Video Clips
Quoted moments from Alaska public meetings, hearings, and press conferences.
Speaker C
“I will not support a variance if it's based on finance, just for the record.”Anchorage Assembly: Platting Board: June 17, 2026 - 2026-06-17 18:30:00 · Jun 18, 2026
Speaker C
“I'm only going to support these variances because they allow infrastructure to be phased in coordination with actual development demand. Requiring immediate construction of an 880-foot roadway segment to serve an undeveloped future parcel would result in infrastructure that is not presently needed.”Anchorage Assembly: Platting Board: June 17, 2026 - 2026-06-17 18:30:00 · Jun 18, 2026
Curtis McQueen
“I have worked for, with, and alongside the Eklutna people, most of it with Eklutna Inc., for over 21 years. I was the CEO for 15 years, right through 2019.”Anchorage Assembly: Platting Board: June 17, 2026 - 2026-06-17 18:30:00 · Jun 18, 2026
Speaker C
“I move in Case S12883 to approve a variance from AMC 2108030E, legal and physical access. A subdivision shall have legal and physical access and a variance from AMC 2108050F2, peripheral streets, improvement of peripheral streets when necessary for efficient flow of traffic or emergency vehicle access, subject to the conditions shown on page 6 of the staff report.”Anchorage Assembly: Platting Board: June 17, 2026 - 2026-06-17 18:30:00 · Jun 18, 2026
Suzanne LaFrance
“if the Assembly approves the grant award, a good neighbor agreement is required. between True North and the community. Keeping in mind though, this is by-right zoning use. Behavioral health services were once provided at this location and anybody could go in and provide those services without any additional requirements. But with a grant from the municipality and through— for the HUD funding, this is when a good neighbor agreement would be required.”Anchorage Assembly: Housing and Homelessness Committee · Jun 17, 2026
Suzanne LaFrance
“True North was planning a launchpad project where crisis services would be provided on-site.”Anchorage Assembly: Housing and Homelessness Committee · Jun 17, 2026
Kimberly Rash
“after the grant expires, HUD requires us to track the progress project deliverables for 5 years after the end of that grant agreement. The use of the facility as acquired has to stay the same for at least, at least 5 years up to 15 years. And so the, the use does have to stay the same.”Anchorage Assembly: Housing and Homelessness Committee · Jun 17, 2026
Thea Agnew-Bemben
“that's also the step towards us being able to bill for services. We have 13 clinicians just between fire and police, not to mention all the clinical folks at the health department. We're not billing for those services right now, and that's revenue that we could be capturing to help meet the need. And then also included in our proposal is 6 different pilot projects.”Anchorage Assembly: Housing and Homelessness Committee · Jun 17, 2026
Thea Agnew-Bemben
“one of them is to be able to do short-term assisted living for people who otherwise would be— Uh-huh. In shelter as a way to bridge them into the benefits that are needed to get them into actual assisted living.”Anchorage Assembly: Housing and Homelessness Committee · Jun 17, 2026
Thea Agnew-Bemben
“The proposal, it's a 3-year proposal. The first year is gonna be about $3.1 million, then a couple million each year after that. So it's a big lift for us to do this, but the goal is that that will get us over a hump that will allow us to not only coordinate care within Anchorage, but also statewide.”Anchorage Assembly: Housing and Homelessness Committee · Jun 17, 2026
Speaker G
“Services not proposed: crisis services. There'd be no crisis services at this facility. They will continue their current work of providing providing that through mobile outreach, and the new vehicle will assist in that and make that a more streamlined and efficient process”Anchorage Assembly: Housing and Homelessness Committee · Jun 17, 2026
Speaker G
“This is a recommended grant for $750,000 of Community Development Block Grant funding that was selected through a competitive request for grant proposals in spring of 2025 for purchase of a building that True North Recovery is proposing to use as a base for operations in Anchorage.”Anchorage Assembly: Housing and Homelessness Committee · Jun 17, 2026
Speaker G
“Under the revised proposal, these are the services that they are proposing to offer at this location. This would include integrated behavioral health assessments, telehealth therapy, medication-assisted treatment, medication management. All those would be outpatient services only, not any inpatient or residential services. Um, it also housed their administrative offices, office space for their mobile outreach staff, They are, as, as mentioned, also purchasing a mobile command center vehicle that they will use to move around the city to provide crisis services.”Anchorage Assembly: Housing and Homelessness Committee · Jun 17, 2026
Speaker G
“she is putting this forward to the Assembly again for Assembly action at the July 7th meeting. This will be a revised Assembly memorandum outlining the revised scope of services being proposed by True North and requesting Assembly approval of the grant agreement.”Anchorage Assembly: Housing and Homelessness Committee · Jun 17, 2026
Erin Baldwin Day
“I'm curious about how this service change impacts financial feasibility of this project, if at all, for True North. It sounds like, based on the feasibility study, that those, the mobile services were actually the least financially viable or stable in the long haul, and there were some questions about whether or not that, that particular line of service could even be sustained after the first 2 years of operation if additional grant funds were not made available.”Anchorage Assembly: Housing and Homelessness Committee · Jun 17, 2026
Suzanne LaFrance
“True North has revised their proposal. I'll let them go into the details, but they are now proposing outpatient services and administrative office space to be co-located with Access Alaska. There will be no crisis services provided out of that facility. We all know that we still need more crisis care, behavioral health resources, and access to treatment. True North plans to purchase a mobile crisis command vehicle to provide these services wherever they are needed”Anchorage Assembly: Housing and Homelessness Committee · Jun 17, 2026
Thea Agnew-Bemben
“the thing we're doing very directly right now is we're applying for funding from the Rural Health Transformation Program, and the, what we are applying to do is to implement client records at all three of our departments—fire, police, and health—which we are in kind of different stages of right now, and then to be able to connect those to the health information exchange, which will allow us to actually have a way to communicate and share information with hospitals.”Anchorage Assembly: Housing and Homelessness Committee · Jun 17, 2026
Kimberly Rash
“at any time we provide HUD funding, whether it's a contract or grant agreement, and the use of it changes, so if it's a land acquisition, the use changes, the grantee or the contractor is required to pay the entity who provided the funds back. The funding, the full amount.”Anchorage Assembly: Housing and Homelessness Committee · Jun 17, 2026
Erin Baldwin Day
“for these 45 to 50 people who are in this rotation, Is the actual need here for a different kind of facility that we don't currently have, or like, what's the constellation of solutions beyond just the sharing of medical records that actually gets us to a place where we don't have these 45 to 50 extremely vulnerable humans who are cycling through instability sort of in perpetuity?”Anchorage Assembly: Housing and Homelessness Committee · Jun 17, 2026
Erin Baldwin Day
“we made that investment and there's still no crisis stabilization center open at Prov. And they are a massive organization with very deep pockets and lots of access to resources. And so I, again, I think that this line of questioning is fair when we're evaluating a $750,000 investment.”Anchorage Assembly: Housing and Homelessness Committee · Jun 17, 2026
Erin Baldwin Day
“when I look at a feasibility study and there's an entire paragraph that says, you know, the mobile outreach team is the service line with the least amount of billable revenue associated given the target population of the service line, and then there's a question at the end about operational impacts if additional grant funding isn't made available. I have questions about sustainability when it sounds like we're shifting harder into that mobile outreach model.”Anchorage Assembly: Housing and Homelessness Committee · Jun 17, 2026
Erin Baldwin Day
“the assembly moved to allow accessory dwelling units in all residential zones in 2023, duplexes by right everywhere in the Anchorage Bowl. That was the HOME Initiative. 3 And 4-plexes were reclassified from commercial to residential construction, and some residential design standards were paused. And with all of this work that's been done since 2022, we are just now beginning to see an uptick in residential permit So 261 residential permits, residential units permitted in 2023, 299 in 2024, and 393 in 2025. And I'd like to posit that that trajectory does not get us to 10,000 homes in 10 years.”Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re AO 2026-85 amending Anchorage Municipal Code Title 21 to create a new missing... · Jun 17, 2026
Erin Baldwin Day
“the maximum height is 40 feet, which is 10 feet higher than what is currently permitted in most residential zones, 30 if the underlying zone is R-1. So one of the things we heard during the TSDO process was a really significant current concern about shadows in these R1 neighborhoods, the residential single-family neighborhoods. And so this was a response to that concern to say, okay, in R1, we will maintain the height as is, as it already exists in that zone.”Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re AO 2026-85 amending Anchorage Municipal Code Title 21 to create a new missing... · Jun 17, 2026
George Martinez
“The starting point is very, very simple to me, that people in the past were able to identify things that they knew the city would need to have the thinking about for the future, but that they weren't ready to take on at that time. So when I got elected, I didn't make up the term Transit Supportive Development Corridor. It was already on a plan.”Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re AO 2026-85 amending Anchorage Municipal Code Title 21 to create a new missing... · Jun 17, 2026
George Martinez
“this is really old language that we're bringing to implementation, and Anchorage seems to have a problem where the rubber meets the road. That's where we often seem to not be able to get past, but I recognize that this body has been committed to getting past the implementation snafu that we often find in our community, piece by piece, and this is the next attempt.”Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re AO 2026-85 amending Anchorage Municipal Code Title 21 to create a new missing... · Jun 17, 2026
Erin Baldwin Day
“MHOP is a decade overdue, as we heard from Member Martinez, it is a proven concept. This kind of development, these sorts of zoning overlays, have proven to be extremely successful elsewhere in environments like ours, and it reflects a decision point at whether we are willing to take the steps that are outlined in our comprehensive plan to incentivize housing in the places that it already makes sense.”Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re AO 2026-85 amending Anchorage Municipal Code Title 21 to create a new missing... · Jun 17, 2026
Erin Baldwin Day
“what the Missing Middle Housing Opportunity Overlay does is it says that minimum lot dimensions are not static. They are determined by subdivision requirements, which are located in a different place in Title 21. It increases maximum lot coverage to say you can cover more of a parcel, up to 70%. It says that you do not have any minimum required setbacks from the front of the lot.”Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re AO 2026-85 amending Anchorage Municipal Code Title 21 to create a new missing... · Jun 17, 2026
Erin Baldwin Day
“An overlay is not a rezone. It does not change the underlying classification of any of the properties. It simply allows property owners to opt in to a more flexible regulatory framework.”Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re AO 2026-85 amending Anchorage Municipal Code Title 21 to create a new missing... · Jun 17, 2026
Erin Baldwin Day
“what the Missing Middle Housing Overlay aims to do is to reduce some of those regulatory barriers and to create flexibility in the places we've already said it makes sense. MHOP— in practicality means flexibility in how a building can be placed and oriented on a lot. What size that lot can be and what size the building can be, the number of units or structures that can be on a lot, and the removal of those roadblocks that often force people into a rezone process. Again, this is a— this is strategically along our most traveled roadways, and I think it's important to note that this is an opt-in situation.”Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re AO 2026-85 amending Anchorage Municipal Code Title 21 to create a new missing... · Jun 17, 2026
Anna Brawley
“this policy has been written into the plan for 25 years. And so the question I keep asking the community is, if not this, then what?”Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re AO 2026-85 amending Anchorage Municipal Code Title 21 to create a new missing... · Jun 17, 2026
Erin Baldwin Day
“trying to walk that line between what is the minimum, minimum effective dose, as it were, of zoning reform versus what kinds of changes are acceptable to our neighbors has been a really tricky thing. And I think that's, that's why we've landed where we've landed.”Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re AO 2026-85 amending Anchorage Municipal Code Title 21 to create a new missing... · Jun 17, 2026
George Martinez
“we have a disconnect between visioning of the past and where we should get to, and it seems like every time you get closer to the rubber meets the road, the level of contention increases. I wanted to note the difference between the visioning of plans that we inherited with the obligation of implementation meets the implementation moment of an excited public working through challenging issues.”Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re AO 2026-85 amending Anchorage Municipal Code Title 21 to create a new missing... · Jun 17, 2026
Anna Brawley
“this ordinance at least represents one way that we can implement the main piece of the plan. And so I think the— Thank you. Questions that I'm putting on the table for everybody to consider is that big picture kind of what do we do with our Comp Plan? And if this is not the way to implement the major piece of the Comp Plan, what are we doing with that plan?”Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re AO 2026-85 amending Anchorage Municipal Code Title 21 to create a new missing... · Jun 17, 2026
Erin Baldwin Day
“they called out that the mismatch between future housing demand and land supply demanded our attention, and if not properly addressed, the housing gap could affect population growth in Anchorage as well as decrease affordability. And here we are, nearly 15 years later, and we are seeing this prediction come to fruition.”Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re AO 2026-85 amending Anchorage Municipal Code Title 21 to create a new missing... · Jun 17, 2026
Erin Baldwin Day
“in 2012, we did a housing market analysis. McDowell Group and ECHO Northwest did an analysis of our housing demand. And I believe that this was prescient writing. So the study's key finding is that there was not enough buildable land to accommodate future housing demand.”Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re AO 2026-85 amending Anchorage Municipal Code Title 21 to create a new missing... · Jun 17, 2026
Erin Baldwin Day
“this is a follow-on piece of legislation from the Transit Supportive Development Overlay, or TSDO, which was introduced last fall, and it was paused pending additional community dialogue. You'll see lots of references to TSDO in the materials before you for this reason. Again, this builds on the work of TSDO, and I want to be very clear about that.”Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re AO 2026-85 amending Anchorage Municipal Code Title 21 to create a new missing... · Jun 17, 2026
Erin Baldwin Day
“for decades now, we have had this instruction, this aspirational language in our land use plans that say we should have more types of housing buildable in these areas. And we have never made the leap from plan to implementation.”Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re AO 2026-85 amending Anchorage Municipal Code Title 21 to create a new missing... · Jun 17, 2026
Karen Norsworthy
“I would suggest somewhere around 5%— 5 to 8% would be my suggestion on making adjustment on the salary. When I look at some of the— and granted, they're union employees— some of their contracts have given as much as 8% on increases. So you have a fair amount of employees that are making more than the mayor now.”Anchorage Assembly: Salaries and Emoluments Commission Meeting · Jun 16, 2026
Karen Norsworthy
“I suggested, you know, the one thing that we haven't looked at in a while was probably the mayor. And if we were going to do anything that—”Anchorage Assembly: Salaries and Emoluments Commission Meeting · Jun 16, 2026
Karen Norsworthy
“if we are able to make a decision here sometime this summer to get it taken care of, then when the budgeting season starts, um, which that whole thing starts in October, they have time to prepare for the following year. So it's important, I think, for us to do this early rather than waiting”Anchorage Assembly: Salaries and Emoluments Commission Meeting · Jun 16, 2026
Karen Norsworthy
“the current salary for the mayor is $145,000 a year plus a little bit of change on that. And I think it has been— it was— I'm looking back in the notebook the last time we looked at the mayor's compensation. And I think it looks like it was in 2020 when we went to the $143,000. And prior to that, The last time it was increased was in 2015. So in 2015, it was $132,000, almost $133,000 a year.”Anchorage Assembly: Salaries and Emoluments Commission Meeting · Jun 16, 2026
Pat Redmond
“we will be looking at increased compensation for the mayor. Are there any other, and we will not be looking at the assembly or school board.”Anchorage Assembly: Salaries and Emoluments Commission Meeting · Jun 16, 2026
Jasmine
“the commission shall afford an opportunity for the public to be heard before rendering any decision that changes compensation.”Anchorage Assembly: Salaries and Emoluments Commission Meeting · Jun 16, 2026
Karen Norsworthy
“Not that that's necessarily an issue, but it's, I think, something worth considering.”Anchorage Assembly: Salaries and Emoluments Commission Meeting · Jun 16, 2026
Pat Redmond
“Do we want to look at any from the Lower 48? I did I don't, I don't think we need to. I think it should be within Alaska.”Anchorage Assembly: Salaries and Emoluments Commission Meeting · Jun 16, 2026
Karen Norsworthy
“I think we can look at the governor. I think we can look at the chancellor of UAA and some other comparable positions within the city.”Anchorage Assembly: Salaries and Emoluments Commission Meeting · Jun 16, 2026
Karen Norsworthy
“I'd like to suggest that we maybe try and schedule something in maybe end of July, first part of August, and then maybe we can look at over the last like 5 years, get information on— let's just look at the workforce with the municipality, I think is worth looking at, is how much, you know, along with the assembly, what's the percentage of increase that has happened there.”Anchorage Assembly: Salaries and Emoluments Commission Meeting · Jun 16, 2026
Karen Norsworthy
“2020, In April, we advanced the salary to $145,000. And here we are at 2026.”Anchorage Assembly: Salaries and Emoluments Commission Meeting · Jun 16, 2026