Video Clips

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

Clips from Municipality of AnchorageClear

Erin Baldwin Day “I've gotten really interested recently in how we stack up against peer cities when it comes to things like fire and police. And so I just wanted to throw out, we don't really have any, like, coverage peers that I've been able to find in terms of, like, the, the land that we cover.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating Cont’d & Enterprise & Utilities · Oct 23, 2026

William Falsey “we're to the place now where we're saying, can we afford to buy laptops? So finding a cut of this target, as the budget director said, it's not going to be easy. There's going to be— you'll have to do less with less.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating Cont’d & Enterprise & Utilities · Oct 23, 2026

Doug Schrage “So in other words, of the 31 people that have left the department so far this year, 7 of them did not reach retirement age and volunteered and separated voluntarily. We only have anecdotal data to support the reasoning behind that, whether it was attributable to the lack of a defined benefit, but it is a common thing that we hear from those in our exit interviews.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating Cont’d & Enterprise & Utilities · Oct 23, 2026

William Falsey “there is not a simpler cut to find that is more painless than this kind of thing that we are putting on the board. Or if we have missed it, we're inviting someone to let us know what it is.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating Cont’d & Enterprise & Utilities · Oct 23, 2026

Donald Handeland “are you guys, I mean, I know this is all kind of hypothetical, but as you guys are doing that, are you looking at only 5% across the board or Potentially more in, in some departments because I'm looking at like snow removal versus the public transportation and the impact to more, I guess, people on that.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating Cont’d & Enterprise & Utilities · Oct 23, 2026

Erin Baldwin Day “discontinuing that route entirely would be a massive impact to a very specific neighborhood and very a specific population of individuals in Anchorage. And Route 65 connects downtown with Spenard and Sand Lake and the airport, and it's the only bus service in southwest Anchorage.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating Cont’d & Enterprise & Utilities · Oct 23, 2026

Anna Brawley “regardless of what we would like to do, that decision is not reflected in our budget. So it's a great conversation for legislative committee and certainly does have impact on our budget.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating Cont’d & Enterprise & Utilities · Oct 23, 2026

Erin Baldwin Day “we really are in a fairly precarious position when it comes to AFD staffing, especially based on the retirement. I hate to use the word cliff because I feel like that's getting a little cliché at the moment, but we really do have a lot of folks who are set to retire in the coming year, and that is, that is going to create some additional complexities for you all.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating Cont’d & Enterprise & Utilities · Oct 23, 2026

Doug Schrage “We think that this next year is the year.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating Cont’d & Enterprise & Utilities · Oct 23, 2026

Erin Baldwin Day “we are incredibly lean when it comes to our fire operations.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating Cont’d & Enterprise & Utilities · Oct 23, 2026

Doug Schrage “Member Baldwin Day, through the chair, we've had 31 people leave the department this year. Not all of those are voluntary.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating Cont’d & Enterprise & Utilities · Oct 23, 2026

Doug Schrage “We will start another academy in 2027 because we are expecting a large, uh, tranche of firefighters to retire at the end of April, which is when people normally retire. And, uh, I think there's a very large number of people that are eligible to retire.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating Cont’d & Enterprise & Utilities · Oct 23, 2026

Erin Baldwin Day “Just starts to like feel a little tight. What would that look like in terms of resourcing to do a third overlapping academy in a single year?”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating Cont’d & Enterprise & Utilities · Oct 23, 2026

Erin Baldwin Day “I think it's important to keep in mind that some of these proposed cuts and programmatic changes really do impact particular neighborhoods and particular communities more than others. Elders. And I'm looking particularly at the public transportation. Route 51 connects Centennial Village with the Muldoon Transit Center, and it goes by several senior living facilities on its way.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating Cont’d & Enterprise & Utilities · Oct 23, 2026

William Falsey “what I want to say is that is not the game that we are playing here. We are playing it straight.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating Cont’d & Enterprise & Utilities · Oct 23, 2026

Anna Brawley “The mayor has an opportunity to veto our decisions if she chooses to do that, and then we have the opportunity to override that veto. So the buck literally stops with us. And this is one of our biggest and hardest jobs in a scenario that we're in right now.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating Cont’d & Enterprise & Utilities · Oct 23, 2026

Erin Baldwin Day “It's conceivable and not unrealistic. Have we ever done 3 academies in a year?”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating Cont’d & Enterprise & Utilities · Oct 23, 2026

Erin Baldwin Day “Yeah, thank you. Just following along with the conversation about the 50 potential retirees in FY27. Does that mean we will see 2 academies in 2027 as well?”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating Cont’d & Enterprise & Utilities · Oct 23, 2026

Susanne Fleek-Green “But for right now, we bring to you really a continuation budget, a continuation budget that costs more, though. Because everything costs more these days.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating & Capital · Oct 16, 2026

Ona Brause “Would the transparency associated with service level budgeting that gives you an idea, pay X amount of dollars and you're gonna get this level of service. And when you don't get this level of service, You come tell us.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating & Capital · Oct 16, 2026

Ona Brause “The question becomes, do you want to bond to pay for this ambulance, and do you want to levy to pay for the service to drive the ambulance? Because if we ask the asset question, we do not have the staff or the funding to make it work.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating & Capital · Oct 16, 2026

Ona Brause “that is a close to billion-dollar deficit that we have been sustaining for the last 10 years.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating & Capital · Oct 16, 2026

Ona Brause “The $15 million gap that we've talked about for the '27 budget was closed by eliminating vacant funded positions as part of the position adjustments that we'll go through in the AM support.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating & Capital · Oct 16, 2026

Ona Brause “The outlook for 2028, as mentioned, the projected budget gap is $15 to $30 million. We will get into the details on those numbers in the fiscal plan chart. Costs continue to increase, as Member Baldwin Day mentioned, healthcare, labor, the cost of energy and fuel.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating & Capital · Oct 16, 2026

Ona Brause “We, we, it's $15 to $30 million projected for the '28 budget, and when we get to the 6-year fiscal overview, we'll talk through the assumptions in that and why there is a range between $15 and $30 million and how that reflects compared to the '27 gap.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating & Capital · Oct 16, 2026

Anna Brawley “is it also the case that if we have a road responding to calls, it's possible that we would have a marginal increase in SEMT revenue, essentially reimbursement?”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating & Capital · Oct 16, 2026

Ona Brause “1.2%? Yeah, that is less.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating & Capital · Oct 16, 2026

Erin Baldwin Day “So if I'm seeing this correctly on FD4, we're saying, hey, $380,000 for an ambulance. Which is the one time, and then we're saying alongside this, we're going to fund a levy essentially on an annual basis, 1.35-ish million to staff the thing we just asked you if you wanted to buy.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating & Capital · Oct 16, 2026

Ona Brause “this process, this conversation, this input is going to take us the next 6 to 12 months at a minimum.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating & Capital · Oct 16, 2026

Ona Brause “the other answer to how we close the gap is that we relied on one-time funds that are now gone. This has been part of the budget for the last many years, but this year is the last year of the MLNP sale fund”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating & Capital · Oct 16, 2026

Ona Brause “And, and the slide says no one-time funds left. There are minimal one-time funds left.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating & Capital · Oct 16, 2026

Anna Brawley “Essentially, the projection would be the property tax bill goes up 1.2%, is that right?”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating & Capital · Oct 16, 2026

Ona Brause “creating the option for the fire service area to vote on— or sorry, not the fire service area, the emergency area-wide area— to vote on expanding services and having an additional ambulance available is, do you want to have more service and faster response available”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating & Capital · Oct 16, 2026

Ona Brause “I can tell you what the rising cost of healthcare costs us, and the medical increase for general government, I believe, was between $4 and $6 million this year, and that's just the additional money that we have to pay for the medical coverage on the employer side.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating & Capital · Oct 16, 2026

Ona Brause “what we also already know is that there is not much that can be given up without breaking. And so whole programs will need to be ended instead of breaking lots of programs. And that means that full choices will be made about ending something as opposed to just managing the decline.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating & Capital · Oct 16, 2026

Susanne Fleek-Green “the mayor talked about it when she delivered the budget again, she asked for some scenario planning by departments to understand what a cut would look like, what services residents lose.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating & Capital · Oct 16, 2026

Ona Brause “The, the, the fire service levy would be $250 million and you would get this, this, this, this, this. That is a service level budget. You tell us what you want us to provide.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating & Capital · Oct 16, 2026

Ona Brause “No, we have zeroed that bad boy out. Through the Chair, this year would be the last year.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating & Capital · Oct 16, 2026

Ona Brause “the additional ambulance unit for 300, at the top of the list, is proposed as an asset purchase for a bond of $380,000 as a $1.6 million O&M increment to operate the ambulance.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating & Capital · Oct 16, 2026

Ona Brause “The budget is $701.8 million and the property tax collection is under $400— or including special— $113 million. So it is not all of the revenue included here.”

Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re General Government Operating & Capital · Oct 16, 2026

Earl Malpass “If you saw that graph there where all the flights to— from Merrill Field to 200 rural communities, remote communities, uh, the impact that we have statewide”

Anchorage Assembly: Energy, Enterprise, & Utilities Oversight Committee-of-the-Whole Committee · Oct 15, 2026

Craig Sanders

“That defines the runway design code, which is a safety feature that the FAA defines. Based on aircraft characteristics.”

Anchorage Assembly: Energy, Enterprise, & Utilities Oversight Committee-of-the-Whole Committee · Oct 15, 2026

Earl Malpass “Merrill Field, it's been here since 1930, obviously, and we've had the space for the, the fixed-wing parked aircraft. We're at near capacity right now.”

Anchorage Assembly: Energy, Enterprise, & Utilities Oversight Committee-of-the-Whole Committee · Oct 15, 2026

Craig Sanders

“We've identified that critical design aircraft as the Beechcraft Super King Air 200, which per the FAA's runway design codes is a B2.”

Anchorage Assembly: Energy, Enterprise, & Utilities Oversight Committee-of-the-Whole Committee · Oct 15, 2026

Craig Sanders

“it's second behind Ted Stevens in terms of aircraft operations, and, you know, is effectively the second most, and combined, you know, has even more operations than some of these airports combined”

Anchorage Assembly: Energy, Enterprise, & Utilities Oversight Committee-of-the-Whole Committee · Oct 15, 2026

Craig Sanders

“it's home to 840+ based aircraft. And 30+ businesses and tenants.”

Anchorage Assembly: Energy, Enterprise, & Utilities Oversight Committee-of-the-Whole Committee · Oct 15, 2026

Anna Brawley “when you mentioned that one piece was below schedule, or below, you meant kind of behind schedule, is that right?”

Anchorage Assembly: Energy, Enterprise, & Utilities Oversight Committee-of-the-Whole Committee · Oct 15, 2026

Craig Sanders

“the key output for the forecast is the critical design aircraft. And what that is, is the most intensive aircraft using the airport that's on over 500 annual operations.”

Anchorage Assembly: Energy, Enterprise, & Utilities Oversight Committee-of-the-Whole Committee · Oct 15, 2026