Anchorage Assembly: Anchorage Women's Commission Meeting 8/6/26

So we are going to officially call the meeting to order at 4:32 PM.

We have a quorum, and others will join as they are able. We know Leslie will not be here tonight. But we are unsure of some of the others, so we'll just get going. Start with our Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Now we have roll call.

So we have Ariana. Present. Celeste. Present. Beth.

Present. Kristy is present, and then our newest commissioner, Melissa, is also present. I am present. Yes. Great.

So Leslie is excused because she let me know. Yes, so Leslie is excused, and then we'll see who else will be attending.

So approval of the agenda.

I will warn that I have 2 agenda amendments for some more recent things that came up after the agenda was created, but we'll open the floor for a motion on the agenda. Motion to approve the agenda.

Second. I'll second. Oh, go ahead, Beth.

Either way is fine. All right, and then discussion. I'll go ahead and propose the 2 amendments. I'm looking at Ariana going, am I doing it right? I really try.

Yeah, I can, I can be chair for a second if you want to be the person who's moving your amendments. That would be great. Okay. So I have, um, 2. Can I do them both at the same time, or do I do them one at a time?

I think you can do them, and if somebody wants to divide the question because they don't like one of them, that's fine. But we'll just say that they're probably going to pass. Yeah, they are not— they're not huge things. One is I'd like to add introductions to the agenda after the approval of the minutes, since we do have a new commissioner who was just appointed 2 days ago. Or confirmed 2 days ago.

And then the second one is under new business. We'd like to discuss the Women's Equality Day resolution that was shared with us from a group of assembly members and the mayor's office. And that would be again under new business. Okay, so we have the addition of introductions after disclosures and the introduct— and then the addition of the Women's Equality Day under new business. Uh, can I get a second on the motion?

I'll second. Thank you. Um, and as long as everybody's okay with it, we'll do this by consent. So just wave your hand or shout if you're wanting to vote against this. Beth, you want to vote against?

No, I didn't. I don't think so. Sorry. No, no, no, no, no, no, you're good. Melissa, you want to vote against?

I would put a thumbs down for that. Not all—. Since I didn't hear any nays, this passes by assent and the motion carries. I will hand the chair back over to our lovely chair, Kristy. Okay.

And so then, now that it's been modeled, it was explained, I didn't quite understand it. Now that it's been modeled, we've had a second on approving the agenda. And I will open this up to approval by assent. If you do not want this to pass, make some kind of virtual or live action motion.

All right. Seeing no dissent, approval of the minutes has passed. And we'll move to introductions. And Melissa was kind enough to jump in on this meeting 2 days after being confirmed. So we'll go ahead and put her on the hot seat to introduce herself, um, in whatever way you'd like to share with us.

Wonderful. Well, good evening everyone. Um, my name is Melissa Skarbeck. I'm a licensed clinical social worker. Um, I own a therapeutic practice in Anchorage, um, and I also operate a forensic social work practice also in Anchorage.

My background My background is in behavioral health, forensic social work, child welfare, family systems, and much of my work focuses on the intersection of mental health, public policy, and community safety. And that's kind of why I'm here. I really do feel like it's part of my duty as a citizen and, you know, person in Anchorage to, you know, do what I can to make it a better place. And I'm looking forward to working alongside of all of you. I value collaborative problem-solving, evidence-informed decision-making, and hearing a variety of perspectives.

I'm excited to contribute, learn, and help advance solutions that serve our community. So it's great to be here. I appreciate it. We're very happy to have you, Melissa. Welcome, Melissa.

Thank you.

Um, let's go ahead through the rest of us. Um, Beth, do you want to introduce yourself? I guess. Hi, I'm sorry my camera's off today. I'm at a hotel in a weird spot.

Um, I'm Beth Fleischer. I'm Director of IT at Alaska Railroad, um, and I wanted to join the Women's Commission because I'm concerned about, um, the welfare of women in our country today and was very grateful to get to be a part of of the team.

Thanks, Beth. I'm going to just go in the order of the people I see on my screen here. Arianna, you're next. Hi, Melissa. I'm Arianna.

I'm the vice chair for the Commission. I will actually be sending you an email because I'm also the chair of the Infrastructure Committee, and I joined this Commission because I believe in civic engagement. In my day-to-day, I work as the executive director for the Federation of Community Councils, and then I stick my fingers in a bunch of pies. So, um, I— and if you ever have any questions, um, we'll be sending you my phone number and Kristi's phone number, so feel free to like reach out to us directly and we'll do what we can to support you.

Wonderful, thank you. And Celeste? Hi, my name is Celeste Early. I live, work, and play in Anchorage, and I work at the Alaska Community Foundation. So my background is in fundraising.

I'm also part of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, and apologies if I'm a little scrambled. We have a big fundraising event next Thursday, so just finishing the loose ends there. But I Got involved with the Women's Commission through a kind of a civic training that the Alaska Center put together that was encouraging people to join boards and commissions. And so when I applied, the Women's Commission showed up. And like you, I believe strongly in giving back to our communities, and this is one way that I can do that.

So happy to be on this commission. It's— I think it's more past a year now that I've been on, so Time flies. Yes, it does.

It's great to meet you all.

Then last, my name is Kristi Traver. I am the Victim Services Administrator with the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association. So while we serve the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands, our main office building is here. In Anchorage, and I've been working in the victim services field for 20 years already. And then a nonprofit background on top of that with previous stuff.

But the reason— I've lived here in Anchorage for 11 years now, and the reason that I joined the commission was that I wanted to have an impact on this community.. It's a place that I have loved to live. I gain a lot of value from it, but I see that there's lots of challenge, and particularly, as you've said, as Beth have said, we all have a role to play in making sure that the status of women in this community doesn't decline further if we can help it. So, that's why I'm here.

Yeah, that's it. I'm just very glad to have you join us. When Arianna sends you that email, it's the culmination of some work. So when we all joined this Commission, it had been struggling partly due to COVID, like lots of things struggled after COVID, and we all kind of walked in and thought, oh, no, there's some basic things not in place for us. So our role has been over the past year to really start putting together some of that core infrastructure.

And so when Ari says that she chairs the infrastructure committee, we have a couple of committees. Infrastructure is basic board orientation, making sure that you all have information about how to contact us and one another., and just making sure that we all have roles within the Commission. Um, so she'll talk, she'll send you some information about the different committees and ask you what you'd like to participate in. You'll hear about those tonight. Um, but I see, um, is that Kayla?

Oh no, that's Katherine. Okay, sorry. I think I saw the K. And anyways, so that'll be a good place for you to start. And I know staff sent an email also. There's an ethics statement in there that you need to sign and get back.

So it's almost like first day on the job, here's all the paperwork to sign, right?

But again, welcome. Disclosures. Do we have any disclosures? This is the disclosures of conflicts of interest, right, with anything on the agenda, Ari? Anyone have any disclosures?

Okay. All right, then we'll move into committee reports. Ari, you're up.

Yay, yay, I'm up. Okay, um, sorry friends, I should have been more prepared. Uh, some things we have learned, uh, I didn't get— I guess, uh, in the last meeting I was like, hey, look at all of the pretty documents I made and let me know if you have any comments. I didn't get any comments. Um, um, if you did look I love you so much.

If you didn't look, I'm going to send another reminder, but please look at the fun documents and tell me what you think. Another fun thing is that we heard from our lovely staff people that we got the historic files for the Women's Commission. There are 7 boxes. They are as old as I am, or they go back as far, I should say. And so I will at some point, staff, come and hang out with you guys, see if I can't borrow your scanner for a bit and digitize some of them.

And then the other thing we learned was that we can do, like, Zoom-only or Teams-only meetings if we want. So I would love to maybe open like a little bit. It doesn't have to be super long, but just like intro thoughts as to whether we want to do some team only. I'd also love to know if that's like easier or harder for staff.

Yeah, just like if anybody has any feedback.

And have staff introduce themselves, so maybe do that right now while you're talking about this. I'm Ashley. I am the program manager for the Anchorage Health Department, and I am, um, co-staff for this commission. Uh, as far as turning this into a hybrid where it's either all remote or half remote, I feel like that would be a little bit more beneficial during high winter seasons where it's pouring snow on the ground, um, and we're not getting ourselves stuck here. But I'm flexible to be here.

If we do move it to being full remote, then we could look into potentially moving the meeting back like 30 minutes to allow everybody to get home from work. But those are the only options I really have. I'm Arlie. I'm the WIC Family Service Supervisor.

I'm fine either way with Teams or in person.

Great. And I will just say, we can't— I can't see either of you. I know what you guys look like, but you can hear their voices, Melissa. I would say personally, since a lot of us are attending almost all of the meetings on Zoom. I think, um, Christy and I tend to be the only people who go in person.

It does seem like a little bit easier. You don't have to have the space set up, and you guys have a little bit more flexibility on where you can take it. I definitely agree, like, in the winter, um, we almost exclusively are on Zoom. So why have you guys hanging out for nobody in the room? That being said, um, Unless anybody wants to make a motion, I will follow up via email with all of the documents and be like, if you have any feedback about this, please let me know.

And then we can like make a formal decision probably at the next meeting. I do know that one of the topics we need to talk about is the mayor. So we can— this wouldn't be something we would do for next meeting anyways, but then people can kind of ruminate on it and let us know what you think. And if you have any feedback, that you want to just give via email, just shoot me an email and let me know, or shoot staff an email and let us know. Otherwise, that's it.

That's all I got. I don't know. I did a lot of work. It's all in there.

Anyone have any comments or questions for Ari right now for infrastructure? I'll say Leslie is also on the committee. Thank you. Uh, Leslie is also on the committee, but obviously she's not here, so speaking for both of us.

Now, that is— that's a lot of work that you guys have been doing, and I know we all appreciate you for it and appreciate your patience as we all kind of navigate our lives to try and get you some feedback. So, um, we can make that a goal for all of us. You said you're going to send out a reminder email. Um, with the link and all of that again. So, yeah, I'll just keep notes and then through staff, um, send out any follow-up from this, uh, meeting so that people kind of have a to-do list in general.

Um, whether it's like me or other committees that you guys want feedback, I'll like collect it and make it nice and send it out like I did last time of like, here's all the things we had outstanding. Perfect.

Perfect. All right. Next on the agenda is our Outreach and Communications Committee, but we don't have any of those members present here currently. Has anyone else heard anything on the status with that committee?

Okay. I will reach out again.

Should admit, like I said, Leslie's on emergency leave, so I won't be reaching out to her, but I'll reach out to Sharon and Kayla to see what's going on. Just for background, Melissa, if you noticed a Facebook page for the Women's Commission, it's not one that we really have access to. And so the outreach and communications committee has been trying to work on establishing our presence in those forums. So we're just trying to get an update from that. All right, I'll move ahead to strategic planning.

And again, for some background for Melissa, the strategic planning piece is what it sounds like, but backed up a little bit. We made the determination that we wanted to get community feedback from women in the municipality about what were their major concerns, what would they want this commission to be focused on addressing through policy recommendations to the municipality. So we are in the process of developing that. There is a draft survey that was sent to the other 2 committee members, that's Beth and Celeste. And I know that they're taking a look at that.

I don't expect to hear from Celeste until after the fundraising event, sometime several weeks after, knowing how those things go. But in the meantime, and so the idea is do the survey, gather some input, then do some listening sessions with targeted groups of individuals., in the muni, different demographics, to get a little bit more in-depth feedback. Um, during the last 2 months, while we were kind of on a little break, Ari connected us with Frankie Dahl, who's the outreach coordinator for the Community Safety and Development Division of the Health Department. So just upstairs here to talk about how we could be working together with them. They have requirements or have wanted to do more in engaging the community, and them participating with our survey and our listening groups would really be beneficial to them.

So they are looking at our survey, the draft survey as well, and may have some recommendations or requests to add or adjust a couple of questions that help them meet some objectives. So they're particularly interested in getting feedback from women in the, in the municipality also. And then their request would also be to attend, at least attend some of the listening sessions so they can gather as well. That led into another connection because we had talked about— Ari and I met with Frankie and, oh, I forget his name again. Okay, you don't either, but we had questions about some logistical things, one of them being survey analysis.

Frankie then connected us with Emily Bokar, who's an innovation strategist with the Municipalities Initiative or I-Team. That meeting, just because of people's schedules, has not happened, but it is scheduled for tomorrow morning.

And the idea there is, okay, how are we going to put this survey out?

How are we, you know, what tools are we going to get to use within the city? So more of this is coordinating with the city's resources, so we're not having to do all of it ourselves or, you know, fundraise for resources to do it. And so that's the intent of this meeting. My interest is on once we have data, uh, they have tools that can do some really in-depth analysis that would help us develop good recommendations, um, based on that data. And then we can move forward into more strategic planning.

So, um, I think in terms of follow-up, it's just Beth and Celeste, once you've had a chance, if you can send some feedback. If you are interested in attending the meeting with Emily Bogart tomorrow, let me get the time on it. Hold on.

Hold on, hold on. Where is that?

That's wonderful. Those are some really pretty tough initiatives. So I'm glad to hear that we're so active. That's pretty wonderful, actually.

It's taken a little bit to get things moving. Again, none of the people on this committee are— have excessive free time on the Commission. So everybody's giving what they can.

But it's starting to move, and thank you, Ari, again, for in her other life making this connection and saying, oh, I have something else for you here. Let's bring in the Women's Commission. I think it's at 10, but if anybody is interested in participating, whether you're on the strategic planning committee or not, just let me know and I'll forward the e-invite to you.

Okay. Oh, wait, no, it's not tomorrow. I just got a new email.

It may be Monday or Tuesday, so just let me know if you're interested and we'll loop you in.

Any questions on where we are with strategic planning at this point?

Really good job.

That was— I just wanted to say really good job.

Okay, Beth, did you want to say something? Because you were coming— I thought you were coming off mute.

I did. I was just gonna say that your survey was amazing. I just—. It was a lot. It's a lot to digest, and I haven't gotten there.

And you did amazing work. It's, um, it was a struggle, just to be honest, to like cut it down, because every question I was like, ooh, then we could ask this. And that's great. Every topic was valid. Every topic was valid.

And it was really— I was like, gosh, we don't want this many questions. And I read them all. I'm like, yeah, we do. Uh, so I hear you. There were more.

It was just— how do we cut it down? A reasonable time, because I know I'm not going to do an hour-long survey. I don't expect anybody else to be there. So anyways, it is draft form, but once we get that feedback, have talked to the city, um, we'll bring that survey to the entire Commission before we launch it. So Okay, moving on to old business.

We lost Beth, heads up. I'm guessing she's coming back, but we lost quorum. We're not making any decisions, so—. Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, there she is. We can just wait till she's back in.

I have one question for staff, if that's cool, before we move on. I was making sure all my documents were up to date. And Kayla is still not on the onboard. She's not on there at all, but I wanted to make sure she's still on the commission. Actually, I was just talking about this before we started, so—.

Oh, great. I just thought onboard hadn't been updated until Melissa's appointment, and then when Melissa was appointed and onboard was updated, I now realized that they still hadn't put Kayla on there. And so I did send an email out to Farah. Oh, you, um, confirming that she is part of the commission and notating her, um, appointment, appointment date and asking if she could be added to the on-board because that's going to matter based on the seat position they just gave Melissa because they, they had already appointed seat 3 to Kayla, then they have to move one of them. And right, because there are different term dates too.

So, right, I have that Kayla was in seat 8 and Melissa's in seat 3. Um, I think I had to go into the actual municipal, um, memorandum that had her in there and that I had checked it against what the assembly had passed. But it would be great to see it on, on board so that I know that I'm also not wrong. Yeah, because that's my concern with it, but I sent it out yesterday. You rock.

Thank you. Okay. So, old business. We had previously talked about having the mayor come to speak, not really speak, but have discussion with us at our September meeting, and Sharon was checking into that. Has anyone heard back whether or not the mayor is confirmed for our September meeting?

No. Okay. So, we need to follow up on this one also. I'll reach back out to Sharon again.

And then, so that was the other— so the other part of that discussion was if the mayor is coming, we all thought we should probably be here in person.

Melissa, just so you know, we're at the Health Department building on 9th Street. Okay, good. Corner of 9th and—. 9Th and L, 825 L. Yeah, 9th and L Street on the 4th floor.

But we'll get a confirmation beforehand because we don't all need to— I mean, it's lovely. We'd all love to see each other in person again, but We'll just get— we'll get confirmation out.

And it needs to go out prior to the agenda going out for the next one. So, we can send it as soon as you guys get it to us. Yeah, perfect. Okay. Okay, I would like to let you all know now that September 6th is my birthday.

So, I'm actually out of town the 3rd through the 9th. And that I think the 3rd was the first Thursday of September. So, I would— Yeah, I would ask for the ability to be by, by Teams. Yeah, that's fine if you're able to, if you need to not be present, because again, you just joined and it's— it took all of us a little while to get on this schedule. So, uh, okay, well, we'll know for sure whether the mayor's not going to be or will be here.

Within a week or so. All right, the records, I think Ari already covered that. We're talking about the historic records and then also our online-only meetings that we already covered under infrastructure.

Any other comments, questions on old business?

New business then.

We, the Women's Commission, received an invitation to come and accept the resolution for Women's Equality Day. Women's Equality Day is— what is it, August 18th?

August 18th. Yeah. Okay. So they're going to read this in on August 18th. That's a Tuesday.

Um, kind of between 5:15 and 5:45 at the very beginning of the assembly meeting before they get into a lot of other discussion. Um, oh, August 26th is Women's Equality Day. Um, and so they've asked if we would like to be present to accept the resolution and potentially say a few words after the acceptance, uh, to the assembly and those in attendance.

We usually do this for Women's History Month the last couple of years.

I thought it was nice that they invited us, and just so you know who is— it's submitted by— it's Chair Brawley, Assembly Vice Chair Voland, and Assembly Members Baldwin-Day, Johnson, Martinez, Perez-Rodriguez, Scout, Silvers, and Mayor LaFrance.

Um, would any of you like to go and represent the Women's Commission on Tuesday, August 18th?