Commission recommends naming Anchorage Assembly Chambers for Dick Traini, 3-2

Anchorage's Public Naming Commission voted 3-2 Wednesday to recommend naming the Anchorage Assembly Chambers for the late Dick Traini, a longtime Assembly member and chair, sending the proposal to the Assembly even though less than 36 months have passed since his death.

City naming code generally calls for waiting 36 months after a person dies before naming a facility for them. Chair Darrel Hess, who said he helped write that code and pushed the waiting period up from 12 months, told commissioners their job is only to advise whether a naming is warranted. The Assembly decides whether and how to name the chambers, he said. It can pass a resolution that takes effect once 36 months have passed, or an ordinance that takes effect immediately and sets the rule aside.

Traini first won election to the Assembly in 1991 and served a combined 19 years over nearly three decades, state Sen. Elvi Gray-Jackson told the commission, making him the longest-serving Assembly member in Anchorage history. Colleagues elected him chair five times, she said. Before that, he spent eight years as president of the Campbell Park Community Council.

"He wasn't a politician, he was a policymaker," his son Rick Traini said.

His wife, Sandy Traini, listed ordinances he worked on, from a drunken driving law she said was the toughest in the nation when it passed to off-leash dog parks, youth court and an anti-stalking law. When the Assembly debated buying Tasers for police, she said, a fellow member wanted to see one used before she would vote yes, so Traini let police tase him.

Hess, the municipal ombudsman, said Traini was technically his boss and reappointed him to the job. He recalled Traini signing the city's 2015 equal rights ordinance, which added sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes, with four pens. Traini handed out three and tossed the fourth to Hess, who said it hangs framed on his office wall.

Tim Potter, a retired planner who said he probably set the record for sitting through Assembly public hearings, called Traini "likely the most effective chairperson of the Anchorage Assembly that I ever witnessed."

Vice Chair Jennifer Harrison voted no. She said the chambers represent the whole city, not one neighborhood, and that she wanted to see more community council support and more stories about Traini on the record before the Assembly acts. "I just don't feel like the case has been made," she said. She said she expected the Assembly to approve the naming anyway. The Midtown Community Council, where the chambers sit, supported the proposal, Hess said.

The commission also voted 5-0 at the same meeting to recommend naming a Chugach Foothills trail for the late former Assembly member Karen Bronga and the Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility headquarters for its longtime general manager, Mark Premo, as Alaska News reported. Harrison said she was concerned that all four of the night's public hearings were for naming things after people.

The Assembly will introduce the recommendations on a consent agenda and can't hold a public hearing until at least 21 days later, Hess said. If they reach the Assembly on Nov. 4, the hearing would come in December.