Muniversity Lunch and Learn with Mayor Rick Mystrom, 8/27/2025

Is not here today. She is on a panel at the Alaska Defense Forum, and so she sends her regrets. As one of the planning members of this team, I volunteered to introduce Mayor Rick Meistrom, and that is in part because 26 years ago he appointed me to my first position with the Municipality of Anchorage, and I am grateful. Um, as most of you know, Mayor Meistrom served from 1994 to 2000, so in a different decade than the one that we talked about last week. He also served on the Anchorage Assembly in the previous decade from '79 to '85, and he was chair from '83 to '84.

And as some of you know, I have a particular fondness for assembly members and the assembly, and So I'd like to ask former Assemblymember John Whittleton to come up. He has a gift for Mayor Maestro. Thanks. So I was busy growing my business in the years when Rick was mayor, and about 2000 started saying I need to learn more what's going on in this place. But I know he is famous for Winter Olympics, so I had in my very small comic collection Spider-Man vs. Hulk at the Winter Olympics.

I've had this in my collection for years thinking I need to do something with this important—. Mayor Meistrom, John, thank you very much.

Thank you, John.

You're going to hear more today about Mayor Meistrom's role with the municipality, in particular the Olympics, Bridge Builders, and the City of Lights and Flowers, as well as when Anchorage received its award for an All-American City. Mayor Meistrom is also involved in advertising, sports in Alaska. He is an author of several books and so much more. And I will turn it over to you, Mayor Heistrom. Thank you, thank you, Barbara.

Thanks.

Well, I told Barbara this will be a lot of fun because I'm used to talking about healthy living. I've written 4 books since I retired, and one is called My Wonderful Life with Diabetes. And I'm going to give each one of you— I've committed to giving away 10% of them, and You don't want to give away books just to anybody. You want people who show an interest, and you folks have shown an interest in the city. And a big part of this is my mayoral years and the years preceding that with the Olympics and the years succeeding that as an author.

And so I, I think you'll see a language that shows Anchorage through my eyes, uh, from about 1972 on. Uh, so I want to give that to you. And then I also have another book that I, I think Barbara is going to be in charge of. This is for department heads, and it's a transition guide of all the projects that we had underway during the time I was—. Oh, here's Democrats.

Um, this is, this is a book that we gave to all the candidates running for mayor to replace me. And it shows the things that we did, the things that we had completed, the things we had not completed, the things we hoped to that would go on. So they each got this, but this has a kind of detail that only the individual department heads, I think, would be interested in. But it'd be fun to see what we thought about 30 years from now, because that was a generation ago that I was mayor. Uh, a task worth— like, it was a generation ago that I was I forget what I was like when I was 54, but I was like 50, 52.

I'm 81 now and they say, what happened? Where'd that guy go? But it's good. It's really good. And when I was a younger person, I had a message that I would tell myself every morning in the shower.

Today I'm going to be happy, healthy, productive, growing, and giving. And that was what I wanted to do every day. I tried to get my life into 5 words, and those were the 5 words I used to do it. Now, as I get older and I read about how so much, how about people when they get to be 80 start degenerating than they did before then, which is a good thing for me. But, and I realized after that reading in this, not, is that there's 4, 3 things, 4 things that are important.

For people that when they get to be my age—. And none of you are my age right now, but, uh, some of you are getting close—. But, and that is you need to have purpose in life, you know, purpose. You need to have, um, activity in life. You need to have things to do to keep you busy.

You need to have love in life, whether it's filial love or love and friendships or amorous love, whatever it is, you need that. That love. And then the third— the fourth thing is you need strength. And I never ever worried about my legs before. They always took care of themselves because I played sports year round.

Now I spend more time exercising my legs than I do the rest of my body, which probably shows. But it's so important to keep your legs strong. Uh, I, I see how One of the first things that people lose is the ability, and that impacts balance. And one of the things I found out by exercising my legs is, is it improves your balance. Your legs are stronger.

And I stumble once in a while. I actually fell once 4 or 5 months ago, and, but I haven't hurt myself, you know. I bounced back up and I'm okay. And that doesn't happen to many people 80-plus years old. I've got a couple sisters, when they fall, they go to the hospital.

Either by having it by themselves. Speak up, please. Pardon me? Oh, okay. Thank you, Cindy.

Thank you. I should have asked them if anybody in the backyard— in the backyard, in the back of the room— if anybody in that backyard over there can't hear me, wave your hands. Okay, I will speak up. Thank you, Cindy. Thanks for that.

Sometimes when you're up here, if you hear yourself, you think everybody else hears you, but they don't. I wanted to start by talking about one thing, and that is, just as a start, I went to the University of Colorado, and above the library at the university, they have a saying that says, "Who knows only his own generation remains always a child." And so what you've shown is an interest by having me here in what happened a generation ago. I was mayor a generation ago, roughly 30 years ago, um, from 1994 to 2000. 1995 Would be 30 years. So, uh, I'm—.

And for that reason, I'm going to give each of— each person in here a copy of my book because you've already showed it. And I've signed them and dated them, but if you'd like me to personalize them, put your name on them, I'd I can do that after. Um, so that's, that's it. I think the important thing is to, uh, to tell you how much fun I had as mayor and to, to share some humor with you. The things— because you've got to be able to laugh at yourself, you know, especially if you're a public person.

You've got to be able to laugh at yourself. And two of my funniest stories, two of my favorite stories, happened the same day on the Sunday before my reelection day. I had been mayor for 3 years. It was the Sunday before reelection day, and I was scheduled to speak at the Pioneer Hall. But before that, I had an hour, hour and a half off, and I thought, well, I'm just going to go down to Elmer's Restaurant and read the paper.

So Elmer's Restaurant was on Fireweed Lane. How many people remember Elmer's Restaurant? Okay, that's the oldest people remember. Now I know how focused with you guys.

But so I went into Elmer's and I got a newspaper and just sat down and reading the paper. Was not going to campaign. I'd been campaigning for a few.

Once. I sat down at the booth in there, was reading the paper, and then I saw a long table of girls, looked like about 9 years old or so, in the middle of the restaurant. And then I saw who was obviously their chaperones or moms in a booth behind that, and I thought, well, I'm going to go over and wish her a happy birthday. You know, I could tell who the birthday girl was because they had little candles on cakes and she was at the end of the table. So I walked over, walked over to her and I bent down.

She was like, I got down on my knee actually and started talking to her and asking her how old she was and what grade she was in and things like that. And I said, well, I just wanted to come over and wish you happy birthday. I thought she'd never forget that the bear came to wish her happy birthday. And as I walked back to my booth, the little girl next to her said, who's that? The little girl said, "That's an Elmer." I got credit for being Elmer.

Elmer's Pancake. And then I went, then I had the speech at the Pioneer Home, an hour late or something like that. I said, "I went to the Pioneer Home and gave a talk at the Pioneer Home." to all the folks that were there. And after it was over, one of the fellows came up to me and said, you know, that lady, it's her 90th birthday today. You see that lady there?

It's her 90th birthday. Her name is Esther, and it would be really cool, she'd really appreciate it if you'd go and wish her happy birthday. So I— keep in mind, I'd been mayor for 3 years before this, so, you know, one would think that they They might remember me or something. So I walked over, walked over to her, and I sat down next to her, and I wished her happy birthday and asked her some questions about herself. And then I said, well, you know, there's an election coming up Sunday, and I'm running for mayor, and I hope you'll consider voting for me.

And I started to say thank you and walk away. Well, she held onto my hand and kind of pulled me back down in the chair. She said, well, young man, I love that. Young man, if you want me to vote for you, you better answer a couple of questions for me. And so she asked a question about crime, and then she asked a question about photo radar, because I think she had gotten a ticket driving down the road.

Speaking fast, and she had a ticket. And so I answered the question as best I could, and she finally said, young man, she said, I think I'm going to vote for you. I know one thing for sure, you'll be a damn sight better than the fellow who's in there now. That sort of makes you humble, doesn't it? How can you not appreciate that?

And then I won't tell jokes the whole time, but I got just a couple of them. Or just— they're not jokes, they're just true stories. One is involved with public works because I I think a lot of you guys are from public works here. And back in those days, back in the old days when Jane and I were in politics, um, and when Cindy was involved, back in those days, you had, you had your phone and phone book. You know, my phone number was there and my address was there.

It was just right there. And people were actually more respectful for me as mayor than they were in the assembly because they presume on the assembly You know, you have a day job and they can only talk to you at night. But I didn't get many calls at all. But I got one, one morning, or one day, about midnight. It was in the winter, it was about midnight, I got a call.

Well, I had another call from a guy not too long before that. He was a little drunk and he wanted to know where all the hookers were. I said, "Well, you need to talk to Mayor Meister." We got him out of downtown. I think we got him to Spinard, I'm not sure. But anyway, this guy was perfectly sober and he called up and he asked me, he said, uh, he says, "Is this the mayor?" I said, "Yeah." I'd been asleep for about 2 hours.

"Yeah." And he said, "Tell me," he said, "is your street plowed?" And I said, "I don't know, I'll look." I looked outside, I said, "Yeah." And he said, "Well, mine isn't, and you said you'd plow all in the neighborhoods in 3 days, and mine's not plowed." So I said, "Okay." I said, just give me a— I have a little pencil on my bed stand, and I said, just give me your, uh, your name and address and your phone number and take care of it tomorrow morning. So he did. So I called up next morning, I called Jim Farrell. Jim was head of Public Works. I said, Jim, I want you to do me two favors.

I want you to plow this guy's street first chance you get, have it plowed. The second thing is I want you to set your alarm for 3 o'clock tomorrow morning. I want you to wake up and call this guy and ask him to— He did.

But the final thing, you know, I always thought I was a pretty good dresser for being mayor. And one day my son came. He was— went to West High as a senior at West High. Came into my room and said, Dad, can I borrow one of your shirts for school today? And well, you know, all fathers are proud if their son wears a shirt of theirs.

I was about 6'3" and maybe 190 pounds. Nick was about 6'3" and about 160 pounds at the time. So I said, it'll be a little big for you, but you can wear it. Help yourself. You know, feeling sort of fatherly pride.

I went downstairs to have breakfast. I said, "Beth, I said Nick's wearing one of my shirts to school today." She said, "I know, today is nerd day at West." So we had that. Let me talk to you about, first of all, my goals as mayor, and then I'll leave some time for questions and answers. So maybe I'll talk about 20 minutes or so. But in terms of setting my goals as mayor, one of the first things I based it on— thank you— one of the first things I based it on was that over the past 3 centuries, I looked at what made cities successful over the long term.

And you come to realize that in the 1700s, What made cities successful is they had to be by tidewater, by the ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, the case of the 1700s in America. If they had access to the ocean, they could build, they could grow, they would be successful. They could start to be successful. They had an opportunity to be successful. They weren't all successful, but they had the opportunity.

And then in the 1800s, what gave them the opportunity to to be successful was those who were smart enough or lucky enough to have railroads going through their cities, or if they were really lucky, to have intersections through railroads, like Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Atlanta that had intersections, St. Louis that had intersections of railroads. And they really prospered during the 1800s. But during the 1900s, then, it really became those cities who could accommodate, best accommodate the automobiles. Who really had a chance to grow and prosper. Those cities that couldn't, that were— and especially the cities back east that were designed for walking, and they had a lot of buildings, they were narrow streets, uh, they couldn't accommodate as well as the western part of the United States could.

So I said to myself, okay, how about 20th century? How about 19th? How about right now, you know, and then the 21st century? What's it going to be? My thought was, is that in the 21st century, people didn't have to live near their corporate headquarters.

They didn't have to live necessarily even near their customers. They could choose, and it's happening now. We all know that now, but this is what I thought in 1994. It's really going to be those cities that can attract people through good environment, attractive living, safe communities, a lot of activities. It's those cities that can attract people will be successful.

And so that was my focus during the whole campaign. I talked about it, a safer, more attractive city, cleaner, safer, more attractive city. And then I added later on, I added with more activities to it. But over and over, I would go and I did that in the campaign over. Uh, that was my message.

So I wanted to make Anchorage a safer, cleaner, attractive city with more activities to attract more people, uh, to live here. And to some degree, I think it's, it's working. Um, 6 years as mayor is not enough really to firmly establish things, but it, it was— I think it was working. I think we got it. And then I asked myself, um, I measure being a mayor?

I know I did a good job, uh, you know, lower taxes, maybe less crime. Yeah, but I came to the conclusion that if the people of Anchorage were prouder when I left office than they were when I entered office, I'd be successful. Whatever, whatever made them proud, I wanted to have the most people the proudest of Anchorage. And did that through a lot of, a lot of different things. But, uh, I, uh, so with those goals, I really wanted to focus on what I kind of condensed that into quality of life.

You know, I just wanted to build that quality of life that would make people want.

Disappeared. And ultimately, uh, the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation incorporated it into Live Play Work, the best place to live, play, work. And that, that was a good— it was just a different way of saying what I had been saying. Um, and then I also wanted to revitalize downtown. And the very first week in office, Dan Cuddy came into my, my office and said, uh, "Mayor, I wanted to tell you personally." This was— they had their main headquarters was at 4th and D Street downtown.

And he said, "I want to tell you, we're moving our bank out of downtown Anchorage." I said, "Dan, why are you doing that?" And he said, "Well," these were his exact words, "downtown is dying and it will be dead in 5 years." I said, "Dan, give me a chance. Give me a chance. I want to revitalize downtown." And he said, "It's too late. We've already got the land. We've got the plans.

We're going to be building a 36th Street." So they did. But I kept— I sort of moved that up in my agenda, the revitalization of downtown. We're losing a big business downtown because of that. And I wasn't sure how I was going to do it until I attended a meeting of the Conference of Northern Mayors. And I went to this meeting and it was in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, north of the Twin Cities, St. Paul, Minneapolis.

And the mayor of Manitoba was a mayor named Sue Thompson. And she— there was a big conference of countries and northern mayors, mayors from Japan, mayors from northern parts of Japan, Hokkaido, from Norway, from Sweden, from Canada, United States, um, Germany, a few other countries that have been held in northern climates. And it was— it's a great conference, a great program for any mayor. I hope, I hope, uh, Mayor LaFrance joins the Conference of Northern Mayors because that's— I learned a lot. I'm writing it down.

And anyway, I, I didn't know exactly how to do it. I was going to do it. So I went to that conference, and it was in October, and it was sort of a dreary October in Manitoba. And she invited 6 of us mayors to go around with her for a little tour in a van of the city of Manitoba. We had— I think we got there early or something.

And so we were driving through this kind of dark, dreary city, and all of a sudden we saw an oasis of light. Dark was. And she said, now this is a business improvement district. We drove through it and there were people outside, they were busy, it was very light, very light, um, they were doing things, they were shopping, they were at restaurant. And then we drove through it, it got dark again, and we went another 4 or 5 minutes and there was another oasis of light there.

And she said, this is another business improvement district. And it just changed things. It just changed how— what the whole nature of it was. And I said, how does it work? She said, well, they pay an additional amount of property tax, and we direct all those taxes to that 4-square-block area.

We charge them additional taxes for that 4-square-block area, and we— they pay it, they get to use it, they get to vote on how they want to use it within the parameters. Of the planning department. And I said, well, that's my answer, that's it, a business planning district. And so I decided to do one, only I decided to do a bigger one in all of downtown, from Gamble Street to L Street, all the way through, and then from, uh, I think 9th Street to 2nd Avenue. So that was— it was basically essential Downtown.

And we put together a group, uh, of people who lived in downtown. And what we had to do is get 50— more than 50% of the ownership of all the properties, of all the private properties downtown. And if we got more than 50%, then they could become a business— then, then we could get a business improvement district established. We had to go through the assembly to do it. And we had what we call our war meetings every Thursday night We had about 20 people and we did— we'd lay out who knew what person, then who they were going to call and what they were going to tell them.

And I think, I think we introduced or increased our property tax by 3/4 of a percent or 1% or something to bring that money, uh, to bring money in to improve that district. And we finally got more than 50%, went to the assembly, And they suddenly had a public hearing. And I remember one guy riding on a bike past me shaking his head. He said, "Bystrom," he said, "I thought you were a rock rib Republican. Now you want to raise property taxes in downtown Anchorage?" Yep.

But anyway, that's how it all got started. We had to pass the assembly, and it's been— and out of that, that we needed to have a nonprofit organization that the money went to that could distribute it, go through the, all the processes to do it. That became the Downtown Partnership. And I mean, I took office, the alleys were paved in Anchorage downtown. There was no, there was no flowers downtown.

There was few sidewalks downtown and very few sidewalks ever got shoveled downtown. I mean, there was just all kinds of things like that that were missing in any city. And now it's changed. Now it's gotten better.

So that was one of the things that quality of life. The other thing is, big one I think that's measurable is public safety. And when I took over in 1994, Anchorage was, its crime was highest since it had been even the start of the the municipality in 1976, Jane. Yeah, the crime was at its highest then, and it was a big, a big deal. And so I set about reducing crime.

Uh, how to reduce crime? First of all, we put together a CAP Crime Task Force, and that's called Community Action Plan on Crime. And I had in the mayor's office, we had the head of the FBI, the head of state troopers, the head of Anchorage Police Department, the head of the school district, the heads of different community councils, heads of different city departments, and my mayor's staff, etc. And we got everybody involved in it, and some things happened that were very, very cool out of it. We met with them, we talked about what needed to be done, we got input, and then we, from that point on, we started laying out what we call the CAP Crime Program, Community Action Plan on Crime.

And one of— some of the things we did, I'll just sort of list some of the things that we did. Um, we, uh, first we cleaned up the city. First of all, got that— just got it cleaned up. We got rid of 9,000 junk cars. There were junk cars just all over the streets.

This is part of the whole broken windows philosophy that came from the mayor about being a house. But we got rid of junk cars, and somebody said, well, how about all the junk cars that were in people's yards? And, uh, I don't know, they said, I don't think we can do that. I said, I don't know. So I talked to Mary Hughes.

We met with Mary Hughes, and, uh, she was my city attorney, and she said, let's, let's look at it. I can— and she came up with an idea. She said We can do it. We can go onto their property, but we have to put a sign in there and they're on the window of the junk cars that are on their property saying, if this— unless this is running, you can't be— you can't have it there. And if you don't move it, uh, like a week, 2 weeks, whenever the period of time was, we'll have a tow to charge you $35 for towing.

And the most common thing that happened, and we got the feedback from Public Works when they were doing code enforcement, they came back and I said, well, how's it working? And every one of them said, well, when I tell them that if you don't get it off your property in 2 weeks, we're going to tow it and charge you $35, the first thing they say is, here's my wallet. If I give you $35 right now, will you take that piece of junk? So they basically wanted to do it. They didn't have the initiative or the money to do it.

They just left it there. So we got rid of 9,000 junk cars. Um, we created programs called My Bottom Town. That was just getting people involved in, in, uh, picking up things on the way that were picking up areas that were between where they worked and where they lived. So just go down that area and And, you know, just say it, don't complain about the litter.

Just take that area and take a black paper bag and once a week or 3 times a week, just go and pick up the litter. It'll work really, you know, it'll work just fine. So that was, that worked really well. Then we got rid of graffiti. We did Graffiti Buster.

And we promised we'd get graffiti done in 24 hours. You tell us where it is. And we bought a truck. A paint truck, sort of a pickup-size truck, that had a whole series of primary color paints. And they could just put a wand against the color of whatever the graffiti was on, whether it was white or gray or tan, whatever it was.

And then, um,.

They could match that right in the back of the truck there and then spray it with the same color that it was on. And so it doesn't— there's not a big black patch where the graffiti was. It's the same color. So the, the taggers would want to bring their buddies down the next day to show them what they did. It was gone.

And so it really diminished it because they, they couldn't spend all that time bragging about it. Now, a couple of people told me they had graffiti on the side of their house they had some in the garage. Could I come spray that? I think they wanted the garage painted.

But anyway, that worked really well. We had that and just a whole series of litter campaigns. But that was, that was really, really successful.

I could do this without putting my glasses on. I've got a— it's only 14-point type, not 16-point. Um, we started foot patrols. We did Graffiti Busters. We, uh, got rid of junk cars.

We started foot patrols with the police, foot and bike patrols, and that made a big difference in downtown. Uh, and it's— it was really kind of interesting. I went out with them once on the bike patrol. There's a picture in this book about me with those guys. I'm, I'm the tall skinny guy in the middle.

The other, the other 4 policemen are bigger. But it's only because they have bulletproof vests on. Maybe it's only— they were probably bigger than me anyway. But, uh, and it's really interesting to see somebody get pulled over by a bicycle. And they did it a couple of times in front of me.

Uh, and then I went out with them, rode out with the police department to see what's going on. And I, they were— I went out with Rob Hume. He was really a great guy. He was the head of the union, the police union. I liked Rob, got along with him really well.

But we went out one night about midnight to go midnight to 4 o'clock in the morning, because that's when all the stuff happened. And I wanted to see it at its worst, see what's going on out there at 4 o'clock in the morning.

And so we went out there, got in the car, And Rob started explaining to me about how the radio worked. And he said, this is how you contact, you know, this. He told me the buttons to push and how I could use it to contact Sarge. And then he said, I thought he was going to say, if I get in trouble, you know, just give him a call. And then he looked at me and he said, Mayor, if I get on the wrong end of an ass-kicking contest, Don't hesitate to jump in.

So I said, okay, I'm in, count on it. So I thought he was going to say don't hesitate to call him, you know, call someone. Don't hesitate to jump in.

Darn it. The other thing that's important, right, I think that was really important is we had to get a new jail. Our jail was, remember our jail was on C Street, Fifth Avenue and C Street? It was the jail, Fifth and C, yeah. And it held 109 people.

And they said, you know, Rick, we need a new jail. And if there's anything that's more controversial than where are you gonna put a new jail, I mean, that's about as controversial as you can get. Um, but I found out, first of all, they said— and I, I asked, uh, Kevin O'Leary, I think he was police chief, or Dwayne Edwards was chief at that time— and I, I said, let me know how we're doing with our existing jail. And he said, well, he said, I can tell you right now that we get a call from the state— state-owned jail, built jail, but the city leased it from the state. To put its people in there.

And he said, we get calls from the state who runs the jail— we just paid the lease— saying, don't arrest anybody tonight unless you have to, because we have no place for them. Don't arrest anybody tonight, uh, because you're gonna have to drive around with them in the back of your car for 3 hours and we haven't opened it. And, and I, I told the stories about how, about how that jail was so overcrowded so many times, and I must have told it for 6 months in all my speeches. I was giving— well, my last year I gave 168 speeches, but most of my years I think I gave about 60 or 70 speeches a year. It was always out talking to them.

But, um, but when it came time to build the jail, uh, we went through all the process Got it all, and then selected the site, and built a jail. And we did the whole thing without a negative comment from any talk radio shows, without a negative letter to the editor. And it's because I defined the problem very clearly and very long in every speech I had before I presented the solution. And if there's any problem that is— if there's anything that's really good illustration of that, not being done now is when Trump had his liberation day. And everybody talked about the changing all of the tariffs in all of the countries because they weren't fair.

He never talked about that was a problem. Nobody ever knew that was a problem. And I'm not sure it was a problem. I mean, poor countries are always going to sell more to us than we're going to buy from poor countries. We're always going to buy more from poor countries than they're going to sell to us.

So, you can't— that's no measure at all. But he didn't talk about the problem before he talked about the perceived solution. And that's very, very good. And then finally, in public safety, and maybe most important, we created Bridge Builders. And that's been a lasting, lasting program.

It's just wonderful. It started— what did I do with it?

Good luck with that. I lost that little thing you get. Thank you. Wait a minute, it's under John's magazine. Got it, got it.

But let me tell you about Bridge Builders before this. It was— we had problems, and the problems that were most visible were problems among Black people. And they were talking about the Crips and the Bloods. Crips and Bloods are— now we're having Crips and Bloods coming into the city. And, um, so I invited, uh, Alonzo Patterson and Dave Blybeck, pastor of our church.

And Alonzo was pastor of Shiloh Baptist, just wonderful guy. And our pastor was a great guy too. We invited them and Pastor Moore and Paul Davis, some other friends of ours, over to our house for dinner to talk about what we could do about this. And out of that discussion, out of that dinner, and one of the first things Alonzo Patterson said, said, Rick, it's not just Blacks and whites, it's Asians, it's Laotians, and it's Tongans, and it's Samoans, and it's Caucasians. It's all different.

It's all of us. And he was right. It was so obvious that I even said Blacks and whites, but it was so obvious in the morning. It's about all our races. And so we came up with the concept of Bridge Builders that night, that we would invite 3 people each from 15 different cultural groups over to our house for an international potluck.

They'd bring their own food, they'd have their own food, and then we would match them, and everybody could eat. We'd match them with people of a different culture. And we just use color-coded their names and different color-coded things. We pick one color and then we pick another color and say John Smith or Paul Davis is now matched with, uh, Jin-Sing Song, a Korean family or Korean couple. And so they, they would become bridge builder friends, um, and they would invite the Caucasian couple would invite the Korean couple and their friends to a dinner at their house, and then they'd reverse the dinner at the other couple's house, and the other couple would bring their friends to that.

So Caucasians got to know Koreans, Alaska Natives got to know Blacks, uh, Aleutians, you know, got to know American or Alaskan Eskimos, Yupiks, Yupiak. And that was 40— we had 45 people in our backyard when we did that. And that program grew so fast that we had about 450 people the last day of office in our backyard. And we had a big backyard. Uh, and we had about 450 folks in our backyard.

You were there. Um, and at that same time, remember there was a group from Bosnia. They escaped from Bosnia. They just got to America and they were there for— in America, the first night here in Alaska, they just got to Alaska. And they came to the Bridge Builders event and they had a couple people with guitars and some instruments.

And we ended up with a holding hands in a 400-person circle doing this, the Bosnian dance, Bosnian-Herzegovina dances. It just was wonderful. So many unexpected things happened. It was just a wonderful program. Um, and it is— I was just notified by, by Nuh And it's still going on.

It's been going on for 30 years now. And it struggles, it goes up and down, but Mayor LaFrance is really supportive of it. He's really doing a great job for us.

And so we're really working to reinvigorate Bridge Builders. But this Saturday, or Saturday, September— not this Saturday, September 27th. And I don't know how these people can, but Saturday, September 27th, from 4 to 6:30 PM at the Stenard Rec Center, there's an international potluck. Um, and so if anybody is interested in getting involved with Bridge Builders And maybe you could get this printed, get it out to the different city employees. I mean, if there's ever a group of people who care about the city, it's city employees.

I mean, you guys care. You guys are really involved. But it's September 27th, 4 to 6:30 PM. It's Bernard Rexel. So, we can get that information to you.

And then finally, I just want to mention One of the things that is, is, well, first of all, I just, I want to finish just talking about crime. The result of the crime during our term in office, '94 to 2000, I had set, I had set a goal, and I'm often fond of setting big goals. I set a goal of reducing crime by 50%, cut it in half. I wanted to cut crime in half, and with all the different things we did. And, uh, and I have to say we failed, but we did cut it by 43%.

And we went, we went from the 50th safest city of America's top 100 cities, we went from the 50th safest to the 19th safest in 5 years. You surpassed everyone.

In another category, cities our size, we were second safest. So we've had a lot of success. But finally, I think more than anything else, what I'm remembered by besides bridge builders is a city of lights and flowers. And I have to say it came from that whole thought that whenever people was to Anchorage, Alaska, boy, is that cold and dark. And everybody said, how do you live with cold and dark, cold and dark?

Dark. And I thought, what do you want to say? Warm and light? Well, no, not exactly, but what about lights and flowers? And so we started promoting it, promoting it, and just every speech I talk about, you know, light up your house in the winter, do the flowers in the summer.

And I'll tell you, Chugach Electric love me. They volunteer all kinds of stuff. People help out, and the flower the flower pieces, places, and that, you know, they, they thought it was great too. And I, I remember going down to Lowe's department store and, uh, they said they had a big sign out in front, sort of a handwritten sign, but it was nice. Sorry, no more lights, but we're flying them up and they'll be up here tomorrow, you know, so you can get lights for the mayor's program.

But it was a great, it was a great 6 years. And people now say, gosh, I bet you were glad it was over. And I was in a way, but it was, it was 6 of the most, the best years of my career, Lane. You know, it was just a wonderful time. And a lot of it comes from the fact that you can't always choose the road you have to go on, but you sure can choose whether you want to walk on the sunny side or the shady side.

And we walked on the sunny side, and it was a good trip. So I just want to say thank you very much, and I got these books for for you folks to get them. And thank you for letting me speak. Thank you very much, Mayor Maestrom. I know that there are going to be some questions, so Claire, do you have a question?

Yeah, hi, I'm Claire. I've been having an ongoing discussion with people about who's in charge of the vision of the city, with the mayor, the assembly, the nonprofit Who's in charge of what? The vision. The vision of the city. Is it, uh, can an individual stand up and set it?

And so I had this conversation with someone who's been around a while, and he said, well, Rick Meisham, I think, is the person who had the best— and I'm not kissing up, it actually happened last week— he really set the vision for our community. And I think some of the things that you did, like the lights and flowers, that's in our DNA now. So I'm just wondering how you're able to articulate a vision and get people behind it and in such a strong way? Because I've seen a lot of our leaders struggle with that. Yeah, yeah, you have to— first of all, people in Anchorage won't buy into some great solution without buying into the problem.

So they've got to know what the problem is. But the responsibility is not to the assembly, it's not community council, it's the mayor. I mean, people look at the mayor as the leader of the city. And in fact, through our charter, which Jane Anbut was really instrumental in, thank you, Jane, for what the charter commission did. It was great.

They made it a strong mayor form of government, very strong form of government. And it's the mayor's job. Mayor is the one that, you know, you can put it in front of the assembly and talk about it for 3 or 4 months or so, but But the mayor needs to talk about what she wants, you know, what's best, what does she think will make the people prouder of the city when she leaves, and what can continue on after. So it really does— the job is really the job of the mayor. And what I did, and it was— I think it was really good, is every Monday and Thursday morning I'd have staff meetings of my key staff people, and it was a Larry Crawford, who was the administrator, head of the administrative departments.

George Michaelis, operating departments. Barry Hughes was my city attorney. Tom Tierney, who was the city— he negotiated with all the city unions and sometimes chief of police. And then Denise Berger was my chief of staff, cheerful lady. And I'd have ideas from over the weekend, over and over, and I just can't make them And I bring them up.

We talk every Monday morning about those ideas. Sometimes everybody thought it was a great idea and we got her to pursue it. Other times they thought it was a terrible idea and they explained why. And other times they said, well, maybe, what if we do this and this? And so you need, you know, unlike Trump who just does it with, you know, he comes up with social media and says, this is what I want to do, and then the people trying to figure out how they're going to react.

And, you know, she should be thinking about what she wants to do on the weekend, on her free time. I found that when I drive up on the hillside, um, every 1,000 feet I got above Anchorage, my vision got clearer. And a lot of times on a Saturday or Sunday, I'd sit up by, uh, you know, by the trailheads up there, just look out over the city and just think. And the city, you get the whole picture then. But it's really up to the mayor, and then it's up to the mayor and her immediate staff.

And then we also met on Thursday, Thursday mornings, that sort of talked about how the week went, and then Monday mornings on how the week's going to go. So it's up to the mayor. I think the city of lights and flowers being in our DNA, it's a really good comment, Blair. And I don't know how many of you know, but my recollection of that was you leave your lights up at Christmas until the last ididrotter gets in. Right?

That was the theme. And so, yep. The last musher gets to go, then you can turn the lights off. Take your lights off. But it really worked nice.

I mean, there was like some of the places were great. Some still are, but I had a friend of mine, he'd just been putting up lights in his trees. He said, Rick, he said, next year, how about doing a city of handshakes and smiles? Bill. Thank you, Mayor.

We were told by Jane and Rick 2 weeks ago that the service area concept was important for voters and for buy-in unification. And also, there's no police on the Hillside for 20 years. Yes. I'm wondering if you could tell us the story of expanding the service area to the Hillside. I sure could.

That is—. That was the single most controversial decision of my career. And before this, so just to give you the background of it, before this, there was no police on the Hillside above sewer highway. And I don't know what the actual definition, but basically the hillside. But, and, and the state law says that any city area that, or any service area that doesn't have police, it's a state responsibility to, to take care of it, to keep it safe.

And so the state police would be cruising through there once in a while, but that was— they were, they were busy with a lot of other things. But they, they were there once in a while. And the— this— so they had this— the Hillside had their own service area, but they didn't pay for police. Now, these are people who came down to Anchorage to shop. They came down— largely came down to go to entertainment events.

They came down to go to parks in lower Anchorage. They came down to go to school sometime here. They came down to their churches, and they were protected by the police, but they didn't have to pay anything. And so we, we, we had the issue of service area and the.

Was supposed to be able to vote, do it, control its own stuff. But public safety was a different animal. I mean, even the public safety police was a different animal. But what we found out, and again, I counted on Mary Hughes figuring this out. She was a great city attorney, by the way.

She basically said, because there's such a big impact on everybody's taxes, this is something that everybody— because we all paid more taxes because they didn't pay any. And so we've all paid more taxes. Hillside represented, I think, almost 20% of our tax base, and 80% was the rest. And her position was, and she thought it would hold up in court, that this was something that impacted everybody. It wasn't just like plowing the roads, the hillside.

It impacted everybody, and everybody on the hillside benefited from it. Maybe not as much as some people did, maybe, maybe more than others. And so she argued that it would stay in court if we did it via a vote of all the people of Anchorage. So we had 80% of the people that thought it was a good idea and they thought it would be good, and we had 20% of the people that thought it was the worst thing they'd ever heard in their life, and they were absolutely intensely against it. So with 80 people intensely against it, more than 20% of the people intensely against it, and 80% of the people generally for it, it was a, it was a tough time.

It was talking to community councils, talking to folks up on the hillside, that was, it was kind of tough. But ultimately it passed by a pretty big margin, and then Judge Sanders, or Rick Sanders, passed the decision that that was absolutely legal and appropriate because of the impact that it had on all the people in Anchorage. And so all the people in Anchorage had the right to vote. But that was controversial.

Okay, John, if anybody would—. Why don't we got a couple more questions? John? Oh, sure. Oh, I'm sorry.

You know, just, you said 6 years is not much time to really get something big done? A lot of big things can take decades. How do we get around that? Seems like we swing one mayor to the next. The things beyond just the 6 years?

Yeah, I, I think the thing is, is that a mayor ought to really promote, campaign hard for somebody they think can, can, will continue on the program. And, and yet the current mayor needs to to get— and I quite frankly did not do too good a job at this— but the current mayor has to really promote a mayor. I actually did a good job, but they didn't win. But, but the mayor really needs to promote a mayor that wants to continue the things they do. And they should have it— if they can do a transition report, it doesn't have to be that deep, but say, here's the 10 programs that are going to that we've started and that I really want to see continue.

What do you feel about it? Are you willing to do it? Can you do it? And then maybe they earn their support by saying, yep, follow through and do it. And hopefully that continues on down the line.

Thanks. Yeah, yeah, Rick, thanks so much for coming and giving a perspective, um, all the, you know, bridge builders, the City of Lights and Flowers. But I wanted to mention a couple things that I just want to kind of personally thank you for. One is supporting and championing Creation Cutty Family Midtown Park for the expansion of it. I'm sorry, I didn't—.

Yeah, Creation expansion of Cutty Family Midtown Park. Oh yeah, thank you, thank you for all your support on that. And that, that took some vision, and that's one of the things that we talking about. What is some of the visions that you have? Some vision that, you know, that could be so much more than what it was at the time, just a little 9 acres, and now it is, um 15, 20-acre park.

Yeah. And the other one is that you told me this story once that, um, the first year you were in office, you wanted to do something more with Westchester Lagoon. It's just a little isolated back there, and you thought, what if we expanded that, put fire barrels out and put some, um, skating, you know, made some trails out there? And the word you got from your staff was, no, we can't do that, the fires. And then after a year or two, he said, get on the air, do it.

And now it's one of the most wonderful and iconic little features of Anchorage, especially in the winter. And we have a pretty good time with it. Thank you very much. And I, I'll share with you two one-minute stories of each of those. The first story is about Westchester Lagoon.

And Connie Jones, bless her heart, was a director of Parks and Recreation. And I thought, "Boy, Wistrom, that could be a great skating rink. That'd just be a wonderful skating rink." And so I wrote about a 2 or 3— 2-page letter, dictated it and had it written, 2-page letter to Connie saying we gotta do this. And she wrote me about a 4-page letter back saying why it's too dangerous and, you know, couldn't do it, etc. And that was, that was my first year in office.

And then I began to realize I didn't have to ask her to do anything. What am I doing asking her to do it if she thought it was a good idea? So I, on a piece of yellow paper, I said, Mayor, I said, Connie, I want you to do this. And I just sketched out a speed skating track around there, a little skating area and barrels in there for heat and everything else. I said, do it.

And now it's Westchester Lagoon, so it's really good. And then Kootenai Midtown Park has its own story. I kept— whenever I'd fly over Anchorage, I'd see this big brown area that was Midtown, and it was just, you know, just see brown, very boring. And I realized there was some land behind the library that could be something really nice. It was reserved for an archives of some kind or other.

Yeah, I think prior to that. And, um, so I thought, okay, how am I gonna get this done? Well, I went to Dan Cuddy, um, and I said, Dan, let's, let's go out your deck, 36th and C Street. And I said, uh, see how— see all those parking lot over by Walmart and how brown that is? See this parking lot over here?

There's just nothing here. But just behind the library, we can see part of it from his deck out there. I said, there's a lot of land, and that's just a perfect place for a park. And we have some money in Heritage Land Bank that we can do it, but the assembly is not willing to do that unless I get— I said, but I think they'd do it if I got a major private contribution that is contingent upon getting that money, using that money. And, uh, Dan thought about it for a while.

He said, "How much you think it's going to take?" I said, "Well, I'm going to take a deep breath, say I think I need $500,000 from you to make this happen." And I said, "I think then we'll get the money out of Heritage Land Bank, and that'll give us a couple million. We can get it done." He said, "Well, Mayor," he said, "go back to your office and take another deep breath, go call me up and give me another number. So I said, okay. So I went back to my office and I called him up and I said, Dan, I took another deep breath, how about $300,000? So he said, okay, we'll do it.

That was, that was the extent of the full negotiation for that. And that became the Dan Cuddy Family Park. And I, I didn't actually, I didn't have anything to do with naming that. It got named after this all happened. And I don't know Who did it?

But it's, it's, it's, it's there. Yeah. So, thanks. Thanks. Yes, we have a question online.

A couple questions online, Mayor. The first one is, um, I would like to know your perspective on the trajectory of homelessness in Anchorage during your term and after. I'm glad they asked the trajectory of it because they didn't ask out of solid because I'm not 100% sure, but 2 things I think need to be done. I think that the city needs to pay attention to the Homeless Commission. And my son, my son served on the Sports and Rec Commission, Ethan, and Ethan and, and, uh, Paul and Ethan.

Anyway, and he said we resolved, we, we took action on the bottom 146 resolutions the city gave to us to give advice on different parts of the state. He said, we worked hard and we did it. He said, under Dave Bronson or under Mayor LaFrance, nobody's even asked them. And so he got a vote, he got appointed to the Homeless Commission because he is, he's a very smart young guy and he got appointed to it. And he finally resigned.

He said they don't know where to go. They've never had any contact with the administration. They've never had anybody asking them any questions about it. And he said they just wander. They're just— that's one thing.

We didn't have a homeless doctor. I don't know why it came up. And I'm glad they asked about their trajectory because what I think we have now is a lot of private buildings have been purchased for homeless people. We feed them, we take care of them, we get them in a, you know, why wouldn't they come in from the villages and come into Anchorage and do that?

I think— I don't know how to make it smaller, and I don't pretend I haven't spent that much time thinking about it, but I do know what we're doing now is going to make it bigger. We're going to have more and more old people. They can come in and, you know, they get fed, they get taken care of. Probably look a lot cheaper than living there. Yeah, I don't have an answer for that.

But I know this young lady had a question there too. Well, thank you. I'll go quickly. Thank you for sharing the story of how Bridge Builders came to be. I didn't know that story.

It's a wonderful program. And yeah, and just learning as a part of your leadership of how you value diversity and inclusion. I just wanted to ask you, in today's, you know, changing landscape, I lead the Office of Equity and Inclusion, and it's been challenging sometimes for those who don't necessarily see the value in celebrating the incredible diversity of the city. I mean, my parents moved here 14 years after statehood and told me all the stories about how Alaskans are Alaskans first and would help each other. And we're all here building a very young state together, and that is to be celebrated.

And I saw so many different people and cultures and nationalities in our home and at our dinner table. And I was just curious to know, you know, in terms of modern times, How would you suggest that is the best ways for cities, and even Anchorage in particular, to continue to move that forward and to continue to celebrate our rich diversity and a landscape where they may be not getting that message or maybe even targeted from a federal level? Well, we've got two people back there, Manu Manay and Cindy Roberts, who have really worked hard at keeping it going. But I would say that the one thing that we need is we need some public leader to come out and just embrace bridge builders, whether it's mayor, governor. You know, I did it when I started out and it was kind of my program and George Bush didn't do much about it.

Art Begich didn't do much with it. When you don't have the leaders doing it, um, Ethan and who else, Bronson, um, you need to have the leader of the city and/or the leader of the state do it. When, uh, when Governor Walker and, uh, his wife Donna, they just embraced Richwooders and we boomed for 3 years for Governor Walker's leadership, uh, because he was involved. Then Donna Walker went to the valley to try to get things started there, but When we had the gala with it, we had, I don't know, 400 people at the gala. So it takes some well-known people, well-known community leaders to really get behind it.

Manu's been doing a great job. He had the Meet the World done in February. It was just magnificent. Yeah, we were there with the mayor. Yeah.

He's been a strong advocate. Okay, good.

I didn't hear that, but I, I, I believe, I believe it was something good. Any other questions? Daryl? Well, I, I have a question. One of the reasons I voted for you for mayor 3 times was the fact that you never lost sight of the neighborhood quality of life issue.

And, you know, having been the ombudsman for 13 years in the city, I hear from a lot of people about neighborhood quality of life issues. Do you think it's a mistake when a mayor focuses too much on the big picture and loses sight of the neighborhood quality of life issues? You know, I think, I think when Jane and her group put into the charter of the community council I think those people really have to be the leaders to do it, to bring to the mayor's attention what's going on in some divisions, because the mayor doesn't have the intimacy that they have. But I mean, there are things that I remember. One, one thing that I did that every, every person I talked to opposed it except some community councils that thought it was a good idea.

But all of the leadership in the city opposed it, and it was cutting back on the amount of gravel we put on the streets after a snow and not putting it into the subdivisions. And everybody said, oh God, there'll be accidents all over, you know, we can't do that. But it used to be when I came into office, within a day or two, there'd be dirt in all the subdivision roads. And then they got into the home, the yard, the garage, and just all over. It was a mess.

And then there was more to clean up. But what I came to the conclusion of is people drive— the speed they drive is according to their own level of risk. And if they're in a subdivision and there's snowpack, they may drive at 16 miles an hour. If there's dirt on the road in the subdivision, their level of risk, they let them drive at 25 miles an hour, 30 miles an hour, whatever it might be. So it's not any riskier, they just have to drive a little slower.

The subdivisions are so much nicer. But I really do think that, that it— the mayor had— the community councils have to communicate, and the mayor has to listen in terms of quality of life. And Tom Begich really helped, uh, Chris Constant Both really helped me and, uh, Bootleggers Cove and Inland View subdivision getting, uh, all the telephone poles, all the telephone poles down, um, the wires and everything else, and using it. That makes a big difference there. And there was nobody in the Spagard Community Council that communicated with them, so all the wires went down, but the poles are all still up.

You drive through Spagard go in behind Beartooth Theater and all the apartments there. And we own about 120 apartments or something, very aware. You see all the poles are still there, and there's— I think maybe there's maybe one wire or something, but yeah, they're just— they're there. Mayor, I'm going to take one more question online. This one says, um, They would like to know if you're still involved with the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, and what do you think about its impact locally?

That's been one of my— thanks, Jean. That's been one of my real great satisfying things. I was in Colorado. I was on a program called Lads Without Dads, and I was assigned to a boy that didn't have a father. Really, really liked it.

Then when I went, moved to Los Angeles, I joined the Big Brothers program there and had a little brother named Danny. We did a lot of things together, and he took part in my wedding there. It was just really a good time. And I came up to Anchorage in 1972, and I think it was about 1973, I thought, be a big brother up here too. And I There's no internet, you can't look it up on the internet.

So I couldn't find anybody who knew anything about how to contact where Big Brothers was. I found out they didn't have one, but I remembered from Los Angeles that it's back in, uh, the headquarters is in Philadelphia. So I called Big Brothers Big Sisters in Philadelphia. I said, oh, we don't have a Big Brothers in Alaska. What are you doing for the next 5 years?

And so they sent me some stuff on how to start it, and I got it, got it going and got it started. And, uh, we got it, got it going pretty well. And now I think so far I think they've matched, I believe, about 15,000 Big Sisters, Little Sisters. They have Big Sisters and Little Sisters too. So I, I still think they're doing a good job.

I, I don't know personally how good they're doing, but it's still that still provides it. So it changes what it means to grow up in Anchorage or Alaska. It's in Juneau too now, and I think it's in Passaic Valley. So thank you. That's been successful.

Let's do a couple more questions and then, um, go ahead. Hi. Hi. Um, I had the pleasure of being a specialist. Notice that it's off today.

You were wondering how when you only have 6 years you could follow through and get things done. And I will say it's very hard, but one of the things you have to do is elect somebody that's a visionary and has a positive attitude. And the years I was in the mayor's office, I never once heard this man use a negative. We never had a problem, we never had an issue. It was a challenge, and he looked at it with a positive attitude and thought, oh my God, how will we get this problem solved?

Oh boy, we have a challenge. Let's see what we can do, you know. So if you want to get things done in 6 years, you need to elect visionary and somebody with a positive attitude. I thank you for the years you've served us.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jake. Did you know, I'm gonna just end on this little note of a visionary, a positive attitude, Thanks very much, Mayor. But I'm going to tell you that Mayor Maestrom walks his talk because I remember parking in the parking lot of City Hall.

Early morning, there were hardly any cars there, and I saw Mayor Maestrom walking in, and he was picking up trash in the parking lot. And did you know I make it a habit to do that now? You've influenced me, you know, 26 years later. I'm picking up trash as part of your vision to make Anchorage a better place, and you've influenced lots of us. Thank you.

There are books for everybody here. So if you have questions, come on up and you can ask individually. Thanks, everyone.