HHAND Commission Monthly Meeting May 2025

Michelle Baker, Commissioner.

Good afternoon, Farina Brown, Special Assistant to the Mayor.

And Thea.

Hi everyone, Thea Agnew-Benben, Special Assistant to the Mayor.

Thank you, everybody. Um, with that, we'll move on to the approval of the order of business. Um, can I get a motion from the agenda?

Sorry, I moved to—. Any second? Second. Any discussion? Uh, I'd like to move Commissioner Thomas to the agenda.

I've got a conflict and I've got, um, I've got a leave early and I've got some things I can do.

Do we have any, any opposition to moving, um, what, Item G, Commissioner's comments, up to what, after the approval of the order for this?

Any opposition?

All right, um, then moving back to the original, uh, can you, uh, any of this 2 people at the agenda, you can amend it, that change. Yeah, you're good. Good. All right, so go ahead and do that. And it is approved with that change.

We'll go on to, uh, Commissioner comments. So yeah, I just, um, first of all, I have to leave early, so I'm sorry, might not be in the forum, um, my other baseball coach, so I've got to coach the team tonight. Um, and also, I— this is going to be my last meeting as commissioner, um, and I just want to give a little background, talk to staff and administration about a lot. Um, you know, I joined about a year and a half ago, I think, and we were a disaster. I mean, we didn't have any, any movement.

We didn't have any path forward. We didn't know what we were supposed to do. We spent our meetings with no help from the former administration trying to figure out what our role was. Um, and then I was— I think I told, I told, uh, Farina that I was going to resign I mean, first meeting that she came, planning on resigning because it was just— we were just spinning our wheels and weren't doing anything. Um, and then Fran came out like, hey, we're, we're getting engagement from the administration, that's great.

Um, but you know, we're an advisory commission and we don't really— we're not asked to advise on anything before it happens. I was on the Parks and Recreation Commission for 7 years. We had 150 at least resolutions about what the administration said. Here's what our plan is. We really found with the administration and the assembly, and we've sent emails to the assembly in the past.

We haven't heard back.

Um, and we're not a conduit for anything. We're an informational meeting every month where the administration comes to us and just tells us what's going on, what's, what has happened. And we don't— we're not ahead of anything. And so I feel like, I mean, a lot's happening with the Anchorage Coalition and we're not, we're not in, in any decision-making process. We're not advising for or against.

We don't have any resolutions coming in here saying, hey, this is— we agree, we're the citizen commission and we agree with this or we don't agree with this before it goes to the assembly. And that's— I mean, you look at the other commissions, I mean, some of them don't have resolutions. The Library Commission, I haven't seen one of theirs, but a lot of them do. And I feel like we're— and I mean, this is like a benchmark issue in Anchorage, and we're a citizen commission, but we're not involved in any of the decision. We just hear from the administration.

Um, and I just feel like it is kind of— there's a lot more information. I understand a lot more about what's going on now. But we're not— this is not what we were designed to do. And I feel like staff probably spends 20 hours, 25 hours a month with this meeting. I mean, getting papers, getting papers together, organizing everything, showing up, and we're not, we're not part of the process.

Um, I mean, I know that everybody has a lot of other important things to do, and I think that it would be good for the administration to engage this mission in a meaningful way, and it's not, it's not process that was designed to be, I don't think. You know, we've taken— we were supposed to guide HUD Fund. That was taken out, right, to the Coalition on Homelessness. Um, they have their own commission over there too, right, for homelessness. So I think this commission either needs to— is either redundant in Anchorage, or it needs to morph into something else that is actually a meaningful conduit between the administration and the assembly.

So there's that. And also, I mean, my big thing is the one thing that I've asked of the administration.

I asked about the non-concrete shelter at the Alex Hotel, right? How that went about. We put out an RFP last July. It was accepted, and then there was pushback after it was accepted. We had 400 rooms.

It's good. And then it came back, um, and then it was split up, and then there was negotiation private, and then it cost us a lot more money, and we didn't get open until November, and we didn't get some open until December, and it cost us a lot more money. It sheltered less people. People in Anchorage died during that time on the streets. I'm not saying that's correlated, but it's bad optics.

And I asked, I believe in December or maybe January meeting, about if we could have a timeline of that and ask about how that came about. And the answer the next month was, well, purchasing have time to take care of it. And I asked again, I think I emailed Frankie again to have to put on the agenda, was put on the agenda again, asked it to be put on the agenda again today for this meeting, and it wasn't put on the agenda for this meeting. So I think it's important that we can look at our mistakes and learn from them. And I'm, I wasn't here to blow anything up with those questions, but if I make a mistake in my business, I expect my guys to come back to me and say, yeah, we made a mistake.

Okay, how are we going to fix this in the future? And we're a citizen advisory commission, right? I mean, we, we want to look at mistakes and try to fix them, but if I don't get any feedback on what I feel like mistakes were made or don't get any response from the committee, from the administration. It's frustrating for me, and it's not, it's not, I mean, it's not above board, right? I mean, that's what we're here for.

So, I mean, you've— this administration has, I mean, all the power right now. You've got the assembly on your side, you've got everything. There's no finger-pointing. And I mean, I'm cheering for you, but I really feel like we need to work ethically and you need to be responsive to the public and your commissioners. So this is my last meeting.

I'm upset about it because I really want to help. You know, I work with every program in English in my company, and it costs me money every time I'm into somebody from the Salvation Army or Covenant House or 4As or the D.O.M. It costs— it costs me money. I mean, I lose good tenants. I— they tend to not end as well as my tenants that work and tenants that pay the rent themselves.

So I'm disappointed in it. I'm not— I mean, the ball's in your court, and I'm cheering for you, and I hope you succeed. But I'm really disappointed in how that came about, how I got no response from that. So, all right. And I feel like you've been— and I mean, staff has been great.

I mean, I really appreciate You ladies coming to every meeting, that's important for us, but I do feel like the structure needs to change, and I feel like we need to work above board, and we need to, you know, not tip the scales, not put our fingers on the scales with contracts. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] I do, and I want to apologize if I've missed not responding. I just want to acknowledge that, like, I would prefer that you stay. And I think you've said something that's incredibly important. A lot of the work— and I want to be as transparent as possible— I'm coming into this very naive around how we engage and we use the Commission.

And so it is my goal, and I said this to all of you, is that we have the Commission as more of a partner in engaging and informing with the— informing the administration and acting in that role. And I've said that consistently. But I would need some of that feedback also coming from the commissioners to say, hey, we need to establish a cadence on if it is not something that is moving through the confidential negotiation process, and that's the purchasing process, not something that we're just internally doing, Here's what that strategy looks like and how we establish a cadence with you all so that you have the ability to pose a resolution forward. You have the ability to say that no, we don't really support an ongoing number of non-congregate shelter locations, beds in one location. I am completely open, myself and Thea are completely open to that, and I think that we fell into a natural rhythm of were on the agenda, we're providing an update because this Commission didn't feel like that they had that information flow coming from the administration.

So I am going to be as honest as possible that we are willing to be flexible and to have you all be engaged in the way that feels meaningful, because without that, then We don't— we're not hearing how do we pivot if it doesn't feel like it's going to be informative, if it's going to be a way that's meaningful for our community. So before— and it sounds like you may have already made up your mind, but I want to put out there to everyone, if we're not saying this before someone steps off the Commission, then we don't have the ability to then reset on how you want information and how we set the cadence so that it's not just a run out every month when we present. And so I apologize that this did not feel that it was meaningful and that we didn't have a chance to talk about how do we reset. No, I tried to, Farin. I mean, I, I, like I said multiple times, I brought it up in a meeting, I brought it up via emails to staff.

Um, so I tried to engage on this one topic, and it was, I mean, and I don't know why it didn't get engaged with I think one thing you could do moving forward is talk to the, talk to the parks director and see how they run their process. I mean, it really is, it really is important, I think, if the way that this commission is structured to, to, to, to have to use it as a conduit and, and not— I mean, I, I don't know if we We all— I mean, you ladies are newer on it. You've been here a lot though.

But we haven't— we're not engaged in the process. You know, I mean, a lot of the people on the Commission are involved in other ways, right? So they're in it. So it's kind of a meeting of what happened this month. But it's not really how— it's not operating how it's designed to operate, you know?

And yeah, I'm pulling for you. Thank you, but that— and I will respect your decision, and— but I apologize that we were not able to, to be responsive in the way that we should be.

As a new person, you know, like, I knew— I don't really know the role of the Commission, so I just been like listening. So it would be great to your guidance in that. Like you said, since you have that experience on being on other conditions, that would be really helpful because mostly, like, I'm listening and getting information and learning, but I don't really know because I've never been on it. So your expertise is valuable. I also don't understand You have participation in all, whatever you want.

I think it's pretty— I mean, I think it's pretty straightforward. I mean, the mayor, you know, she was on the assembly for 6 years, right? So she understands the process of how things go through commissions and how the administration runs things through commissions, and then there's a resolution, and then it goes to the assembly. So, um, I appreciate that. I just— I've got 550 of my own people that live in my buildings and my kids' sports and my I'm on the Center for the Blind board, so I've got a lot going on, and that fills my bucket, right?

And then also at the same time, but I do feel like— I hope you can engage the Commission, and I hope you can engage them in a way that they're part of the decision-making process, right? I mean, I think that's important for people to feel like they're actually here and they're helping. Instead of just absorbing information from the administration. So I got to go to practice, but I— staff has been amazing. Jen, you've been great.

Frankie, you've been great. Everyone's been amazing. And I hope to serve on another commission in the future in a different capacity. All right. Thank you.

Thanks, everyone. Good luck with the coaching. Thank you.

Um, no longer have a quorum, so we, um, we— the only other action item we had was approval of— so not a big deal. Next one. Um, go, but I mean, I do appreciate his feedback. I'm not surprised why this is something he's been concerned about before. As we said, he left, um, did stay on for a while.

And, you know, the Commission's been in rebuilding phase for— I think we're still in that phase. Um, and, um, see if he stick around And again, I hope you can learn from this feedback. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] I'm curious about other.