ADA Advisory Commission Meeting 2025 05

All right, um, all right, uh, calling the meeting to order then. Okay, all right, um, so, uh, first, uh, first act here, we're going to do a roll call. Um, on the agenda you'll see that we have— we'll just kind of go through, make sure we have everyone. Um, April White, present?

Looks like we do not have April White here. Um, Dean Paul, said we have Dean online. I'm here. Excellent. Jessica Oswald, that's myself.

Onami, looks like Onami's online. Is it Onami? I'm here. Is it part of Onami? Onami.

Yeah, Onami, got it. And Brian? Yes, here. All right, and Crystal?

Looks like we're missing Crystal. Um, I see we have Rob Crockett online. Is—. Are we missing anyone? Is there anyone that should be listed on the roll call that's not listed?

Because I think we've got—.

Oh, Robert Crockett is, I think, a member of the public. Not one of the commissioners. And then Rick was actually— he resigned last week, so he is no longer on roll call. Okay, so this list here is, is the current commissioners? Mhm.

Okay, all right, so we have 4 present and 2 absent, right? That is correct. Okay, all right, all right, so, uh, first off, we're going to do a quick run through on the agenda and look for, um, So the agenda was presented. We have, um, 9 topics for today. Uh, so is there a motion to approve the agenda for today?

I make a motion to approve the agenda. Second. Second. Second. Second.

Agenda is approved. Um, next, hopefully everyone had a chance to review the meeting minutes from our last meeting, and, um, unless there is any conversation around the minutes Is there a motion to—.

A motion to approve the minutes? All right, so is there a second? I'll second that.

Excellent. So the meeting minutes are approved. Um, all right, so unfinished business. Uh, this will be our, our formation, consist of reenergizing of the committee. Um, so we have the opportunity for an election.

There are 3 seats available. We have the chair, vice chair, and secretary roles available.

Let's see, we only have 4 of our 6 here today as well. So I'm just going to pause for discussion. Do we feel comfortable moving forward with 4 of our 6 members, or thoughts and conversation before we move too far forward? Yeah, Ryan says, I feel like we have a quorum. So I feel like the majority of us here, and I feel confident that we can move forward.

I'll make a motion that we move forward. Excellent. I'll second. Okay, all right, um, so, uh, let's go ahead and we'll open up to folks that may have interest in any of these roles. Um, is there anyone interested in being the chair of the—.

Ryan says, I am interested, I nominate myself as chair. I'll second that.

Should we go ahead and vote? Um, all right, uh, let's go. Maybe we'll just vote one by one. Is there anyone else interested in this? Well, and is there anything else that you would like from me?

Do you want me to give you any type of statements or anything, or can we just go ahead and vote? Let's see if there's anyone else interested, and if not, then give a little bit of background.

Um, so 1, 2, 3. So the, um, Anamay, do you have interest in this role as well, or—. No, I don't have an interest in the chair role. Okay, all right, so let me go ahead and just say we'll formally vote. All in favor of Brian as chair, say aye.

Okay, anyone opposed? Excellent, unanimously chair. Congratulations. Yeah, we would still And it's good. Is there anyone interested in serving in the vice chair role?

What is the role of the vice chair? I'm not 100% sure what that role is. Yes. To step in if the chair is not available or happens to miss a meeting, you just fill in for the chair. It's not real hard.

So you would do it right now, like going through the agenda, the meeting minutes, and just kind of keeping, you know, call to order. You look like a great vice chair. Yeah, I nominate myself then. I'll second that. All right, all in favor?

It sounds like— okay, is there anyone opposed? All right, unanimous acceptance of the Vice Chair role. Excellent. So we now have the Secretary role available, and I'm getting some good eye contact here. So, Dean, perhaps this is between you and I.

Do you have a passion for the Secretary role, or happy to fill in as needed as well? I may do it at a later point. But right now, I'm not in a position to actually do it at this specific time right now.

Okay, just a point of clarification. Um, Carly, is the Secretary actually publishing the minutes, or is that— is there— is that part of— do you support that? So, as an ex officio staff member, I am responsible for having the municipality retain minutes, agendas, any kind of documentation about our meetings that we would like to keep stored with the meeting. I also provide technical support, publish the public notices, and post our videos to YouTube for our meetings. Do you generate the minutes and agenda?

I am capable of doing so. It may be better to have that handled by y'all because it's uncertain if I will be, you know, constantly available to be at the meetings personally. We can definitely continue staffing them. Um, but it may be nice to have a secretary, um, elected who is part of the board, just in case, or the commission, just in case. Yeah.

Um, well, I was going to just tell you my, my bandwidth in terms of trying to be secretary. It may be helpful to— I know there's 2 other members. Perhaps we could at least defer to see if there's others interested in our next meeting. Okay. Um, again, if we have absolutely nobody willing to—.

No. Okay, we'll wait on the secretary position for a later A later meeting. You can like carry us for meeting, we'll get more attendees next month. It's just going my own bandwidth right now. Okay, I appreciate it.

Well, and we should be getting some more commissioners appointed hopefully. Maybe one of the new ones would be willing to step into that one. Yeah, if there's no one, then certainly. Okay, all right, uh, very good. Um, well, given that we have a new chair I'm happy to transition this portion.

Would you like to take over from here, Ryan? Yeah, sure. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. Yes, and I will give a recognized to Afonso for the rest of the election process to the next meeting.

I do need a second for that, just for the role of secretary to take over for the rest of this meeting. I'll second that.

Okay, perfect. Thank you. Part is finished. We can move on to new business. We do need to vote on the meeting agenda or the meeting schedule, and I believe we just did a poll.

Um, I am curious what the results are from that poll. From the city community, did we have a schedule? Um, so I believe the time that was accepted was 6 PM to 7 PM. I was unsure, it was unclear if we had decided what day of the month we would be meeting on. So, I think it was 1st Thursday, 2nd Thursday, or 4th Thursday of the month we would have available to staff as the Commission.

And then it's uncertain if we have, you know, other availability. Yeah, because the third Thursday of the month, this room at between 6 and 7 is already used for the Equal Rights Commission. So that was not available.

But we could do the second, we could do the fourth Thursday. What, what, what else was on that poll? The poll included it. From what I remember, it was mostly just meeting times, right? And then me and Marie had a correspondence about, you know, which Thursday of the month we would be meeting on.

And then it started approaching the third Thursday of the month, and we decided to have this meeting today. But wasn't one of the times also during the day, like around the lunch hour? There were—. I remember the most votes for any one of the time slots was, I think, 2 votes for 6 to 7. And then the rest of the options had like 1 vote.

That's what I would have guessed. Okay.

Maybe we can go ahead and revisit this. And we can make a motion to discuss this.

Which is the best day of the week for us? I mean, it does seem 6 to 7 works best for all of us, so we can maybe make a motion to keep a 6 to 7 time and then discuss which Thursday of the month. I'll make a motion to, to open it up, but I'll, I want to state one thing. I'm retired, I'm flexible, the time doesn't really matter to me. So many of you who work or have other responsibilities, kids at home, whatever it is, I'm flexible.

So I probably won't say much about the schedule because I can meet any time, really.

Okay, thank you. I can meet 6 to 7 on any Thursday or any time on a Thursday, so it wouldn't matter to me which Thursday.

Thank you. Uh, Jessica, do you have any extra comments? Um, do you prefer 6 to 7? Is that okay with you? Uh, either time slot works.

I have an occasional other board I might be on, but Generally, okay.

For me personally, I am also flexible, so it really doesn't matter to me. I want to do what's best for the group, the majority of us, and I think maybe if possible we can just decide on the second Thursday of the month, um, unless you guys have a preference, we can do it on the last week of the month.

Second, the second Thursday. Second.

So you— are you making a motion? You're making a motion for that date time? Okay, so we need a second. Yes. Okay, I second that.

I second.

Right, that date, so that would be the next meeting when June June 12th? Yes, June 12th.

June 12th.

I'd like to make a motion that we accept June 12th.

If that's, if that's going to be the next meeting. I want to make the motion a little bit more simple. This is Ryan. Do you mind rephrasing it? We will meet the second Thursday of every month from 6 to 7 PM.

I'll second that.

So I can't make the motion as a chair. I need one of you guys to make the motion, and you can just reframe it in that phrasing. More specific. I'll make a motion that we meet this— was it the second Thursday of each month? Yes.

I'll second. I'll second that.

So I just want to clarify that we add that like 6 to 7 PM time in that. To 6 to 7 PM, yes.

I second that.

Cool, thank you for that. And are all in favor? In favor. Say aye. Aye.

No opposed. All right, thank you. The motion passes. Then we can go ahead and meet on the second Thursday of every month from 6 to 7 PM. Thanks for that.

All right, and then the next thing on the agenda for new business is discussing the Commission's priorities. And you will go ahead and flip the agenda on the back. You will see that there is the first paragraph. Just go ahead and read that first paragraph, please.

For Robert.

So Robert, you don't have a copy, so I'm going to go ahead and read it for Robert. Yep. So we have 4.60240.

The Americans with Disabilities Act Advisory Committee.

So, A, it has 7 members with 3 members from the active disability organization and 4 members of the community, direction of Anchorage Health Department, or designated by the president, act elect of the secretary for the committee. And then we have B that we're going to be reading. So, there are 8 different priorities that we have.

So review the Americans with Disabilities Act in order to maintain a clear and comprehensive understanding of federal legislation addressing all forms of discrimination against individuals on the basis of disability. The second one is to make recommendations to the mayor and assembly for the adoption, change, or repeal of the municipality's laws, rules, regulations, restrictions, and other matters affecting the individuals with a disability community. The third is act in an advisory capacity to the mayor and the assembly in matters of policy concerning implementation by the municipality of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Number 4 is report at least annually to the mayor and the assembly on individuals with disabilities issues, progress in relevant areas such as employment, and public and private accommodations. The fifth is identify municipal facilities and employment procedures that require modifications and advise the mayor in the assembly of those issues.

Number six is undertake efforts to open and maintain channels of communication with the disabled community of the municipality and should periodically hold hearings on matters of importance to the community and the Anchorage community as a whole and the municipal government. Number 7 is carry out educational and public relations programs designed to create public awareness. And then number 8, we have perform such other powers and duties as the assembly may refer to them from time to time.

So that are our current priorities for the committee that reason we are gathered here. Do we have any comment? Commission? Commission?

It's pretty straightforward.

Yeah, so I know this is our second meeting as a commission, so we're still trying to figure out how much authority or what we can do as a commission to help the city. And I think now is a good time to go ahead and discuss what we can do to help. If there's anyone— if there's any concerns or anything from our constituents or the members who were just observing from the city's perspective, or any city staff have any comments. I would like to, um, address that. We have a member from the public that has asked to be present today and speak about a concern that he's personally having with the practices of the municipality that is affecting him, including discrimination based on his disability, and he would like to speak.

Robert Crockett, are you there?

You want to go ahead and unmute yourself?

Oh, he doesn't have a mic. You don't have a mic? Oh, do you—. Would you like to type your concern in the chat? Or if— yeah, um, or you could call.

I could have you call my work cell and I can put it on speaker if that works. Yeah, right.

Okay, let me go get that.

While we're waiting for that, I'd like to make a motion that we, if we have the time in this meeting, to just go around and a couple minutes each just explain what we're trying to accomplish being in this group and what our expectations are so everybody knows pretty much what everybody expects so we can work together and cohesively and actually get some things figured out and possibly get some things to happen within our community.

I like that idea, and we could make that motion after Robert shares his concern with us. Thanks, Dean. Oh, that's, that's fine. Yeah, just because we're waiting, might as well use up the time with something.

This is a good time to interject. Yeah. All right. Uh, Robert, would you call my work cell? It is 907-343-9767.

Hello, Robert, is that you? Yeah, that's me. Okay, I'm going to turn the volume up so that everyone can hear. Okay, go ahead.

Here, I work regionally. Uh-huh. At the end of February, and I, um, I can do all the functions of my job. I got my doctor's note, sign off, uh, everything's fine.

Okay, so you, you work for what department? Correct. Okay, and you had a seizure? Yeah. And you can't drive for 6 months, if I understand correctly?

Okay, and so then you submitted a, uh, you you asked for a reasonable accommodation with your supervisor?

Yeah. Okay, so did you reach out to HR directly to ask for the reasonable accommodation as well? Uh, that was the only time I went to— my supervisor was new, he didn't know, but I didn't know about ADA accommodations until I got into contact with the HR about a week later.

Okay, do you mind going back with like your timeline just so I can understand it correctly? So you had a seizure at work and then your doctor told you that you couldn't drive for 6 months. So how long after that conversation with the doctor did you reach out to your supervisor or HR? He talked to my supervisor the same day I went to the doctor. I think February, March, I don't really— I don't really exactly think back dates off the top of my head.

And then you also said that HR just, just got back to you after 2 months, correct?

There's been some back and forth. They offered me A different job. Everyone's been ridiculous. Oh, do the bank runs for me. That's the only part of my job I can do.

Okay, so they didn't offer you modified duties, they just tried to assign you to a different role?

Yeah. And so is— was that a temporary reassignment or a permanent reassignment? The point right now is permanent reassignment. It's my old job, uh, but it took them 2 months to do it. It should have been resolved within a couple days when I got my original doctor's note.

Okay, thanks. Okay, so if I understand, then Did you go 2 months without work and no pay while you're waiting for someone to make a decision on whether to grant a reasonable accommodation? And the only reasonable accommodation that you were asking for was just not to take the bank run, the deposit, to— and someone else could do that? Yeah. And had that been done by anyone else in the past?

Yeah. Okay.

All right, so is your position that the process for an employee to receive a reasonable accommodation is too slow?

Or it's not, uh, what would the word be, not, um, responsive enough? Yeah, it's not very responsive. Yeah, so it's supposed to be—. Any contact I've had with HR, I have had to—. Interactive is the word that you're looking for.

So it's supposed to be active, like a back and forth with communication. So for example, you— for 2 weeks you hear nothing, that's not an interactive approach. So that is part of the ADA process you need, that you need to have that interactive approach.

Yeah, the interaction with HR and from me on my part, they didn't reach out at all. Me.

Okay. Okay. So it's now May and this started in February, end of February? End of February. Okay.

Okay, I do have one more clarifying question. Um, so did the seizure happen during work or was it during your personal time? During—.

Okay, okay. So I think what you're Your concern is for our advisory commission is that you would like— if I understand this correctly, you would like us to maybe review the municipality's process and to see if it can be, uh, improved so that it's more responsive and interactive so that you're not going without job and employment for over 2 months. Okay.

Are you back at work now? Yeah, I've been at work for 2 weeks now. Okay, so did they grant your reasonable accommodation?

They granted me a light duty. Okay, so you don't have a reasonable accommodation in your personnel file? No. Okay, and seizures is a recognized disability for the ADA. It's not going to go away for you.

There's no cure right now for you, so this is conceivably something that you might encounter again, uh, and then you would be right back into the same situation of having to not drive for 6 months, have to be seizure-free for 6 months in order to drive.

All right, and so then you need a reasonable accommodation permanently in your file so that if that happens, there's a plan for you to be able to continue working and not be interrupted and be without work and pay for a long stretch of time. Is that correct?

Yeah, go ahead. I have a question for you, Robert. Um, have you made any attempts to contact vocational rehab and explain to them your situation and ask them for advice or actual help? They even have funds available to make workspaces accessible to keep people employed or, or help find a position that where you can be gainfully employed with your disability. They're quite effective in this area.

I have not.

I would suggest you go there, you know, fairly soon if you have the time and get a counselor. They will assign you a counselor. They'll do an assessment and then they will, will see what they can do to either keep you with your current employer or give you the equipment or the skill set to have a different employer or a different position. And the other question I have for you, are you, are you a union member with the municipality? Yes, I am.

Have you talked to those people? Yes, I have. I've talked to the president of the union. He's the only person I was able to get in contact with.

I think you might find Voc Rehab quite quite helpful, and they will at least point you in the right direction, uh, where you could end up with the outcome that you're looking for, which is, is, you know, employment that is meaningful for yourself. It's worth a try.

Thank you.

I think what I heard, um, Mr. Crockett say was that How long have you had this job?

A year. Correct. Okay. All right. So your position is that you're not looking to get a different job.

You just want the municipality to put in place your reasonable accommodation to allow you to do your current job.

Yeah.

Okay, right. I think what he's asking is that maybe our commission could look at the process that we have here at the municipality and see what the disconnect is on why the interactive process is not working for him, because it shouldn't take 2 or 3 months for someone to just get a reasonable accommodation. All he needs is someone else to run the bank run, which has been done by other employees in the past. That is the only function that he needs assistance with. The rest of his job he is able to do.

Is that correct, Robert? Okay.

Okay, and I am making note of that, so the Commission will follow up Robert, I'm not sure how you prefer us to reach out to you afterwards. Do you prefer text, phone, email? And if you don't mind—. Yeah, we can do that. Sure.

Do you want to, um—. And then do you also have— sorry, do you also have an MOA email? Yes, I do. Do you prefer your personal email or the MOA email?

Okay, because this meeting is recorded, I don't want you to share your personal information over the recording, but we can figure out after the recording in this meeting is finished how to best contact you and to get that information. All right, thank you. No problem. All right, thank you. Thank you.

Yes, thank you. So I'm going to write that phone number down that he called from. Yep. Okay. And then do you mind following up with Robert to get his personal email once you, once you have the time?

Yes, do that. Thank you.

Okay, and then going back to the commissioner's priorities, I do have a couple of things. If you see C, Part C, it says this commission should, um, shall terminate on October 14th, 2025, unless affirmatively, uh, affirmatively continued by the assembly in accordance with Section 4.05.150. So reminding everyone that it is important for us to bring this up to the commission, or bring this up to the assembly, to continue this ADA commission to provide these services to our community. How is that done?

That is a great question. Someone show up to an assembly meeting and, or get on their agenda Or is it a motion, or how is that addressed?

I am curious from one of the City Hall staff, uh, if you could answer that question. What is the typical process? Do somebody need— does somebody need to go to the assembly and make a formal motion or add that onto their agenda, or is it just go up to somebody from the assembly and talk to them? The way Marie Hyousa explained it to me, and in the last meeting as well, was that the internal audit department would make a recommendation for the assembly to vote to close this commission. Her reasoning for why that wouldn't happen is because since the commission hasn't met, they wouldn't see reason to make that determination to close this meeting.

Um, that, that's pretty much all that I had on that, is that the recommendation is made by internal audit, and her reason to believe that the recommendation would be that this commission stay open would be because we haven't met enough to make a determination. That's really all that was explained to me. Okay, so maybe what we need to do is contact Marie Husa and ask her what exactly the commission needs to do. So that we can move forward with getting the information to the assembly.

And since that's October 14th, we're going to be meeting plenty of times before then, so we should be able to have a clear understanding for the next meeting, right, in June, in June, on what we have to do.

Okay, yes, right. And as the new election, uh, elected chair, I'm happy to take that on to make sure that we can do that and renew this commission. So can we put that on the agenda for next month, um, to follow up, circle back to this point, um, and that Maya and I will contact Mary Hughes and get specific instructions so we can report to this next meeting?

All right, sounds good. Thank you.

And then I have a motion from Dean. You wanted to discuss, um, the expectations, what we were bringing to the table. Do you mind repeating that motion? Yeah, I'd like to make a motion that we just have a, maybe a couple minutes each to explain what we're trying to accomplish being on this, on this commission and what our expectations are of working together with each other and trying to come up with priority lists that we can work together to try to accomplish. It's gonna, it's gonna require some work because we have to Maybe each of us need to come up with a thing or two that we think should be addressed within the municipality to increase employment and accessibility.

And, you know, it's not possible for— but if we can accomplish something, then we've done some good. Because I could start by explaining that my purpose here is to get something accomplished that changes the way we have accessibility in Anchorage and improves it. And it'd be nice to do something that maybe other communities haven't done before so we can spread the word around of how we can make life more meaningful for people that are suffering from any type of a disability. Doesn't matter whether they acquired it as an adult or they were born that way. That doesn't matter.

Acquired it, you know, from, from Vietnam, or I should say from injuries. As I had, I had an oldest brother, my oldest brother had a disability acquired from Vietnam. And, uh, and for seniors, because there's a lot of work to be done. And if we can come up with equitable ways, even work with business, work with the municipality, work with provider agencies that provide services for people with disabilities, hospitals, or whoever is interested to come up with reasonable, uh, solutions to problems to improve our system and continue to, to act that way. So it's going to take kind of a think tank amongst all of us to come up with ideas and decide which ones we're going to prioritize and go after.

Well, that's basically in, in a short version. My motion is for us to, to just explain to each other what we're expecting to get out of this Commission and accomplish while we're here.

Yes. Does anybody second that motion? Second. Okay, thank you. All right, that will be officially inputted.

Thank you for your explanation, Dean. We appreciate that. That's very thoughtful and insightful. I think for me personally, as a person with a disability, You know, I have to face a lot of barriers every day, whether it is systemic, unintentional, maybe intentional, but that is my approach to anything, is that I want to remove all of these barriers so everybody has an equal opportunity of life, right? And, um, I think bringing my personal life experience to the table, some systemic issues that we all face, and we are a big community, we live together, we work work together.

We pass each other by on the street, right? And some people have these different experiences. People have different issues. And I think being able to meet together, we can get— that we can have an equal opportunity from everybody. For example, for Robert, you know, bringing up his issues, talking with us, sharing his concerns, his experience that he faced.

Right? All over the city there are people that are motivated. There are people that have disabilities, right? There are people that are going to be watching this meeting, like Robert's story, you know, myself as Ryan, I have a story to share. Other people have their stories to share, right?

And we want to make sure that this is an open environment for everybody to feel comfortable to share that. Very good.

So, so I guess I'll— okay, um, is that okay? Jump in? Yeah, yeah, please go ahead. Yeah, I was just about to ask that same question. Um, so just in the spirit of as we start brainstorming a little bit together, I know at our last meeting we talked about, um, the role of the Commission and how do we start to kind of come up with very actionable ideas to hopefully get traction in the near term, in addition to some of the more broader principles behind what we want to do.

So, I had gone off and I did a little brainstorming. I, my passion and interest in being able to participate with this group is from a hospital healthcare perspective. Alaskans spend 67% longer in institutions and in hospitals than the rest of the country. And for disabled Alaskans in particular, we are chronically institutionalizing Alaskans that could live at home or in the community as well and more independently. We have some folks that live in hospitals for years with disabilities that have incredible limitations on their freedoms because they're institutionalized that could live in the community.

And so as I thought about that ask of what are some tactical things we might think about relevant to the Municipality of Anchorage, I just— this may be a little detailed, but I shot an idea off in an email, and so I'll spend maybe 1 minute on it, if that's okay. The—. Yes, sure, go ahead. Okay. Yeah, go ahead.

Okay. So, and again, this is when we think about the Americans with Disabilities Act, and we think about some of the legislation that's going to happen nationally when we have situations where there are chronic challenges that does, I think, really merit some of these conversations. And the first thing I want to hit on is the idea that we have a tremendous lack of accessibility for housing and for assistance for significantly disabled Alaska, Alaskans. Coverage in particular. And we see this in the hospitals.

And at the state level, if you double-click on the PDF there, this is data from the State of Alaska Senior and Disability Services. And if you zoom in, what you're going to see on the far right, these are senior disabilities. There's home and community-based waivers. Really built around the spirit of independent living. Um, quick question, I'm sorry to interrupt.

Are you sharing your screen for Dean? Uh, no, but I did forward this email to all of our commissioners so you would have access to it. I hope you received. Okay, cool. I just want to make sure.

Yeah, sorry, Dean. Thank you, and I'll be quick. I don't know, it's the, um, but if you look in the middle here, this is, you'll see that there are 5 different home and community-based waivers. Those are on the far right. So you'll see that there are 2,492 Alaskans that are eligible for the Alaskans Living Independently waiver.

And so there is a very rigorous process where Alaskans are screened for disability and then screened for eligibility for these waivers, and then often can struggle to find placement in the community. Likewise, we have our Children with Complex Medical Conditions waiver, 236 Alaskans served by this.

The next one is our Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities waiver. We have 2,108 Alaskans. Again, not— maybe assume half of these Alaskans live in the Anchorage municipality area. Individualized supports, etc. The—.

So what I wanted to tee up is the idea that when we think about a lack of housing, if we go back to the main email, um, in the municipality of Anchorage, under Municipal Code 12-15-015, it stipulates real property tax exemptions, and there's a series of exemptions that exist today for disabled veterans seniors, residential property owners, nonprofit hospitals. And so what I wanted to propose is we think about maybe creating a space for a conversation with the municipality where we look at a very kind of tight definition of who— how we might utilize tax exemptions or tax relief or property taxes to be able to support incentivizing assisted living facilities caring for Alaskans that qualify for the waiver, the general relief funds. And if you scroll down a little bit, a little more data. This, you're going to see here, this is in Alaska, this table at the bottom. This is how many licensed assisted living facilities exist in the state of Alaska.

You'll see at the very bottom, there's about 700 and This is just to— there's 739 assisted living facilities in Alaska that are licensed today. 545 Of those are in Anchorage, and the average size is about 6 beds. So many of these are small owners, small business owners, right? And when you think about incentivizing the idea that we might be able to make some recommendations for tax exemptions that encourages these innovative small business owners to continue to care for and/or even further open up access for disabled Alaskans that may be stuck in a higher-level institutional setting that can live far more independently in assisted living. So, just want to kind of throw the idea out there.

If you look at— if you scroll up to the top here, again, this goes a little deep. I had, you know, put a little bit of language in here about even what this might look like. Sure, whatever went in there. But the concept being that we could propose some language similar to these other exemptions that might drive different behavior that opens up more housing and independent living options for folks that are basically trapped at a higher level of care. Right.

And we just started that out there. So since that was kind of the lens I brought, I just brought a very specific tactical, like, here's an idea. Something that we might be able to look at. You have a similar interest that I have. I want more housing.

That's my biggest thing that I want. Right, so they're really like—. Francis, I like that idea. Yeah, so there's something that goes in this spreadsheet. This is the health services list right off the state website, so I'll put the link in there too.

So I just, I just pivoted the table directly off the state website. So there's one or two— it's not going to be perfect because there's like human entry. Okay. Um, but it's very, very real, like diverse. Yeah, because it says Anchorage, Anchorage, Anchorage in 3 places.

So, like, yeah, there was a list of 700 where someone at the state has typed them all in. So I took the Excel, but this is, but this is real. Sorry, let me make sure everyone could hear that. There was a question about, um, the how perfect the data, the fidelity of the data, and I was explaining the email. I linked the source directly from the state website, the healthcare facilities licensure.

So there's a few anchorages typed with an odd, so it doesn't show up perfectly. I just did a pivot table.

Dean, sorry, did you have a comment? Oh, oh, yeah. Yeah, my, my interest is to increase affordable accessible housing. And one of the big things that I want to see happen is that we come up with a plan, if, if we get— if the members agree to this, to when the state pays for accessibility added to a home or any type of a building, that that accessibility has to be maintained and not removed from that facility or that house. I had a personal experience.

I cared for my mother and my father and one other individual in my house. They all were in wheelchairs at one point. Eventually, before they passed— my parents passed away within 30 days of each other in 19— or in 2020, February, March 2020. And I sold my house to my own son and, uh, because it was just too big for me. It was mostly retiring, and he removed all that.

And I was— it caused, you know, a disagreement between himself and myself. Now he no longer lives in Anchorage, and I had, I had installed at my own cost a walk-in accessible tub, a very nice one, 2 accessible showers. I had widened all the doors at my own expense to make them wheelchair accessible. I made a 4-level house wheelchair accessible with chairlifts, and all of that was removed. And we need to stop those kind of things from happening.

Access Alaska receives a lot of accessible, uh, implements that have been put into houses. They can't even get rid of them. It's, it's really bad. Uh, Why are we allowing, when the state pays either through the waiver system or for any other program, vocational rehab or whatever it is, I don't care what it is, why are we letting those accessible features being removed from those properties when the property owner got a major subsidy or it was paid for? So we, we take that out of our system.

We need to find a way to stop that. We need to find a way of preserving the accessibility that we've Done. It costs a lot of money to do accessibility, and most people don't realize it, but if you have an accessible house, you can sell it for more money later. Go to the MLS, try to find an accessible house for sale. I've been through this, I've looked and I've studied it.

When they come up for sale, they sell quick. Sometimes they sell before they even come on the market. That's where the demand is, because as time goes on, more and more of us are going to become disabled. And we need to have that accessibility. We need to be able to have home and community-based services that allow people to live in their home or in a home with other people.

And we're shooting ourselves in the foot paying for all this, these modifications, and then it just goes away. So I have ideas that we can talk as a, as a group to come up with ways to hopefully get the municipality to see it our way and somehow find a way to restrict removal of those accessibility items out of a house.

There's only 4 minutes left on the meeting. Yeah, so I just want to let you guys know that we do only have 4 minutes left, so make sure that everybody has the opportunity to speak. So thank you for that, Dean. So, and Jessica did, she did her research on the municipality of all the codes all the laws, regulations. So I suggesting that maybe you could start looking at that and then go from there.

That way we have a bone to start with. Sure. And so, Aunamay, do you have time that you would like to share? Is there anything you would like to add? Um, sure, sure, sure.

My purpose for joining was to learn more about the ADA legislation 'cause I don't actually know the legislation itself. My exposure to it involves, centers around patients. I often write accommodation letters for all sorts of things, usually mental health related though, since that is my field currently with veterans, but it's also been in the community with community mental health, and often you hear People voice their frustrations with things that they're going through at work or employers not really being— I don't know the word. Employers just not being willing to be supportive or provide services. And so all the people have to go through and people often feel victimized or like they're being singled out.

Sometimes shamed into not doing what they want or not getting the requests they put in. So my hope, or my intention, being on this Commission is to hopefully find a way to increase access to care and services, which is pretty vague. That's a vague umbrella term, but that is ultimately the goal. So whatever we can do, I'm game for that. And also to improve equity in the workplace for disabled people.

I think a lot of what we don't have comes from a lack of awareness. So I think some part of what we do should be geared towards educating the public. And then there's also a lack of empathy from a lot of people, unfortunately. And then there's stigma, especially when it comes to mental health. But sometimes also with people with physical disabilities as well.

So education, I think, would be a big part, but also finding ways to make people feel more empathetic about what people are going through, because historically people tend to get involved more with things that they feel they can relate to. You have to be able to reach people at the heart level in order for them to to do anything. At least that's what I've observed anyway. I don't know what the actual research is for that. So whatever we can do, my part would, you know, I hope we would at least some part of that would involve educating the public to increase their awareness and hopefully get them to, you know, be a little kinder so they can help.

That's all I have.

Thank you so much, all of you, for sharing. We all have our own lens. We all have our own experience. We all have our own different expertise into the field that we all bring to this table. And so I like that we can throw ideas about that is off of each other.

That's where the magic happens. So, without further ado, I'm just going through the agenda to make sure that we reviewed everything that we have left. I don't think we have any more public comments, right? No. No?

Okay, and then we just had one member comment from Robert that we will definitely follow up on. And then if there's nothing else, we can tie it up with that motion since we just discussed everything. There was no really action from that motion, so just something to keep in mind if you want to have a future motion to discuss for discussion and you just have some of that research behind it. Yes, Jessica. Could maybe, maybe a motion before our June 12th meeting, knowing there'll be about a month and we have the public meeting thing where we can't email each other, maybe if everyone could come up with one or two actionable ideas so that that gives us a brainstorming list for next.

Yeah, I like that idea. I was actually about to say that. So yeah, I would like for us to just go ahead and email Maya or Marie our proposed ideas, and then you can add it to the agenda for the next meeting on June 12th. If possible, try to think of something 2 weeks before the meeting so she can put— she can put it all together and have it ready. So definitely brainstorm and have all those ideas.

And I like it, but if there's no other business to be discussed, is somebody Can somebody make a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn. I'll second that. Yeah, okay, meeting is done at 7:01. Thanks everyone.

Thank you. Thank you. Pleasure to meet everybody. That would be perfect for our rules, if that's okay. Yeah, that would be great.

All right, um, all right, uh, calling the meeting to order then. Okay, all right, um, so, uh, first, uh, first act here, we're going to do a roll call all. On the agenda, you'll see that we have— we'll just kind of go through, make sure we have everyone. April White, present. Looks like we do not have April White here.

Dean Paul, said we have Dean online. I'm here. Excellent. Jessica Oswald, that's myself. Onani, Is it part of the— On the main.

Yeah, on the main. Got it. Okay. And Brian? Yes, here.

All right. And Crystal?

Looks like we're missing Crystal. I see we have Rob Crockett online. Is—. Are we missing anyone? Is there anyone that should be listed on the roll call that's not listed?

Because I think we've got—.

Oh, Robert Crockett is, I think, a member of the public, not one of the commissioners. And then Rick was actually— he resigned last week, so he is no longer on roll call. Okay, so this list here is, is the current commissioners? Mm-hmm. Okay.

All right, so we have 4 present and 2 absent. Right, that is correct. Okay, all right, all right. So, uh, first off, we're going to do a quick run through on the agenda and look for, um, so the agenda was presented. We have, um, 9 topics for today.

Uh, so is there a motion to approve the agenda for today? I make a motion to approve the agenda. Second. Second. Second.

Second.

Agenda is approved. Next, hopefully everyone had a chance to review the meeting minutes from our last meeting, and unless there is any conversation around the minutes, is there a motion to approve the minutes from our last meeting?

A motion to approve the minutes. Is there a second? I'll second that.

Excellent. So the meeting minutes are approved. All right, so unfinished business. This will be our, our formation, because it's the reenergizing of the committee. So we have the opportunity for an election.

There are 3 seats available. We have the chair, vice chair, and secretary roles available.

Let's see, we only have 4 of our 6 here today as well. So I'm just going to pause for discussion. Do we feel comfortable moving forward with 4 of our 6 members, or thoughts and conversation before we move too far forward? Yeah, Ryan says, I feel like we have a quorum. So I feel like the majority of us here, and I feel confident that we can move forward.

I'll make a motion that we move forward. Excellent. I'll second. Okay. All right.

So let's go ahead and we'll open up to folks that may have interest in any of these roles. Is there anyone interested in being the chair of the committee? Bryan says, "I am interested. I will nominate myself as chair." I'll second that.

Should we go ahead and vote? All right. Let's go— maybe we'll just vote one by one. Is there anyone else interested in this role? Well, and is there anything else that you would like from me?

Do you want me to give you any type of statements or anything, or can we just go ahead and vote? Let's see if there's anyone else interested, and if not, then give a little bit of background.

Um, so 1, 2, 3. So the, um, Onamae, do you have interest in this role as well, or—. No, I don't have an interest in the chair role. Okay, all right, so I'm gonna go ahead and just say we'll formally vote. All in favor of Brian as chair, say aye.

Okay, anyone opposed? Excellent, unanimously chair. Congratulations. Yeah, we would so— and that's good. Is there anyone interested in serving in the vice chair role?

What is the role of the vice chair? I'm not 100% sure what that role is. Yeah, to step in if the chair is not available or happens to miss a meeting. You just fill in for the, for the chair. It's not real hard.

So you would do it now, like going through the agenda, the meeting minutes, and just kind of keeping, uh, you know, call to order. You look like a great vice chair. Yeah, I nominate myself then. I'll second that. All right, uh, all in favor?

It sounds okay. Is there anyone opposed? All right, unanimous acceptance of the Vice Chair role. Excellent. So we now have the Secretary role available, and I'm getting some good eye contact here.

So, Dean, perhaps this is between you and I. Do you have a passion for the Secretary role, or happy to fill in as needed as well? I may do it at a later point, but right now I'm not in a position to actually do it at this specific time right now.

Just a point of clarification, um, Carly, is the secretary actually publishing the minutes, or is that— is there— is that part— do you support that? So as an ex officio staff member, I am responsible for having the municipality retain minutes, agendas, any kind of, um, documentation about our meetings that we would like to keep stored with the meeting. I also provide technical support, publish the public notices, and post our videos to YouTube for our meetings. Do you generate the minutes and agenda? I am capable of doing so.

It may be better to have that handled by y'all because it's uncertain if I will be, you know, part— like, constantly available to be at the meetings personally. We can definitely continue staffing them. Um, but it may be nice to have a secretary, um, elected who is part of the board, just in case, or the commission, just in case. Yeah. Um, well, I was going to just tell you my, my bandwidth in terms of trying to be secretary.

It may be helpful to— I know there's two other members. Perhaps we could at least defer to see if there's others interested in our next meeting. Okay. Um, again, if we have absolutely nobody, then no. Okay, we'll wait on the secretary position for a later A later meeting.

If you can like carry us for a meeting where we have more attendees next month, it's just going on my own bandwidth right now. Okay, I appreciate it. Well, and we should be getting some more commissioners appointed hopefully. Maybe one of the new ones would be willing to step into that one. Yeah, if there's no one, then certainly.

Okay, all right, uh, very good. Um, well, given that we have a new chair I'm happy to transition this portion. Would you like to take over from here, Ryan?

Yeah, sure. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. Yes, and I will, um, give a recognized to, uh, for the rest of the election process to the next meeting. Um, I do need a second for that, just for the role of secretary, um, to take over for the rest of this meeting.

I'll second that.

Okay, perfect. Thank you. Part is finished. We can move on to new business. We do need to vote on the meeting agenda or the meeting schedule, and I believe we just did a poll.

Um, I am curious what the results are from that poll. From the city community, did we have a schedule? Um, so I believe the time that was accepted was 6 PM to 7 PM. I was unsure, it was unclear if we had decided what day of the month we would be meeting on. So, I think it was 1st Thursday, 2nd Thursday, or 4th Thursday of the month we would have available to staff as the Commission.

And then it's uncertain if we have you know, other availability. Yeah, because the third Thursday of the month, this room at between 6 and 7 is already used for the Equal Rights Commission. So that one is not available.

But we could do the second, we could do the fourth Thursday. What else was on that whole meeting? The poll included it from what I remember. It was mostly just meeting times, right? And then me and Marie had a correspondence about, you know, which Thursday of the month we would be meeting on.

And then it started approaching the third Thursday of the month and we decided to have this meeting today. But wasn't one of the times also during the day, like around the lunch hour? There were—. I remember the most, most for any one of the time slots was, I think, 2 votes for 6 to 7, um, and then the rest of the options had like 1 vote. That's what I remember off the top of my head.

Okay, maybe we can go ahead and revisit this, um, and we can make a motion to discuss this, um, which is the best day of the week for us. I mean, it does seem 6 to 7 works best for all of us, so we can maybe make a motion to keep a 6 to 7 time and then discuss which Thursday of the month at the next meeting. I'll make a motion to open it up, but I want to state one thing. I'm retired. I'm flexible.

The time doesn't really matter to me. So many of you who work or have other responsibilities, kids at home, whatever it is, I'm flexible. So I probably won't say much about the schedule because I can meet at any time, really.

Okay, thank you. I can meet 6 to 7 on any Thursday or any time on a Thursday, so it wouldn't matter to me which Thursday. Okay, thank you, Alani. Jessica, do you have any extra comments? Do you prefer 6 to 7?

Is that okay with you? Either time slot works. I have an occasional other board I might be on, but generally okay.

Okay, for me personally, I am also flexible, so it really doesn't matter to me. I want to do what's best for the group, the majority of us, and I think maybe if possible we can just decide on the second Thursday of the month, um, unless you guys have a preference, we can do it on the last week of the month.

Second, the second Thursday. Second.

So you—. Are you making a motion? As you're making the motion for that date time, okay. So we need a second. Yes.

Okay. Yes, I second that. I second.

Right, that date, so that would be the next meeting. When? June and— June 12th? Yes, June 12th.

June 12th.

I'd like to make a motion that we accept June 12th, if that's going to be the next meeting. I want to make the motion a little bit more simple. This is Ryan. Do you mind rephrasing it? We will meet the second Thursday of every month from 6 to 7 PM.

I'll second that.

So I can't make the motion as a chair. I need one of you guys to make the motion. You can just reframe it in that phrasing. —More specific. I'll make a motion that we meet this— was it the second Thursday of each month?

Yes. I'll second. I'll second that.

So I just want to clarify that we add that like 6 to 7 PM time in that. To 6 to 7 PM, yes.

I second that.

Cool, thank you for that. And are all in favor? In favor. Say aye. Aye.

No opposed. All right, thank you. The motion passes. Then we can go ahead and meet on the second Thursday of every month from 6 to 7 PM. Thanks for that.

All right, and then the next thing on the agenda for new business is discussing the Commission's priorities. And you go ahead and flip the agenda on the back. You will see that there is the first paragraph. Just go ahead and read that first paragraph, please.

For Robert.

So Robert, you don't have a copy, so I'm going to go ahead and read it for Robert.

Yep. So we have 4.60. 2.4.0, The Americans with Disabilities Act Advisory Committee.

So, A, it has 7 members with 3 members from the active disability organization and 4 members of the community, direction of Anchorage Health Department, or designee by the president act-elect of the secretary for the committee. And then we have B that we're going to be reading. So there are 8 different priorities that we have.

So review the Americans with Disabilities Act in order to maintain a clear and comprehensive understanding of federal legislation addressing all forms of discrimination against individuals on the basis of disability. The second one is to make recommendations to the mayor and assembly for the adoption change or repeal of the municipality's laws, rules, regulations, restrictions, and other matters affecting the individuals with a disability community. The third is act in an advisory capacity to the mayor and the assembly in matters of policy concerning implementation by the municipality of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Number 4 is report at least annually to the mayor and the assembly on individuals with disabilities' issues, progress in relevant areas such as employment and public and private accommodations. The fifth is identify municipal facilities and employment procedures that require modifications and advise the mayor and the assembly of those issues. Number 6 is undertake efforts to open and maintain channels of communication with the disabled community of the municipality and to periodically hold hearings on matters of importance to the community and the Anchorage community as a whole and the municipal government.

Number 7 is carry out educational and public relations programs designed to create public awareness. And then number 8, we have perform such other powers and duties as the assembly may refer to them from time time. So that are our current priorities for the committee, that reason we are gathered here. Do we have any comment? Commission?

Commission? It's pretty straightforward.

So, I know this is our second meeting as a commission, so we're still trying to figure out how much authority or what we can do as a commission to help the city. And I think now is a good time to go ahead and discuss what we can do to help. If there's anyone— if there's any concerns or anything from our constituents or the members who were just observing. From the city's perspective, or any city staff have any comments. I would like to, um, address that.

Uh, we have a member from the public that, uh, has asked to be present today and speak about a concern that he's personally having with the practices of the municipality, um, that is affecting him, including, um, discrimination, uh, based on his disability, and he would like to speak.

Robert Crockett, are you there?

You want to go ahead and unmute yourself?

Oh, he doesn't have a mic. You don't have a mic? Oh, do you—. Would you like to type your concern in the chat? Did he say— or if— yeah, um, or you could call.

I could have you call my work cell and I can put it on speaker if that works. Yeah, where is it? Okay, let me go get that.

While we're waiting for that, I'd like to make a motion that we, if we have the time in this meeting, to just go around and a couple minutes each just explain what we're trying to accomplish being in this group. And, uh, what we're at, what our expectations are, so everybody knows pretty much what everybody expects, so we can work together and cohesively and actually get some things figured out and possibly get some things to happen within our community.

I like that idea, and we could make that motion after Robert shares his concern with us. Thanks. Oh, that's, that's fine. Yeah, just because we're waiting, might as well use up the time with something.

This is a good time to interject. Yeah. All right, uh, Robert, would you call my work cell? It is 907-343-9767.

Hello, Robert, is that you? Yeah. Okay, I'm going to turn the volume up so that everyone can hear. Go ahead.

And I, um, I can do all the functions of my job. I got my doctor's note, sign off.

Okay, so you, you work for what department? Correct. Okay, and you had a seizure? Yeah. And you can't drive for 6 months, if I understand correctly.

Okay, and so then you submitted a— you, you asked for a reasonable accommodation with your supervisor.

Yeah. Okay, so did you reach out to HR directly to ask for the reasonable accommodation as well? Uh, I was— the only time I went to my supervisor was new. He didn't know, but I didn't know about ADA accommodations until I got into contact with the HR about a week later.

Okay, do you mind going back with like your timeline just so I can understand it correctly? So you had a seizure at work and then your doctor told you that you couldn't drive for 6 months. So how long after that conversation with the doctor did you reach out to your supervisor or HR? I talked to my supervisor the same day I went to the doctor. I think that was February, maybe March 1st.

I don't know the exact date off the top of my head.

And then you also said that HR just, just got back to you after 2 months, correct?

There's been nothing. They offered me a different job and everyone's been ridiculous. Do the bank runs for me. That's the only part of my job I couldn't do.

Okay, so they didn't offer you modified duties, they just tried to assign you to a different role? Yeah. And so is— was that a temporary reassignment or a permanent reassignment? Right now it is permanent. Uh, but it took them 2 months to do it.

It should have been resolved within a couple days when I got my original doctor's note.

Okay, thanks. Okay, so if I understand, then did you go 2 months without work and no pay while you're waiting for someone to make a decision on whether to grant a reasonable accommodation? And the only reasonable accommodation that you were asking for was just not to take the bank run the deposit, and someone else could do that? Yeah. And had that been done by anyone else in the past?

Yeah. Okay.

All right, so is your position that the process for an employee to receive a reasonable accommodation is too slow, or it's not— what would the word be—. Not responsive enough? Yeah, it's not very responsive. Yeah, so it's supposed to be— any contact I've had with HR Interactive is the word that you're looking for. So it's supposed to be active, like a back and forth with communication.

So, for example, you— for 2 weeks you hear nothing, that's not an interactive approach. And so that is part of the ADA process that you need to have that interactive approach.

Yeah, so interaction with HR, and from me on my part, they didn't reach out.

May.

Okay. Okay, so it's now May, and this started in February, end of February? Okay.

Okay, I do have one more clarifying question. So Did the seizure happen during work or was it during your personal time? During—.

Okay.

Okay, so I think what your concern is for our Advisory Commission is that you would like, if I understand this correctly, you would like us to maybe review the municipality's process and to see if it can be improved so that it's more responsive and interactive so that you're not going without a job and employment for over 2 months. Okay.

Are you back at work now? Yeah, I've been at work for 2 weeks now. Okay, so did they grant your reasonable accommodation?

They granted me a light duty. Okay, so you don't have a reasonable accommodation in your personnel file? No. Okay, and seizures is a recognized disability for the ADA. It's not going to go away for you.

There's no cure right now for you, so this is conceivably something that you might encounter again, uh, and then you would be right back into the same situation of having to not drive for 6 months, have to be seizure-free for 6 months in order to drive.

All right, and so then you need a reasonable accommodation permanently in your file so that if that happens, there's a plan for you to be able to continue working and not be interrupted and be without work and pay for a long stretch of time. Is that correct?

Yeah, go ahead. I have a question for you, Robert. Um, have you, uh, made any attempts to contact vocational rehab and explain to them your situation and ask them for advice or actual help? They even have funds available to make workspaces accessible to keep people employed or, or help find a position that where you can be gainfully employed with your disability. They're quite effective in this area.

I have not.

I would suggest you go there, you know, fairly soon if you have the time and get a counselor. They will assign you a counselor. They'll do an assessment and then they will, will see what they can do to either keep you with your current employer or give you the equipment or the skill set to have a different employer or a different position. And the other question I have for you, are you, are you a union member with the municipality? Yes, I am.

Have you talked to those people? Yes, I have. I've talked to the president of the union. He's the only person I was able to get in contact with.

I think you might find Voc Rehab quite, quite helpful, and they will at least point you in the right direction, uh, where you could end up with the outcome that you're looking for, which is, is, you know, employment that is meaningful for yourself. It's worth a try.

Thank you.

I think what I heard, um, Mr. Crockett say was that— how long have you had this job?

A year, correct? Okay. All right, so your position is that you're not looking to get a different job, you just want the municipality to put in place your reasonable accommodation to allow you to do your current job.

Yeah.

Okay, I, I think what he's asking is that maybe our commission could look at the process that we have here at the municipality and see what the disconnect is on why the interactive process is not working for him, because it shouldn't take 2 or 3 months for someone to just get a reasonable accommodation. All he needs is someone else to run the bank run, which has been done by other employees in the past. That is the only function that he needs assistance with. The rest of his job he is able to do. Is that correct, Robert?

Yeah. Okay.

Okay, and I am making note of that, so the Commission will follow up. Robert, I'm not sure how you prefer us to reach out to you afterwards. Do you prefer text, phone, email? And if you don't mind—.

Yeah, we can do that. Sure. Do you want to, um, and then do you also have— sorry, do you also have an MOA email? Yes, I do. Do you prefer your personal email or the MOA email?

Okay, because this meeting is recorded, I don't want you to share your personal information over the recording. But we can figure out after the recording and this meeting is finished how to best contact you and to get that information.

All right, thank you. No problem. All right, thank you. Thank you. Yes, thank you.

So I'm going to write that phone number down that he called from. Yep. Okay. And then do you mind following up with Robert to get his personal email once you, once you have the time? Yes, thank you.

Okay, and then going back to the commissioner's priorities, I do have a couple of things. If you see C, Part C, it says this commission shall terminate on October 14th, 2025, unless affirmatively continued by the Assembly in accordance with Section 4.05.150. So reminding everyone that it is important for us to bring this up to the Commission— or bring this up to the Assembly to continue this ADA Commission to provide these services to our community. How is that done?

That is a great question. Someone show up to an assembly meeting and, or get on your agenda, or is it a motion, or how is that addressed?

I am curious from one of the City Hall staff, uh, if you could answer that question. What is the typical process? Do somebody need— does somebody need to go to the assembly and make a, a formal motion or add that onto their agenda, or is it just go up to somebody from the assembly and talk to them? The way Marie Hyosa explained it to me, and in the last meeting as well, um, was that the internal audit department would make a recommendation for the assembly to to close this Commission. Her reasoning for why that wouldn't happen is because since the Commission hasn't met, they wouldn't see reason to make the determination to close this meeting.

That— that's pretty much all that I had on that, is that the recommendation is made by internal audit and And her reason to believe that the recommendation would be that this Commission stay open would be because we haven't met enough to make a determination. That's really all that was explained to me. Okay, so maybe what we need to do is contact Marie Husa and ask her what exactly the Commission needs to do, um, so that we can move forward with getting the information to the assembly.

And since that's October 14th, we're going to be meeting plenty of times before then, so we should be able to have a clear understanding for the next meeting, right, in June, in June, on what we have to do.

Okay, yes, right. And as the new election, uh, elected chair, I'm happy to take that on to make sure that we can do that and renew this Commission. So can we put that on the agenda for next month to follow up, circle back to this point, and that Maya and I will contact Mary Hughes and get specific instructions so we can report to this next meeting?

All right, sounds good. Thank you.

And then I have a motion from Dean. You wanted to discuss, um, the expectations, what we were bringing to the table. Do you mind repeating that motion? Yeah, I'd like to make a motion that we just have a— it'd be a couple minutes each to explain what we're trying to accomplish being on this, on this commission and what our expectations are of working together with each other and trying to come up with priority lists that we can work together to try to accomplish. It's going to, it's going to require some work because we have to— maybe each of us need to come up with a thing or two that we think should be addressed within the municipality to increase employment and accessibility.

And, you know, it's not possible for— but if we can accomplish something, then we've done some good. Because I could start by explaining that my purpose here is to get something accomplished that changes the way we have accessibility in Anchorage and improves it. And it'd be nice to do something that maybe other communities haven't done before so we can spread word around of how we can make life more meaningful for people that are suffering from any type of a disability. Doesn't matter whether they acquired it as an adult or they were born that way, that doesn't matter. Acquired it, you know, from Vietnam, or I should say from injuries.

As I had an oldest brother, my oldest brother had a disability acquired from Vietnam. And for seniors, because There's a lot of work to be done, and if we can come up with equitable ways, even work with business, work with the municipality, work with provider agencies that provide services for people with disabilities, hospitals, or whoever is interested to come up with reasonable, uh, solutions to problems to improve our system and continue to, to act that way. So it's going to take kind of a think tank amongst all of us to come up with ideas and decide which ones we're going to prioritize and go after. Well, that's basically in, in a short version, my motion is for us to, to just explain to each other what we're expecting to get out of this commission and accomplish while we're here.

Yes. Does anybody second that motion? Second. Okay, thank you. All right, that will be officially inputted.

Thank you for your explanation, Dean. We appreciate that. That's very thoughtful and insightful. I think for me personally, as a person with a disability, you know, I have to face a lot of barriers every day, whether it is Systemic, unintentional, maybe intentional, but that is my approach to anything, is that I want to remove all of these barriers so everybody has an equal opportunity of life, right? And, um, I think bringing my personal life experience to the table, some systemic issues that we all face, and we are a big community, we live together, we We work together, we pass each other by on the street, right?

And some people have these different experiences. People have different issues. And I think being able to meet together, we can get— that we can have an equal opportunity from everybody. For example, for Robert, you know, bringing up his issues, talking with us, sharing his concerns, his experience that he faced. All over the city there are people that are motivated.

There are people that have disabilities, right? There are people that are going to be watching this meeting, like Robert's story, you know, myself as Ryan, I have a story to share. Other people have their stories to share, right? And we want to make sure that this is an open environment for everybody to feel comfortable to share that.

Very good.

So, so I guess I'll— okay, is that okay? Can you jump in? Yeah, yeah, please go ahead. Yeah, I was just about to ask that same question. So just in the spirit of as we start brainstorming a little bit together, I know at our last meeting we talked about the role of the Commission and how do we start to kind of come up with very actionable ideas to hopefully get traction in the near term.

In addition to some of the more broader principles behind what we want to do. So, I had gone off and I did a little brainstorming. I, my passion and interest in being able to participate with this group is from a hospital healthcare perspective. Alaskans spend 67% longer in institutions than in hospitals in the rest of the country. And for disabled Alaskans in particular, we are chronically institutionalizing Alaskans that could live at home or in the community as well and more independently.

We have some folks that live in hospitals for years with disabilities that have incredible limitations on their freedoms because they're institutionalized that could live in the community. And so as I thought about that ask of what are some tactical things we might think about relevant to the Municipality of Anchorage, I just— this may be a little detailed, but I shot an idea off in an email, and so I'll spend maybe 1 minute on it, if that's okay. The— yeah, sure, go ahead. Okay. Yeah, go ahead.

Okay. So, and again, this is when we think about the Americans with Disabilities Act, and we think about some of the legislation that's happened nationally, when we have situations where there are chronic challenges, that does, I think, really merit some of these conversations. And the first thing I want to hit on is the idea that we have a tremendous lack of accessibility for housing and for assistance for significantly disabled Alaskans. Coverage in particular. And we see this in the hospitals.

And at the state level, if you double-click on the PDF there, this is data from the State of Alaska Senior and Disability Services. And if you zoom in, what you're going to see on the far right, these are senior disabilities. There's home and community-based waivers. Really built around the spirit of independent living. Um, quick question, I'm sorry to interrupt.

Are you sharing your screen for Dean? Uh, no, but I did forward this email to all of our commissioners so you would have access to it. I hope you received. Okay, cool. I just want to make sure.

Yeah, sorry, Dean. Thank you, and I'll be quick. Um, it's the, um, but if you look in the middle here, this is, you'll see that there are 5 different home and community-based waivers. Those are on the far right. So you'll see that there are 2,492 Alaskans that are eligible for the Alaskans Living Independently waiver.

And so there is a very rigorous process where Alaskans are screened for disability and then screened for eligibility for these waivers, and then often can struggle to find placement in the community. Likewise, we have our Children with Complex Medical Conditions Waiver, 236 Alaskans served by this.

The next one is our Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Waiver. We have 2,108 Alaskans. Again, not— maybe assume half of these Alaskans live in the Anchorage municipality area. Individualized supports, et cetera. The— so what I wanted to tee up is the idea that when we think about a lack of housing, if we go back to the main email, um, in the municipality of Anchorage, under Municipal Code 12-15-015, it stipulates real property tax exemptions, and there's a series of exemptions that exist today for disabled veterans, seniors, Residential property owners, nonprofit hospitals.

And so what I wanted to propose is we think about maybe creating a space for a conversation with the municipality where we look at a very kind of tight definition of who— how we might utilize tax exemptions or tax relief or property taxes to be able to support incentivizing assisted living facilities caring for Alaskans that qualify for the either waiver or the general relief funds. And if you scroll down a little bit, a little more data. This you're going to see here, this is in Alaska, this table at the bottom. This is how many licensed assisted living facilities exist in the state of Alaska. You'll see at the very bottom there's about 700 and Um, there's 739 assisted living facilities in Alaska that are licensed today.

545 Of those are in Anchorage, and the average size is about 6 beds. So many of these are small owners, small business owners, right? And when you think about incentivizing the idea that we might be able to make some recommendations for tax exemptions that encourages these innovative small business owners to continue to care for and/or even further open up access for disabled Alaskans that may be stuck in a higher-level institutional setting that can live far more independently in assisted living. So, just want to kind of throw the idea out there. If you look at— if you scroll up to the top here, again, this goes a little deep.

I had, you know, put a little bit of language in here about even what this might look like. Sure, whatever went in there. But the concept being that we could propose some language similar to these other exemptions that might drive different behavior that opens up more housing and independent living options for folks that are basically trapped at a higher level of care. Right? And we just throw that out there.

So since that was kind of the lens I brought, I just brought a very specific tactical people like, here's an idea and something that we might be able to look at.

You have a similar interest that I have. I want more housing. That's my biggest thing that I want, right? So they're really like— Francis, I like that idea. Yeah, so there's something that goes in this spreadsheet.

This is the healthcare facilities right off the state website, so I'll put the link in there too. So I just, I just pivoted the table directly off the state website. So there's one or two, it's not going to be perfect because there's a human entry. Okay. Um, but it's very, very real, like diverse.

Yeah, because it says Anchorage, Anchorage, Anchorage in 3 places. So like, yeah, there was, there's a list of 700 where someone at the state has typed them all in. So I took the Excel, but this is, but this is real. Sorry, let me make sure everyone could hear that. There was a question about, um, the how perfect the data, the fidelity of the data.

And I was explaining the email, I linked the source directly from the state website, the healthcare facilities licensure. So there's a few anchorages typed with an odd, so it doesn't show up perfectly. I just did a pivot table.

Dean, sorry, did you have a comment? Oh, oh, yeah. Yeah, my, my interest is to increase affordable accessible housing. And one of the big things that I want to see happen is that we come up with a plan, if, if we get— if the members agree to this, to when the state pays for accessibility added to a home or any type of a building, that that accessibility has to be maintained and not removed from that facility or that house. I had a personal experience.

I cared for my mother and my father and one other individual in my house. They all were in wheelchairs at one point. Eventually, before they passed— my parents passed away within 30 days of each other in 19— or in 2020, February, March 2020— and I sold my house to my own son and, uh, because it was just too big for me. It was mostly retiring. And he removed all that, and I was— it caused, you know, a disagreement between himself and myself.

Now he no longer lives in Anchorage, and I had, I had installed at my own cost a walk-in accessible tub, a very nice one, two accessible showers. I had widened all the doors at my own expense to make them wheelchair accessible. I made a 4-level house wheelchair accessible with chairlifts, and all of that was removed. And we need to stop those kind of things from happening. Access Alaska receives a lot of accessible, uh, implements that have been put into houses.

They can't even get rid of them. It's, it's really bad. Uh, Why are we allowing, when the state pays either through the waiver system or for any other program, vocational rehab or whatever it is, I don't care what it is, why are we letting those accessible features being removed from those properties when the property owner got a major subsidy or it was paid for? So we, we take that out of our system. We need to find a way to stop that.

We need to find a way to preserve urban, the accessibility that we've done. It costs a lot of money to do accessibility, and most people don't realize it, but if you have an accessible house, you can sell it for more money later. Go to the MLS, try to find an accessible house for sale. I've been through this, I've looked and I've studied it. When they come up for sale, they sell quick.

Sometimes they sell before they even come on the market. That's where the demand is, because as time goes on, more and more of us are going to become disabled, and we need to have that accessibility. We need to be able to have home and community-based services that allow people to live in their home or in a home with other people. And we're shooting ourselves in the foot paying for all this, these modifications, and then it just goes away. So I have ideas that we can talk as a, as a group to come up with ways to hopefully get the municipality to see it our way and somehow find a way to restrict removal of those accessibility items out of a house.

There's only 4 minutes left on the meeting. Yeah, so I just want to let you— yeah, I just want to let you guys know that we do only have 4 minutes left, so make sure that everybody has the opportunity to speak. So thank you for that, Dean. So, and Jessica did— she did her research on the municipality of all the codes, all the laws, regulations. So I suggest that maybe you could start looking at that and then go from there.

That way we have a bone to start with. Sure. And so, Anamay, do you have time that you would like to share? Is there anything you would like to add? Sure, sure, sure.

My purpose for joining was to learn more about the ADA legislation. 'Cause I don't actually know the legislation itself.

My exposure to it involves, centers around patients. I often write accommodation letters for all sorts of things, usually mental health related though, since that is my field currently with veterans, but it's also been in the community with community mental health, and often you hear People voice their frustrations with things that they're going through at work or employers not really being, I don't know the word, employers just not being willing to be supportive or provide services. And so all the people have to go through and people often feel victimized or like they're being singled out. Sometimes shamed into not doing what they want or not getting the requests they put in. So my hope, or my intention, being on this Commission is to hopefully find a way to increase access to care and services, which is pretty vague.

That's a vague umbrella term, but that is ultimately the goal. So whatever we can do, I'm game for that. And also to improve equity in the workplace for disabled people. I think a lot of what we don't have comes from a lack of awareness. So I think some part of what we do should be geared towards educating the public.

And then there's also a lack of empathy from a lot of people, unfortunately. And then there's stigma, especially when it comes to mental health. But sometimes also with people with physical disabilities as well. So education, I think, would be a big part, but also finding ways to make people feel more empathetic about what people are going through, because historically people tend to get involved more with things that they feel they can relate to. You have to be able to reach people people at the heart level in order for them to do anything.

At least that's what I've observed anyway. I don't know what the actual research is for that. So whatever we can do, my part, I hope we would at least, some part of that would involve educating the public to increase their awareness and hopefully get them to be a little kinder so they can help. That's all I have.

Thank you so much, all of you, for sharing. We all have our own lens. We all have our own experience. We all have our own different expertise into the field that we all bring to this table. And so I like that we can throw ideas about that is off of each other.

That is where the magic happens. So without further ado, I am just going through the agenda to make sure that we reviewed everything that we have left. I don't think we have any more public comments, right? No. No.

Okay. And then we just had one member comment from Robert that we will definitely follow up on. And then if there's nothing else, we can tie it up with that motion. Since we just discussed everything, there was no really action from that motion. So just something to keep in mind if you want to have a future motion to discuss for discussion and you just have some of that research behind it.

Yes, Jessica. Could maybe, maybe a motion before our June 12th meeting, knowing it'll be about a month and we have the public meeting thing where we can't email each other, maybe if everyone could come up with one or two actionable ideas so that it gives us a brainstorming list for next. Yeah, I like that idea. I was actually about to say that. So yeah, I would like for us to just go ahead and email Maya or Marie our proposed ideas, and then you can add it to the agenda for the next meeting on June 12th.

If possible, try to think of something 2 weeks before the meeting so she can put— she can put it all together and have it ready. So definitely brainstorm and have all those ideas, and I like it. But if there's no other business to be discussed, does somebody Can somebody make a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn. I'll second that.

Yeah, okay, meeting is done at 7:01. Thanks everyone.