Hey y’all, Anchorage Deadbeat back again with another post Assembly meeting transcription of the Mayor’s Report and the Chair’s Report. Just a reminder that I do live threads covering the meetings on Threads, if that’s something that interests you!
Okay onto the meat.
Here’s the transcription of the Mayor’s Report from last night’s meeting. I tried to include hyperlinks to as much reference material as I thought might be relevant for the uninitiated.
BRONSON: Good evening, everyone. Good to see everyone here tonight. I hope everyone’s been enjoying the snow. In true Alaska fashion, winter showed up in an extreme way, with a record snowfall for a November 5th. My administration has been working diligently to get the word out about the city’s snow plowing and removal process. My administration has created a snow removal page on the muni website, I encourage everyone to go there. There you can find the snow plow and removal plan maps of the muni and state-owned roads and sidewalks in a real-time update on plow out areas. The goal is to keep constituents informed about the city process and timeline, so that they know what to expect, and I’m proud of the work we’ve done to provide useful resources to Anchorage citizens. No matter how long you’ve lived in Alaska, the first snowfall is always a learning experience and a bit of a challenge for everyone. I’m extremely grateful for the road maintenance and operations crews for their hard work. We have several new [Maintenance and Operations] drivers on the road this year, so we ask for a little patience as these new employees learn the ropes from seasoned veterans, but I’m confident Anchorage is in good hands.
The Solid Waste Service admin building opened last week for cold weather shelter. This was a huge lift for several municipal departments. I want to especially thank the Anchorage Health Department for leading the way, and the Purchasing Department for getting the necessary contracts executed swiftly. As of this afternoon, 90 people have checked into the shelter. The feedback we are hearing from homeless individuals is that they don’t want to go to Solid Waste Service building. They would rather stay outside until they get a hotel room. Hotel rooms are not a sustainable solution for shelter. They are expensive and incentivize being homeless. Everyone deserves a roof over their head, but the Assembly’s plan for homelessness is creating a new entitlement at the expense of taxpayers. We need only look to our friends to the south (for example: San Francisco and Seattle) to see where this road leads. I believe we can work together on a solution that is best for everyone. And I hope the Assembly will work with my administration on a plan that respects hardworking taxpayers and keeps our homeless folks warm. This year, the Anchorage Health Department set up a reservation hotline [Transcriber’s Note: the phone number if you need assistance is 2-1-1, further resources can be found on the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness website] for the very first time. It’s been extremely beneficial in allowing us to get an accurate snapshot of those seeking shelter. And as we know in order to plan accurately, we have to have accurate data. The reservation hotline is free and I want to acknowledge the Health Department for having the forethought to set up its own method to capture the number of people seeking shelter. With this new tracking system, I’m confident we will be able to plan better going forward.
Now, moving on to housing, I want to congratulate, heartily, the Assembly on a successful Housing Action Week. This is an important issue that affects all Anchorage residents. I am encouraged by the proactive efforts of the assembly to address housing availability and affordability. And I believe that Anchorage will thrive as a city from our continuous and collaborative efforts. A major win for us was the recently signed methane gas agreement between the MOA and the Eklutna Corporation. This agreement, alone, has the potential to bring 1170 housing units to market. I recently had a discussion with members of Air Force senior leadership stationed here, and they expressed how urgent this housing plan is for them to execute and plan their 2035 plan. So, you know, there are roughly 200 military families living in hotel rooms because they can’t find housing. And I really look forward to the day that our military members can feel a sense of housing security while stationed here at JBER.
With the days getting shorter, and the temperatures getting colder, we are reminded by how much we in South Central Alaska rely on natural gas to keep our lights on and our homes heated. For the last several years, the Department of Natural Resources has been raising concerns about the level of development occurring on natural gas found in Cook Inlet. As current production levels stand, the state may have to start importing natural gas. We know that Cook Inlet has plenty of natural gas left, but we need companies to produce it. I’ve been working closely with Governor Dunleavy on this issue, and I recently joined him at a press conference where he announced the proposal for legislation that will incentivize natural gas production in Cook Inlet. Going forward, I will continue to collaborate with railbelt utilities and the Anchorage caucus to work on solutions to ensure energy security for Anchorage. And that concludes my remarks, Mr. Chair, thank you very much.
Afterwards we heard the Chair of the Assembly’s Report (usually posted on his Assembly page, but I think I beat him to it at the time of posting. When his version goes up, it’ll be fun to compare!)
CONSTANT: Everybody, good evening and welcome. So, this last week was Housing Action Week, and it was an amazing event. The cynics in the community say “oh, one more convening to talk about housing, where’s the action?” Well, I think that this was an action oriented event. It was a week-long initiative to get our community talking about housing because the housing shortage crisis is really an everyone problem. And after a full week of programs by community organizations, including the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce, the ACLU of Alaska, the Alaska State Home Builders Association, the Anchorage Home Builders Association, NeighborWorks Alaska, the Mayor’s Office, the administration, the Assembly hosted the Community Housing Action Summit last friday. We welcomed neighbors and industry experts, the municipal staff and special guest Charles (or Chuck) Marohn of Strong Towns for presentations on local market data, national best practices, and the Assembly’s draft housing strategic plan. I think Chuck Marohn has one thing that everyone could learn from when trying to solve problems: find the smallest thing you could fix, the very smallest thing on a problem, and fix that problem, and then turn to the next smallest thing and fix that until, finally, you’ve solved all the problems. The event was livestreamed on YouTube, and the event material, including the draft housing strategic plan can be found at anchoragehousingaction.org. During ACDA’s presentation at the Housing Action Summit, Mike Robbins reviewed a new report on incentives for market rate attainable housing, which reviewed four case studies of western mountain cities that measurably resolved their housing shortage problems. The message is clear: the solution to our housing crisis isn’t one of big change, but a multitude of small changes in both policies and processes. That means we’re in it for the long haul. We’ve got a lot of work ahead, and we can start by doing the small things now. Start by reading the draft housing strategic plan and provide comments to the Anchorage Assembly via email by December the 4th [Transcriber’s Note: here’s the email address for all members], And I want to extend a very sincere thanks to both member Brawley and the de-facto chair of the event, Mr. Member Felix Rivera for hosting the Friday Summit, to everybody who participated in Housing Action Week events, and community partners who joined in the conversation. Thank you. Let’s keep talking. Let’s get to action. Visit anchoragehousingaction.org for more.
Next, into the ongoing struggle that we face in this community about what to do with issues relating to homelessness. I’m glad to report that I am going to be in DC at the end of the month and have been fortunate enough to schedule a joint meeting with members of our congressional delegation to continue the conversation about HUD funding and how we can address the inequity of funding, because in a lot of ways, the challenges we face are challenges of limited and unfair funding in addressing the issues relating to homelessness. The local government cannot afford to be the only funder of the solutions we need in this town, because we are a regional and a national center for community in America and we need to have outside support. So I’m going to be in DC at the end of the month, working on that. But in regard to cold weather sheltering, I want to respond to a statement made to the media by the mayor recently that demonstrates, I think, one of the core challenges that we faced over the last, some, 20 months. He said, “I don’t come up with these plans, I just set the policy.” I just set the policy. I want the community to understand that this legislative body, the Assembly is actually the policy making body of the municipality, we set the policy, and the administration’s job is to implement the policy. And so we appear to have been struggling over who it is that sets the policy for the city, and I think at some point we will come together and be able to implement a plan that is effective. When everybody recognizes that, we as a community, have a policy of distributed resources of homeless services across the community in a way that does not create in one part of town a single location, that the neighbors in that part of town have to bear the burden for everyone else from across the city and the state
The assembly is happy to continue trying to work with the administration, and another thing that was said in the media was that the Assembly said to wait on implementing the plan. The Assembly never said wait on implementing the plan. What the Assembly said was let’s wait on passing judgment on the effectiveness of the plan until it’s been implemented so that we can course correct and fulfill the needs that are demonstrated that aren’t fulfilled as we implement the plan. So it is, I believe, the hope of the Assembly that the administration, through the Health Department, will continue working hard to get all of those shelter beds full, to help us cross reference that list of individuals who are in need of shelter, and then set up the shelter services that we need to meet the need and continue the most important work, which is moving people from the streets and shelters into housing. This fall, the Health Department presented a plan for emergency shelter that includes non-congregate shelter and congregate shelter at the 56th Avenue facility. The Assembly has appropriated the funds to make that possible, and if the plan is falling short and needs additional elements, whether that includes warming locations, or additional locations, we need to hear from the administration on their plan to implement the policy of the Assembly in this municipality. We will find the funds to make it possible. Throughout the process, we’ve been doing our best to work with the administration, and I want to thank, again, the Health Department for their hard work and standing up the system, because it’s barely two to three weeks old and we still have, what, 60 to 90 people in a shelter, the 56th Avenue shelter, that has capacity for up to 150. So we’re not up to speed there yet. But what we did hear from the Mayor is that people don’t want to be in congregate shelter. And so we have to carefully consider how we set up shelters so that people will actually use it, because, for the last 25 years, we have seen people would rather camp out than be in a big shelter setting.
With that said, I’m really glad for the work that’s happened. We are starting to move people. I look forward to when we get to full at that shelter and start to work on the process of opening, whatever the next steps are, as I have committed, I’ll work with this Assembly to find the funds to operate the services that need to be in place to make sure that when people are struggling and suffering outside, they have a place to come in and get warm and be safe and engage on the path to housed.
Next on the agenda tonight, we are going to be discussing the budget. Tonight, we are moving on work towards the second public hearing [Transcriber’s Note: here is a link to the public testimony on the budget section], maybe the final public hearing, of the 2024 budget. And I want to thank anybody who’s here to testify on that. We will hold the public hearing tonight, right around 8 pm, just like we did the first time, we’ll suspend the regular business and move on to that. There will also be a work session this Thursday, November 9th, to discuss potential budget amendments by members. And the assembly will take up deliberations and likely vote on the budget at the November 21st Assembly meeting, you can learn more about this process at www.muni.org/assembly. Next, I’m going to take the unusual step of inviting the HR Director to come up and make a brief report on an ordinance that recently passed that changes the position of the municipality in the context of drug testing policy. Mr. Andrews, would you please come and give us a brief report? I believe that that ordinance goes into effect this Thursday at 12:01 am, so this is the first opportunity to provide the workforce of the municipality an update on the plan. Mr. Andrews.
ANDREWS: Good evening, thanks for the opportunity to publicize these changes to the personnel rules. I’ll do a few highlights. Yes. Communication is going out tomorrow afternoon to employees and supervisors. Obviously, the supervisors will be getting the employee communication as well. But a few of the highlights are the legislation creates two different groups of employees: covered and non-covered. Those folks who are covered are CDL holders, people who work for transit, and commissioned officers under the Alaska Police Standards Council. Nothing changes for those classifications as far as any testing procedures, post-accident, randoms, there’s no change there. For the non-covered folks, there are some changes. We’ve changed how we’re going to test and when we’re going to test in the post-accident scenario. As far as initiating the test, instructions to the supervisors will be the same for the initiation of the test, although the property value standard will not be used in determining whether or not we need to have a test. We’ll be using the DOT standard for all post-accident testing situations. I just want to remind folks, we are primarily only talking about post-accident testing here, we are not a we’re not a universal drug testing employer, we don’t do that.
So key points to remember: now there are two different groups of employees, covered and non-covered. The communication will go out tomorrow afternoon. We’ve shown folks where they can go look at the new legislation, we’re putting that on our website in place of our current testing policy, so people can have the freshest information available. And I guess, what else would i cover, a significant change in light of the legislation is a default towards treatment. And with our message tomorrow we’re going to encourage people, if they are concerned about those kinds of things, we’re going to point them towards the EAP because I think it’s important for the employer to state that they want people to be safe and healthy. So it’s always better for folks if they think they are experiencing some kind of substance abuse issue to reach out and get help as soon as they can, the EAP is a great place to start.
Other than that, communication goes out tomorrow. There will be more communication to follow. We’re trying to meet the timeline as quickly as possible. I foresee probably some additional training in the future. And those kinds of things. If you’ve got a question, I’m happy to answer.
CONSTANT: I don’t have any questions. I just want to say thank you. The gist is, tomorrow, a communication will go out that sets out the timelines and operation of the new policy that prioritizes allowing individuals an opportunity to get back to work if they do have an incident relating to substance use disorders. And by the end of the year, I think the ordinance says that you have the opportunity to publish those policies and so thank you very much for this report and look forward to seeing the email so that the workforce is clear on the policy. Thank you.
All right, so a couple last items. I want to note that we do have a resolution tonight that will be honoring Veterans Day, that we do have Veterans Day coming up as a holiday. And I want to honor, in my report, those who have served this nation and so we’ll have that discussion shortly. And I would note that we had the passing, as I noted at our last meeting, of Vic Fisher, an amazing statesman of both Anchorage and the state of Alaska and United States policy making. His family and the community will be hosting a reception for him, Sunday from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Captain Cook Hotel, if you’re interested to participate.
That’s all for the reports this week. However, I am considering trying to do some level of transcription regarding the particularly interesting discussion regarding the “Operation Agreement” that Bronson contracted with the Hockey Association. The whole discussion was tense and informative. I highly recommend watching as much as you feel up to. Here’s the beginning of that discussion on the livestream.
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I also post these transcriptions on my website (which I’m looking to overhaul soon, if I can find a way to mirror my threads from X and Threads on there, as well as restoring my article regarding the Mayoral Arts Grants from way back when I started doing this).
That’s all from me for now. Stay safe, Anchorage, and tell the ones you love that you love them.
ANCHORAGE DEADBEAT 