Video Clips

Quoted moments from Alaska public meetings, hearings, and press conferences.

Clips from Municipality of AnchorageClear

Erin Baldwin Day “do you have a sense, you know, based on sort of this data set that we're building, what the, what the true demand is for shelter at this point? And I think looking at, looking at our utilization rates, I mean, and to your point that 93% is full or greater, it does make me wonder, you know, where, where should we be looking? What should our capacity, what should our real capacity be?”

ANC Muni Assembly, Housing and Homelessness Committee · May 24, 2026

Thea Agnew-Bemben “we would love to have another 100 beds at East 56, you know, kind of starting tomorrow would be wonderful. We could fill those beds and that would be great. If we had another 50 beds at Linda's Place for November-December, so just carrying on with kind of our surge plan, as well as adding 20 beds at our non-congregate site.”

ANC Muni Assembly, Housing and Homelessness Committee · May 24, 2026

Justice (Public Testifier)

“somebody should be given a chance to get off the street. When people are cycling and they're not using the resources, it's a waste of time to do that. And these people I see in and out of the places. Why isn't the given a chance somebody that hasn't been there.”

ANC Muni Assembly, Housing and Homelessness Committee · May 24, 2026

Thea Agnew-Bemben “we have 300 year-round beds, 100 at 5656, 100 at Linda's Place, 100 at the Alex. The Alex is non-profit congregate, the other two are congregate. And then between November 2025 and April 2026, we went up to 450 beds with our surge beds.”

ANC Muni Assembly, Housing and Homelessness Committee · May 24, 2026

Thea Agnew-Bemben “I think as we move into really this, the months before budget season, I think we also need to have a conversation about what it looks like to reduce this system. And I'm not saying that because I personally want that to happen. I'm saying it because this is an area that has grown very significantly in the last 5 years in our budget.”

ANC Muni Assembly, Housing and Homelessness Committee · May 24, 2026

Suzanne LaFrance “This year's Point-in-Time Count shows a 28% reduction in unsheltered homelessness compared to last year. That is fewer people sleeping in our public spaces, fewer people susceptible to our cold winter nights, and fewer people unsafe in our community.”

ANC Muni Assembly, Housing and Homelessness Committee · May 24, 2026

Thea Agnew-Bemben “Right now, our shelter providers are reporting, like, this was just a couple weekends ago, 85 turnaways. Those are duplicated, so I think you could say if somebody tried our two congregate shelters, maybe 40 turnaways, but that's quite a lot in early May.”

ANC Muni Assembly, Housing and Homelessness Committee · May 24, 2026

Thea Agnew-Bemben “We served 2,704 unique clients in emergency shelter. And for an individual, the median length of stay was between 8 and 50 days. For families, it's between 30 and 41 days. Our shelters were 95% occupied for those who served individuals and 87% occupied for those who serve families.”

ANC Muni Assembly, Housing and Homelessness Committee · May 24, 2026

Suzanne LaFrance “This year, our shelter beds across the municipality were full at the time of the count. This highlights the need for these beds and the critical role they play in keeping a vulnerable population safe. But we still need more shelter beds.”

ANC Muni Assembly, Housing and Homelessness Committee · May 24, 2026

Dawn Skeete “one of the things that we were talking about and would like to propose is removing annual physical requirements because this exceeds the state requirement, uh, removing duplicative nutrition requirements that are already governed in either state regulations or in the USDA standards because the nutrition— it's really well laid out what they have to do for food requirements. And then eliminating outdated provisions as it relates to a sick child center.”

Worksession re AO 2026-69, amending Anchorage Municipal Code Chapter 16.55 Anchorage Child Care... · May 21, 2026

Dawn Skeete “even after we removed the requirement last year for liability insurance, When we asked questions, no one indicated that they had dropped their insurance. They're all voluntary, from what we could tell, the responses, they're all voluntarily maintaining it.”

Worksession re AO 2026-69, amending Anchorage Municipal Code Chapter 16.55 Anchorage Child Care... · May 21, 2026

Dawn Skeete “Examples include removing outdated terminology in the definitions, aligning the definition— aligning definitions with state regulations, and removing the requirement that an administrator has to either live in the licensed facility or that no one lives in the facility. We're focusing on increasing flexibility for adolescent caregivers, especially as it pertains to after-school programs because they often hire high school students and modernizing training requirements to reflect current practices, including more options for online training.”

Worksession re AO 2026-69, amending Anchorage Municipal Code Chapter 16.55 Anchorage Child Care... · May 21, 2026

Dawn Skeete “The additional changes that are being proposed are intended to improve alignment with state regulation, reduce duplication, and modernize outdated requirements, and as well as support providers, and continue— while also continuing to maintain health and safety protections for children.”

Worksession re AO 2026-69, amending Anchorage Municipal Code Chapter 16.55 Anchorage Child Care... · May 21, 2026

Kimberly Rash “One of the other things that we didn't mention but we talked about in the first round, there was a state task force on child care and they had done two sets of recommendations and one of the recommendations was looking at code and making sure that we could align with them in that we could open up more spots within our community. So really that was the first round was the most impactful for the homes and centers. And then this is just some additional cleanup of either language or ability to still increase capacity and reduce barriers.”

Worksession re AO 2026-69, amending Anchorage Municipal Code Chapter 16.55 Anchorage Child Care... · May 21, 2026

Kimberly Rash “In the AO, you'll also see that there is no summary, summary of economic impacts this round. The last round had about a $30,000 impact due to removal of the licensing fees, but this round there are no economic economic impacts.”

Worksession re AO 2026-69, amending Anchorage Municipal Code Chapter 16.55 Anchorage Child Care... · May 21, 2026

Dawn Skeete “Several consistent themes emerged and providers reported On— we hear this a lot— they reported ongoing demand targeted at infant care, that we are grossly low on infant care in this town. Many of the responses indicated that staffing flexibility had definitely helped with passage of Round 1 last year, and at the same time, the responses also indicated that they emphasized continuing staffing shortages and operational challenges.”

Worksession re AO 2026-69, amending Anchorage Municipal Code Chapter 16.55 Anchorage Child Care... · May 21, 2026

Dawn Skeete “We sent out 190 surveys and we received 32 back.”

Worksession re AO 2026-69, amending Anchorage Municipal Code Chapter 16.55 Anchorage Child Care... · May 21, 2026

Dawn Skeete “the idea is to reduce duplication and modernize— excuse me— modernize code language with MOA oversight and enforcement fully in place. The licensed facilities will continue to be inspected, monitored, and subject to state and MOA licensing regulations.”

Worksession re AO 2026-69, amending Anchorage Municipal Code Chapter 16.55 Anchorage Child Care... · May 21, 2026

Anna Brawley “AO-202669. So that is an ordinance changing some of our— proposing to change some of our child care ordinances or code.”

Worksession re AO 2026-69, amending Anchorage Municipal Code Chapter 16.55 Anchorage Child Care... · May 21, 2026

Anna Brawley “we have a public hearing on that that will come up on our May 26th meeting”

Worksession re AO 2026-69, amending Anchorage Municipal Code Chapter 16.55 Anchorage Child Care... · May 21, 2026

Dawn Skeete “The Municipality of Anchorage has a different licensing structure as the— in that we are the only municipality in the state that does it, that it governs and enforces child care codes.”

Worksession re AO 2026-69, amending Anchorage Municipal Code Chapter 16.55 Anchorage Child Care... · May 21, 2026

Anna Brawley “as we look at these big long-term funds, it's kind of like a bathtub. You got to think about how much you're filling it up, how much is draining out, and ideally you're keeping the bathwater in there enough that it can cover those costs. And so our, the moves we have are infusion of cash to kind of close that deficit all at once, or as we said, tax levy, or, or really in the BSSA's case, just building more stuff or having the community build more stuff.”

ANC Muni Assembly, Budget and Finance Committee-of-the-Whole · May 21, 2026

“The IT internal service fund order of magnitude is going to be about $14.7 million. When we look at those numbers, we're also going to tell you deficit, some portion of that is related to general government and some portion of that is related to the enterprises and utilities. And rough numbers, about 90, 89% of the workers' compensation general liability fund deficit we think is going to be— we're working on the hard numbers now— general government share. So there's $14.7 million that general government owes that fund. On the IT side, because of the way that the capital assets depreciate, it looks like more about 64% of that fund, so about $9.3 million that general government owes that fund.”

ANC Muni Assembly, Budget and Finance Committee-of-the-Whole · May 21, 2026

“I'm very hopeful that when we are able to show you the full ACWRA that we will actually have a plan to retire most all of that general government liability to those fund deficits, but I can't get there until I'm there.”

ANC Muni Assembly, Budget and Finance Committee-of-the-Whole · May 21, 2026

“Likewise, the internal IT service fund incurred expenses that it hasn't recovered in real time. And in, in, in the municipality has paid all of its bills, but it is carrying these deficit positions that ultimately do need to be addressed.”

ANC Muni Assembly, Budget and Finance Committee-of-the-Whole · May 21, 2026

George Martinez “I notice areas of regular, recurring maintenance problems with flooding for years on some of the areas that that seem to have the dots in my district.”

Infrastructure, Enterprise and Utility Oversight Committee-of-the-Whole · May 21, 2026

Anna Brawley “I'm glad we have yet another billion-dollar liability. We keep adding them up.”

Infrastructure, Enterprise and Utility Oversight Committee-of-the-Whole · May 21, 2026