Video Clips

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

Clips from City of North PoleClear

Larry Terch “So this $110,000, um, that was just quoted, where did you come up with that figure and their qualifications, and what type of workload are you thinking of for that kind of salary? So that would be a 40-hour-a-week employee workload.”

North Pole: Budget Work Session - Administrative and Clerk/HR Budget · Oct 27, 2026

Larry Terch “the mayor is a political position, and as you look at our code, when you get into the city manager position, it's much higher than the mayor's position.”

North Pole: Budget Work Session - Administrative and Clerk/HR Budget · Oct 27, 2026

Santa Claus “our code permits us to have one and actually requires it under current code, um, that we ought to stick with that and explore that, especially at that salary level.”

North Pole: Budget Work Session - Administrative and Clerk/HR Budget · Oct 27, 2026

Larry Terch “So I don't know if the Director of City Service position needs to remain as it has been in the past.”

North Pole: Budget Work Session - Administrative and Clerk/HR Budget · Oct 27, 2026

Larry Terch “So what's the proposed salary on that? $120,000, I think, is what we had that at.”

North Pole: Budget Work Session - Administrative and Clerk/HR Budget · Oct 27, 2026

Larry Terch “We had talked about hiring a chief of staff or someone in the mayor's office to assist the mayor in day-to-day work, grant writing, and also the transition period between mayors.”

North Pole: Budget Work Session - Administrative and Clerk/HR Budget · Oct 27, 2026

Larry Terch “Uh, right now it's at about $110,000. And then the intent was, since we've never had that position before, to hire them as a non-PERS employee, saving us about 22.5% in PERS”

North Pole: Budget Work Session - Administrative and Clerk/HR Budget · Oct 27, 2026

Larry Terch “The director of city services— that position wasn't, um, introduced or created until I think we got into Mayor Welch's time, where the intent for that director of city services position was to eventually become a city manager.”

North Pole: Budget Work Session - Administrative and Clerk/HR Budget · Oct 27, 2026

Larry Terch “the council voted by resolution to hire a director of city services. Um, my intent was to not hire a director of city services, turn the public utility supervisor into a department head”

North Pole: Budget Work Session - Administrative and Clerk/HR Budget · Oct 27, 2026

Larry Terch “I have not had a chance to read through the substitute as that wasn't sent out, um, prior to the meeting and only Right before the meeting, was it placed on the dais?”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Robert Palmer

“So I commend the Mayor Pro Tem for quickly trying to find an alternate solution.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Robert Palmer

“the major concern that I had with it is that it conflated comp time or compensatory time with the utility on-call policy. And when you use the term comp time and you put it in the comp time code, in general you have to pay 1.5 times the actual hours worked, and that means the individual is work— is on the clock when they're working, and they get the right to choose between comp time or overtime.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Santa Claus “this particular ordinance addresses eligibility and accrual and on-call assignments and records. I want to make a point of this. This is different from the on-call for fire and police.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Thomas McGee

“I would highly recommend, since the attorney hasn't had a chance to give you an evaluation of it, that you would postpone this to the next meeting before you make a decision on it tonight.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Benny Williams “If he can give me the same quality of work, I'm going with the $18,000.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Larry Terch “I reached out to call service in Anchorage, um, and for less than $350 a month, we could put the utility department through a call center out of Anchorage so that those calls that came through that weren't of an emergency type nature could be answered and emailed to our utility rather than disturbing a utility worker at 1:00 AM.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Thomas McGee

“The public doesn't, so the public hasn't reviewed it, and I don't see any utility employees back there ready to speak on it. So it's just my recommendation that you postpone it till the next meeting.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Santa Claus “if I was actively in business here in North Pole and I heard this conversation this evening, I would be pretty disappointed. And under certain circumstances, I might be inclined to move my business elsewhere, and I would not like to see that happen personally.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Larry Terch “competition is competition, and competition is good. That sets the price down to the lowest bar for our city.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Santa Claus “there's been— in front of us here on the dais is a substitute for their particular ordinance that's before us right now. So it essentially be a thorough amendment of it, and it addresses some concerns that the city attorney had, and also that one of the utility workers brought to our attention today with a testimony”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Robert Palmer

“The Kenai case was in 1983. Since then, based on that case and the 3 cases I cited, the hiring cases, the contractor hiring cases, there are some municipalities who have memos from their attorneys recommending not to enforce their local bidder preferences because of the extreme risk of a constitutional challenge.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Benny Williams “I'd go with the one— do I want quantity or quality? And I check everybody out and make sure I get the best deal for my money.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Santa Claus “I take Mr. McGee's point that we might want to postpone this and give everybody on council an opportunity to review this material rather than make an instant, um, vote.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Robert Palmer

“They tried— I'll just briefly talk about the case. They tried to sell land only to city residents and then gave a benefit, a 5% benefit, to residents who have been there long-term. Ultimately, the Alaska Supreme Court said that was an unconstitutional disposal of land because of the local bidder preference, the local resident preference.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Larry Terch “And Mayor Terch? No. Would anyone like to change their vote? I have one.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Robert Palmer

“it became clear to me that that was not the intent. The intent was to provide some sort of fair compensation for the utility employees who are doing extraordinary work of being on call. And so that's what led to the substitute ordinance.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Santa Claus “if they're local businesses, they're already paying things like property taxes and other taxes here. So they're stimulating our economy.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Robert Palmer

“Fairbanks bidder then comes in and challenges the award and says it's unconstitutional, and that goes through the bid review process, usually to a judge, and then judge would say yes or no, and typically awards the bid to the lower bidder, which is both cheaper and a non-resident, and so city would have to pay, you know, less expenses.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Robert Palmer

“I share your opinion, and I wish I had a chance to look at this sooner than just before you got at the final reading.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Robert Palmer

“usually because it's a constitutional challenge, the city would also have to pay attorney's fees because there's usually constitutional claims are entitled to full attorney's fees.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Larry Terch “I contacted the attorney because first I did not feel as though the original version of this was legal, um, as we are dictating to our employees whether they could take comp time or choose overtime, which is in our code.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Robert Palmer

“I did just about an hour ago, Mr. Mayor, and I haven't had a chance to fully digest it.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Robert Palmer

“anytime a municipality or government in Alaska provides a local bidder preference, it's likely unconstitutional. I don't get to that conclusion lightly”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Santa Claus “I would like to, uh, substitute the, uh, this particular language for the, uh, ordinance.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Larry Terch “While we sit up here and we talk about overtaxation of our residents, we then turn around and say we're going to provide a bidder preference to our local businesses. To me, doesn't make a lot of sense. We're either on board or we're out into the water.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Robert Palmer

“I think the clerk said by 3 o'clock today, and so my goal was to get it to you by noon. If I will say, these types of ordinances are legally tricky, and I fully understand the policy.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

Larry Terch “this is a lot of effort on something that we don't need inside of our city code. We already do this as a city. And, uh, I love our North Pole businesses, but this is not the right way to love on our North Pole businesses.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting October 19, 2026 · Oct 19, 2026

“I agree with, uh, what Councilman, uh, or Mayor Pro Tem, uh, Brandt, um, just said regarding a reduction in salary for the reasons he mentioned.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting September 21, 2026 · Sep 21, 2026

“if we are going to reduce the mayor's pay compensation and adjustment, we should have a plan forward to have someone in place to take over some of those duties that the mayor would normally hold, especially if they're not here during office hours. Creates a big problem and a huge hole.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting September 21, 2026 · Sep 21, 2026

“You could attract qualified, or, you know, qualified mayor candidates by paying $140,000 a year, $150,000 a year, or you do it the opposite way where you move to a more part-time, and it's something other people can do besides is, you know, having this as a full-time job.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting September 21, 2026 · Sep 21, 2026

“if I was going to be all in on something, I'd want to be compensated for being all in on something, not just part-time.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting September 21, 2026 · Sep 21, 2026

“what happens, uh, Councilman Brandt, when the director of city services, who you delegated all this work to, gives a 2-week notice and, and leaves the city? Who, who covers that, and how do you propose moving forward with a situation like that?”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting September 21, 2026 · Sep 21, 2026

“why do you feel as though the director of city services is a suitable replacement for the mayor's position? It is not.”

North Pole: Regular Council Meeting September 21, 2026 · Sep 21, 2026