Anchorage Assembly: HHAND Commission Monthly Meeting June 2026

Our recording—. Wonderful. Go ahead and call the meeting to order with a quick roll call.

Lucy Hansen, Community TV. Frankie Doll, Stafford. Kingsburg Briefs staff. Ursula Montalvo, Human Services Division Manager, Department of Veterans Affairs. Federal Way staff.

Calvary Meeting staff. And online we have McKenna. I'm McKenna Bacon, I'm with the Anchorage Health Department.

I didn't hear.

Who did you say?

Yeah. Oh, sorry. This is Lila Taylor. I'm the Housing Services Division Manager with the Anchorage Health Department. And we have Julie, who is where we all want to be.

I'm Julie Greengramp, Commissioner. And Kimberly Hi, Kimberly White, Anchorage Health Department. And Elizabeth. Hi, good afternoon. I'm Elizabeth Matthews.

I'm with Covenant House Alaska. Thank you for joining us. And Thea. Hi everyone, Thea Agnew-Benben with the Mayor's Office. With that, I'll move on to the board of business.

Everything looks Motion to approve your business.

Okay, second. Second by Michelle. Any discussion?

And I would open for discussion. We do not have, uh, um, Uh, copy of the, um, 10 core values. I would move to postpone that indefinitely, putting it on the agenda, but we keep forgetting to address it. We can— if someone has those values and wants to bring it forward, we'll put it back on the agenda. Um, you can postpone it.

Yep, and we went over them in April and they were supposed to be revised and then returned to me and I haven't gotten the revised version. Oh, that wasn't mine. Okay, so you were thinking of the rules? Yeah. Oh, it's for her?

For Alex. Well, we need to keep them on the agenda. Whoever was responsible for revising that, Who is that? That was— look back minutes. I could look at the minutes and email commissioners.

I could look back at the minutes and email commissioners after this meeting. So we'll, we'll, we'll fund it to next month. Um, and I would say if you don't have it by next month, I'll— you want to keep it on the agenda, I can do it. Um, but it'd be wonderful to do something with it. Once we do that, I'll do proper motion.

Uh, any other discussion about the order of business?

Going once, going twice. Any opposition to approval of the order of business?

Once, go twice. All right, uh, agenda is approved. Moving on to the minutes. Entertain a motion to approve last month's minutes.

Dr. Johnson, second. Oh, slide over one sec. Laura, Laura. All right, uh, take a moment to read through the minutes. Wonderful job again, Frankie.

Good meeting last month. Good robust discussion.

Any discussion and edits, changes?

Question. Okay, Brickett, that's good. Uh, any opposition to— or has everyone had enough time?

Any opposition to approving the minutes as written? Going once. Rolling twice. Minutes are approved. Um, moving on to disclosures.

Do any commissioners have any disclosures? Uh, currently I'm working with, uh, Do we go together? Uh-oh. We're in trouble. All right.

I don't think that creates a conflict. No. And just for clarification for commissioners, that is a standing item for commissioners to bring up any disclosures for relevant action items on the agenda. So thank you for sharing, but that definitely doesn't conflict with anything we're dealing with today. So no worries there.

Got it. Yeah, but, um, congratulations. Yeah. Okay, and then any other disclosures, commissioners? Perfect.

Um, and we move on to action items. Number 1, ongoing business officer elections. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Frankie. Yeah, so that is up for officer elections. I will be running the elections today.

We have 2 seats up for election, chair and vice chair. How this will work is I will open the floor for nominations. You may nominate another commissioner or yourself. The nominee needs to accept the nomination. If there's only 1 nominee, we will look for a unanimous vote.

If there are multiples, you've got little sheets of paper and I've got pens here, so we'll do ballots. Commissioners that are online, if we do end up needing to do a vote, you will need to email me your vote. And I think that about covers it, so I'll go ahead and open up the floor for our election of the chair. Do I have any nominations for chair? Good.

Else, we're good. Dave, do you accept the nomination? I, I mean, I want to give others an opportunity. I'd be happy to do it again, but want to give others opportunity if they'd like to. Any other nominations?

I accept. Okay, um, all right, so I will ask if there are any objections to Dave being being voted in as our chair once more.

Seeing and hearing none, Dave Rittenberg is our Hand Commission chair once again.

Yay! All right, now for vice chair. I'll go ahead and open up the floor to nominations for our Hand Commission vice chair. Anyone interested?

We cannot nominate people who are not present because they have to accept. Doctor, do you accept it? Okay.

Are there any other nominations for Vice Chair?

Am I understanding that the Vice Chair is basically fill in if you're not here? I see. Well, I hear my nom in the board on that.

Second. And Laura accepted. Okay, any other nominations for vice chair? Okay, seeing and hearing none, I'll ask for— are there any objections to Laura being nominated or being elected the vice chair of Hand Commission?

Seeing and hearing none, Laura Raines has been nominated our Hand Commission Vice Chair.

I will hand the floor back over to our Chair, Dave Rittenberg. Thank you very much. Okay, we wanted our for value. So we'll just go over that. The business summer schedule.

Um, it's summertime, it's beautiful out. Um, we have sometimes in years past taken summer off, or we have done different activities. We've done tours of, um, neighborhoods or programming or other things like that in lieu of a meeting. Um, and I would just ask commissioners, what is your, um, appetite for continuing to meet over the summer? Would we like to pivot meetings to do more visitation?

Um, and if so, where would you want to go? Um, I would just offer that Summer does, uh, summer is the time when we're planning for winter, um, and that if we want to get ahead of, um, discussions or participate in discussions about what things may potentially look like this winter, if we don't start meeting again until September, we're already way behind the ball. This takes us at least meetings to get any sort of resolution. Uh, so, uh, I think for my part of it, probably continue to meet over the summer, um, just in case something comes up. Really about July, August where things start percolating for public season fall.

But that's just one commissioner's opinion. It would be Yeah.

Oh, that's an excellent question. I would have to look into that.

I don't know that it technically can, because if you don't meet quorum, you know, then there is a limit to the amount of meetings that you can meet that way. I would say— We're going to talk about it and provide notice. What's the notice requirement? Um, I think we would, like, move to cancel the publicly noticed meetings, and then you would let me know where you would like to go, and I would try and help you coordinate. Okay.

And that's, um, but to be able to do that, we need to have that. Being the same, you're going to go, uh, a Fairview Neighborhood Walk that they do. We would want to publicly notice that. Meeting, just 72 hours notice, or, um, ideally a week. Yeah, although I, um, historically when they've done tours previously, were those publicly noticed and the public was available to show up for those tours?

Yeah, they're, they're all public notices. They do count as either meetings or exceptions. Okay.

Okay. Yeah. So then we would— So, all right. And we would be publicly noticed for a week. I mean, I think best practice is probably more than a week.

I think we could get away with a week if it were like an emergent situation. We could do 72 hours, but a tour isn't an emergent situation. I would like to do a request for me, uh, Charles Larson. July. So is it any date or is the date of the week?

We just— yeah, we— I mean, we didn't walk every day, so that's—. Um, the day of the meeting, fine. July 1st. July 1st.

Yeah, which would be a Friday. It's a Saturday. It's a Saturday. I would recommend not a weekend day that the locals are not here. I think that's a good idea.

If you want a quorum.

It's really flexible. Well, and I would say you don't necessarily need a quorum for the tours. The public notice just serves as like Open Meetings Act compliance, essentially.

Um, and so in lieu of a meeting where we do business, uh, we would all meet up for the resource center. Commercial Drive. Commercial Drive. 3127 Commercial Drive at the normal meeting time. Um, and see, wonderful, thank you, love that.

Um, is that a— I'm relatively sure that we would need to, if we're going to substantially, like, change the, the place and the content of a regular meeting, we should motion to do so. So is that a motion to— okay, so Shané has motioned to do that. Is there a second?

And then discussion. Discussion.

Opposition? Going once, going twice, going three times. The motion passes. Um, I look forward to seeing the, uh, the resources. You're all welcome to come in, talk with me.

Okay.

Yeah, sorry, you're okay. It was an announcement.

A quick break in business here. Well, that was interesting.

Um, close that out.

I believe we were at a, uh, no objections, right? Yeah, no objections. Motion passes. Look forward to seeing the resource every time, uh, on July 1st. And we'll keep the August meeting the same.

Thank you. Yeah, and we can— we can— can we do any work at the July meeting if something comes up?

Um, I—. Best practice would be to have it as an agenda item. Um, so if, like, ideally I would like to have, uh, the agenda and, um, materials for review published for the public a week in advance. So if something does come up, um, if we can get that out and published a week in advance, I don't see why not. You could also, um, if something emergent comes up, you guys can always schedule work sessions in which, as long as you have a quorum, you can— and it's publicly noticed— you can take action.

I think I would We're going to meet anyway. I think it would be good just to have the space available for us to do business if we need to. Like, I don't know, something happens between now and then, or there's some initiative that comes up between now and then. The space will be reserved for that. Well, we would meet.

Oh yeah, yeah, we would meet over there, but we would have just a boilerplate agenda that if we wanted to add something, so we would— yeah, we'd talk about the agenda and have our normal roll call of people. Yeah, yeah. Or as a business item, informational item, informational item, informational item, and then potentially have it, you know, if you want to play anything on the table or anything like that. Yeah, you just don't have to go Sounds great. Any other discussion on next month's meeting?

Rock and roll. Okay, moving on to informational items, ongoing business. CFD, Jed, you're up. Yes, so I just have one main update that is probably of considerable interest to a lot of you. The intents to award for the supportive housing and customer grant proposals have been posted.

They are publicly available. I will list the grantees, proposed grantees here in a minute. These are posted on BidExpress, which is where purchasing puts them now. They have also said they will start also putting them on their website again, but I have not seen it yet. So, if you do want to look at them there, they are on BidExpress.

They are hard to find. And you need an account, which is free to do that. If you have questions or want to copy the films from the museum, just email me. I can send them to you. I have copies of them.

I will just do this. The grantees: um, Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, Awake, Covenant House, New Life Development, and ROAR. So these, these were posted on May 29th, which was last Friday. They are posted for a 7-day protest period of 7 calendar days, during which if there's a protest from other proposers, that could be submitted to the Purchasing Department. That period we are currently in, it ends on Friday, June 5th.

So any unsuccessful proposer that wishes to protest the intent to award may do so. And once we get through that period and any protests, We will, uh, submit notes to review assembly for, um, that's my update. I don't think there's anything else that we have that's going to be of as much interest as that one. Terrific. Questions for Jed?

I have one question. Is it related to Jed's update? Uh, it's pertaining to our— what's going on I would, I would hold that for you to report to the public. This is about a very specific RFP, which is not—. Share the people that responded again.

Yeah, uh, Covenant House and New Life Development.

Are those the ones that are fine, or the ones that are being—. The ones that are being recommended for. Recommended. Yes, for many more of them. These are the ones recommended for.

And then just as an aside, I would like to thank Dave. If you are here for public comment, Dave, yes.

Okay, anything else? No, I think that's it for now. Um, we have a lot of other stuff going on, but I've talked about it previously. More stuff in the future, but that is new and, um, we already announced.

Um, handing off to Housing and Homelessness.

Um, you know, I think the only update we have is that, so a little while back, Kenny Peterson donated a couple of porta-potties to Beans Cafe, and those are out for use, so we'll be providing the servicing for that throughout the end of the year. Other than that, the 3 municipally funded shelters are still continuing to run as normal.

Okay, moving on to updates from the Mayor's Office. Thea. Hi, everybody. Let's see. A good place to learn probably more than you want to know about what we're working on is two recent Assembly Committee meetings.

One was this morning. That was the Public Health and Safety Committee and we gave a, it's hope, it's not quite quarterly but hoping to be quarterly update on our crisis response. So you can go online and see the PowerPoint and hear the presentation there and then a week or maybe 2 weeks previous we gave also a quarterly presentation at the Housing and Homelessness Committee that, that did a pretty big overview of all the data that we're collecting and kind of efforts that are ongoing related to— sorry, homelessness and health was the subject of that one. So that's got a lot of detail and happy to, you know, talk with you further if you're interested.

And in addition to that, we are mostly just trying to respond to many, many community needs, both from people who are concerned about camping, concerned about trash and different things in community places, but also respond— helping respond to properties where there's code enforcement issues going on. We've been really trying to work across all of our departments with those properties so that we're not only just addressing the, you know, the yard and the house, but also the people in it and also the animals that are often there too. So that's been a lot of work recently. Very excited. I see Michelle's in the room there.

We got to go on a tour with the mayor of South Central Foundation's Yes, yes, yes, to their crisis stabilization center, and that was just phenomenal and amazing and very excited for that to open. And then I also got an update from Providence today that I shared in that presentation that they will be opening before the end of the year, and they sent some photos of their construction that's ongoing. So that's very exciting. Those are the things we did have a really good meeting yesterday with a lot of neighbors from the 3rd and 4th Avenue and Carlock area. So David, thanks for being there and bringing your staff.

Also had Scott and Jeremy from BEANS and a bunch of other neighbors and interested folks. So just trying to really bring that area together to help maintain safety and connection and yeah, make sure that we're all working together. And we'll be doing that in other areas where people are, you know, kind of voicing concerns. But yeah, happy to answer questions, take feedback, take suggestions. Thank you, Thea.

I think if possible, this— and I'm going to speak for the body here, but I think we would all be very interested in when the time comes, seeing the Providence Price Stabilization Center and with DECCA, the NACI funds that they all will assist with, those, you know, as putting a different hat on now as someone who has, you know, been doing this work for a long time, the stabilization centers, in my opinion, are really going to be transformative. And just to have that place that is going to provide the appropriate intervention at the appropriate time, as opposed to, you know, providing mental health intervention for mental health crisis as opposed to a law enforcement intervention. For mental health crisis. I think it's just, um, uh, very, very excited to see how that transforms our community. So, you know, thank you for your work on that, thank you for your work with the mayor.

Um, so that's, that's— I'm just tenfold excited for that. Um, and then also, um, thank you for that facilitated conversation yesterday. I think you know what I mean. Yeah. Service providers and the community members in the room talking about these issues, um, and, um, you know, putting faces to the names and developing these person-to-person relationships, um, you know, that's going to, um, just make it that much easier when we need to problem solve.

So I thought I had a really good conversation yesterday. Thank you, Mayor's Office.

Any questions, comments? Planning from the beginning, talking about tours, multiple times. I'm not sure. Anything else?

Hey, everybody wants to get up and do a dance. Moving on to new business. Looks like we don't have Ron here for his presentation, so we'll reach out and see if he's available for next month. But looking forward to that. Saludos, Ron, for being here tonight.

That brings us to Lucy. Um, I— oh, correct.

So Lucy Hansen, CEO of the Policy Association of Alaska, has a presentation for us. Thank you so much for being here. And with that, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you. Okay, if I stand?

Absolutely. It's weird because my culture is I have to sit down and talk. That's the polite way, but I'm standing and talking. So, to me, it's like, excuse me for standing in front of you, but my name is Lucy Hansen. I'm the CEO of the Polynesian Association of Alaska, and I am so grateful to be here to provide a short but small presentation for a small nonprofit organization in Anchorage.

And Polynesian Association of Alaska started back in 2004 in a small office down here on the Thompson Building on 3rd Avenue, and where we were there with some other organization, nonprofit organization, but We started back in 2004 when there was a lot of shootings and a lot of youth activities with the law back in the days. And so we started because when I did, I taught a Samoan computer class in our Samoan language for our elders in that building. And then my elder says, "We need to find a home." for us. And I said, "A find a home? What do you mean?" What they mean by, we need to find a place where we can go and get information, resources, and help us to live in this new community.

So that's how we started. So when we started, 12 elders came in, and I had the computer class for 2 years, and they graduated from the computer class because It costs $15 to call their loved ones back home for 3 minutes. So I created a— my husband is IPM, retired from IPM, so he built 4 computers and we installed it in all these elders' homes so they can email their loved ones back home to save money. So that's what happened. So Polynesian Association of Alaska, its mission is to seize empower and educate individuals and families, and most of all, we promote pride and acceptance of all cultures.

So, we started back in '04 when we thought of it was just Polynesian at the time, but then we noticed that we have a lot of Pacific Islanders that comes around. They live here in Anchorage, but some of them, they come and they live somewhere else outside of Anchorage. So, who we are, who are Pacific Islanders? As you know, we're from Polynesian, Micronesian, Melanesian, and some are from that they moved to Indonesia, but most of us that live up here in Alaska are from, mostly are from Polynesian. So, the Polynesian, as you see, they're from their Samoan, Tongan, Hawaiian, Tokelau, and some of the Cook Islands, and most of us that are Polynesian, 80% of those communities, so individuals, they live here in Anchorage and make Anchorage as their home.

So, I don't know if you all or anyone visited, you probably went to Hawaii, and then you, I don't know if anybody visited Samoa. So, I myself am from American Samoa, and there's two Samoa, there's Samoa and then there's American Samoa. So, when you say, what, What's the difference? The difference, the only difference is their government status. So American Samoans, U.S. national, and then Samoa is under the British.

So they're the one that when they travel, they travel there with green cards and, you know, and visa. But U.S. national, they don't travel with that. They can travel anywhere. Also, the differences is unless you're a citizen, even if you're American Samoan, National, you cannot vote unless you're a citizen of the United States. So those are the differences.

And so a lot of us from Polynesia here in Anchorage are Samoa and American Samoa, and I think the highest population of our Polynesian people here in Anchorage are our Samoan community, and there's so many of them. Back in 1985, when I moved up here, there's only 12 families here in Alaska, and we only get together on Sunday at church in a trailer. But after 5 years moving here and live here, there was families that move up like in groups of 10, you know, so every year it like doubles our number. And so right now we're close to about 35,000 of our Pacific Islander all over Alaska, and most of them, 75% or 80%, are here in Anchorage.

Okay, so our vision is, um, when we started Polynesian Association of Alaska, there was so many things that we could see that would benefit our elders, our youth, our families that move in, in Alaska. And when we started it, we went from meeting with AST through education and we partnered with them to try to help our students that are in school. And then at the same time, we also look at employment because, you know, if we can't find a job, we can't live in this, in the culture and this environment. Environment that we live because it's so different than coming from American Samoa or the Pacific Islands. It's only one season and it's like you live under the tree, you know, you can just pull your mats under the tree and you sleep under the tree.

So not over here, you cannot do that here. There's four seasons here in Alaska and you'll be freeze to death if you do that in the winter. And then we think about it, 7 months of winter in Alaska and it's only what, 3 or 4, if we're lucky we get 3 summer months, but summer in Alaska. So we went from education, which we are still doing, employment, health, and culture. The culture was important to us because when we look at our community, the culture where it comes everything to us, it's like culture, it's education, it's employment, and also health.

Because if we don't— we come from a different culture and we bring our culture here. Sometimes, you know, it's really hard for me to look at some of my communities and my families that they live the same way they live back home. And living in a different environment, it's way different than living back in the island. At the island, you own your own land and, you know, you grow your own crops. You fish in the sea and you get your food.

But here, if you can't work, if you don't understand the language, if you don't have no job, if you don't have good health, you know, your life is pretty much short. You know, you're probably dead or you ended up going back home, you know, if you're lucky, if you still have families back home. So, through education, we partner with AST., and as you see that Samoan language is the third highest one in the school district, and that means there's a lot of kids here from our community. And so the more number, the higher the number, the higher the needs that we have to continue doing with the community. So in, um, and we are still doing that partner with, with the English school district.

So PAL also, um, through their education We started Pacific Island Education Scholarship in 2021, and currently we have 18 students that's already awarded for this scholarship, and that's about $21,600 that went into this tier set continuing education, which is an important thing that we want to see is students continue education. We don't want them to drop out from school and not continue education and then ended up being out on the street or no place to stay. So through the education, we do annual multicultural students education summit, which we started in 2023, '24, '25, and then we're waiting now on currently on 2026. We're gonna be partnered with Alaska Youth Court and also Keys to Life to bring a multicultural education summit to Anchorage. And through education also, we started a senior planning project with community churches, and then we were looking to work with our churches.

And in Anchorage, we have, I think, about 50-something churches now, our Samoan churches, and there's like 200 to 300 people. So, that's a lot of people, you know. So, through Through those, during COVID we knew that it was hard for us to reach our community if it's by myself as an individual and also as a woman, because my culture is men do not look up at a woman to be the leader of the crew. The lady in the family won't have nothing to say in the family. The man does all the talking.

So here in the United States, when they found out that I am the the CEO or the founder of this nonprofit and try to call the man that runs the churches, it was, you know, it's not a good thing. They were like, "No, we're not going to go listen to a woman." So I have to go the other way to reach the church through the first lady or the wife of the minister. And from there, that's how I got into a leader that oversees 11 to 13 churches in Anchorage.. And from that connection, that's how I was able to— we were able to do all this program is through churches and all those 11 to 13 churches. So we want education.

We partner with Alaska Leadership Project as peer leader navigator. We partner with Department of Labor through YOA youth program. And then on the community, Manai Faux Hall, that's where we do all of our work. Then we also work with ACLT, the workshop opportunity for the community. And then on health, we provide the— we host the community diverse health awareness fair every year in January, and we partner up with the Diamond Center, and that's where we provided this year.

But the years before, the 9 years before that, it was through the Anchorage Public Library. So we went from there to partner up with Providence and Cancer National Society to educate our community because so many of them die from cancer. So many of them die from diabetes when they move here. Back home, it's so hot, they don't have to work because it's heat and it's hot. Here is so cold, they don't go outside and move around.

So it's like they're stuck at home and they don't have nowhere else to to go to get some health, you know, resources where they can get themselves healthy. So they just eat, eat, eat, eat, and they eat canned food, they eat frozen food, you know, but back home we have help, you know, that fresh food from the ocean and from the crops. So it collected a lot of illness through our community and through COVID, that's when we see that our community was the second to the highest that pass away from COVID because not just COVID itself, but complications from other health issues that they have. So then we went to culture. So we partner with a lot of organizations in our, in Anchorage.

This last May, we just completed our 21 years since we started our Asian and Pacific Island Heritage Month, and we did that down at the Park Strip last Saturday, even though it was cold, but It was a lot of people there. I think people were just dying to get out of the house, but it was a lot of people, about 1,500 people. They would come in every day, the whole Saturday through the whole, the whole day. So it was good. And then also we started a pageant in Alaska, Alaska Miss Pacific Island Pageant, and for 3 years now.

So we've been doing a lot of culture. We also provide culture presentation at Anchorage School District. So, that is some kind of a short history of what we do in a community yearly. So, from January to February, March, April, May, June, July, August is not there, that's our break month, September, October, November, and December, those are the things that we do for the whole year here in Anchorage. And a lot of times, a lot of people, they don't know what we do., and this is a great opportunity for me to come and tell you guys that this is what we do.

In 2021, when we had started our homeless and rental and rental and utility assistance program, when we first— that night when we first brought it to the community, I mean, the hall was full of people, and I didn't know that I know that we do need that service, but I didn't know how many families needed it. But when we went to sleep that night, I only— we woke up the next day, we had 15 applications, but our program can only accept 2 first applications that we receive per month because we don't have enough funding for it to help everybody. And so we went through from 2 applications each month out of that 15 applications that we received. So, but just to let you know that we didn't know that our families, they live in like groups of 10 people in one family. And so you would have a 2 to 3 bedroom and you would have 10 to 15 people that would live in there.

That means I went into one of my Micronesian family and they have 3 families that live in a 2-bedroom and the grandma was sleeping on the floor in the living room, 2 grandmas. So each family has a room, so there's like a parent and 2 child in each room, you know. So that's how bad it is that we see in our community. And during COVID we also, not just my community, but we do peer leader navigator through ALP, and we have a lot of calls from a lot of other communities, not just specific Latin communities. Community.

We also have calls from our Alaska Native community, you know, and so, and I know Alaska Native community, they have a lot of fundings, you know, more fundings than what we do. So we refer them to other organizations that have similar programs that they might be able to help them. But before we send them out, we call those agencies and say, do you have a program that would help this family that they need electricity or they need gas or they need just one month to get through, you know? So, up to now, we still have— we just helped 2 families last month on their electricity and their gas, but we still looking for funding to help the community.

That's a little bit of our statistic and report of our community collaboration, homelessness and awareness project. 390 Individuals, 42 families from 2 members to 10 members in the household. Rentals, 25 families. Electricity and gas, 16 families. 420 Families educated about their rights to housing, how to find rental.

Community and employment, 200— 2010 to current, we have 360 people educated on employment and resources. 125 Received interviews and follow-up. 89 Received employment, 25 still working at the same, same job, and 64 move on to new jobs. On health education community, we have 4,000+ community members in Alaska and all over the United States. That means our nurse that provide our cultural language English bilingual education about health, about cancer, about diabetes, about gout, about anything that our community is going through now.

She takes that down to lower 48 to any conference that they do. We went all the way from Alaska to Seattle, Utah, Vegas, California, Hawaii, Samoa, New Zealand, and Australia. So, that's about close to or more than 4,000 people that we educated about that health issue. And then on our 2,750 Alaska community members through Inewo Multicultural Health Fair in the month of January since we started, 321+ students aged 5 to 18, 50+ parents through the Color Blue awareness that we do every April every year for child abuse and neglect. 450 Students aged 5 to 18 and 15 parents for awareness for mental disability, Color Your Mind project every June.

So we're getting ready to host that next month. Our Pacific Island Community Connection, ASC Connection 2000, and more students through elementary and high school, quarterly community connection, 1,200 plus, and cultural awareness events, 15,750 multicultural individuals. So, PAWS scholarship and awards, 2021 to current, we awarded 16 students, received education scholarship of total of $19,200. 2018 To current, um, 2022, 202 PI community awarded for volunteer community services in Anchorage that we do every December at the Native Center.

So that's a little bit of what you see, what we do on a cultural education. We partner up with some of our churches, provide Samoan language school from all— from ages elementary and middle school.. And then we also have 2, 3 churches that provide those for, for the community. And our Youth Multicultural Education Summit, that is 2024 when we did it at UAA, 2025 when we did it at Fairview, and then 2026 we're getting ready to host that on October 22nd, 2024, 3 days. With the Keys to Life in Alaska Youth Court.

Our cultural collaboration with ASD, that is through high school, elementary, and then our community visitation to ASD different high schools that has more of our Pacific Islander students, just to make sure that they know who they are and keep peace and don't get into problem in the school. Pacific Island Community Connection, that is our community connection where every quarter we bring in a couple of few people from different office of the state to provide information and resources to our community and do presentation at our community.

Pacific Island and Health Education, they provided free health resources and services for health and education, employment, nutrition, food, affordable home, keep good health, and how to help and help families from losing their homes and more.

And then we have a Color Blue Awareness for child abuse and neglect. That was from 2024, '25, and then 2026. We just finished that one in April.

Our community awareness for mental disability, Color Your Mind, is a program that we started about 3 years ago. And we started out with few kids, but now we have more kids from 3 years now, and we're getting ready to do our 2026 in June. Our community and health education. Through our education, not just health that we taught, we also provide our US citizen naturalization session with, with the community. So we partner with with the US citizen naturalization group, and they come in and they teach our community how to complete application, what is required to become a US citizen.

Employment and homelessness. So, like I said, that we partner with a lot of organizations, Department of Labor, with the youth program, and also we do the program with the seniors. And then we also do food bank, not food bank, but we do like a Thanksgiving project for homeless people.

And this is our culture celebration on every May. So we just finished one this May, and we have the inspirational evening. This is the first of the month, the first Sunday of May. And then the end of May is this one. So this is the one that we do at the Park Strip, and we have a lot of people, they come to this event every year.

So we just celebrated our 21st event last weekend.

July 4th is also something that we participate in. We provide breakfast, pancake breakfast. For our veterans at a last or free price, and we also march in the parade of the July 4th. And this is our gala, our scholarship award at the end of the year. We honor our volunteer services and our partnership.

And we just pick up a Pasupika Voice of Alaska program like we don't have enough to do. I said, this is a good way of, you know, of taking this further out, not just Anchorage, but working with KNBA. We started this about 3 years now, and every Saturday on KNBA 90.3 FM from 9 o'clock to 11 AM in the morning, you will hear us speaking our Native language, English, all the City Guidance songs you can hear on there. We also bring in our entrepreneurs, our leaders, our educators, scholars. They come up and tell their stories on their shared stories with the community.

These are some of the communities that we partner with on some of our programs.

And those are the ones that we collaborate with. So, all of us are volunteers through our community, through our organization. None of us are paid staff. We volunteer our services to the community. We do fundraising if we know that we don't have funding for our event, for our programs.

So, a lot of times that we do a project, we fundraise for that project, and if we don't have enough our board member will come in and say, okay, let's do another fundraising, or let's donate in to try to get this program going. So all those programs that you see every year, it's out of the pocket, and sometimes we apply for grants. We're 501, and sometimes we apply for grants, and if we don't get the grants, we'll do fundraising and whatever we can get, but the programs still continue. But the, you know, the 'Cause whatever it is, we have to cut down our funding according. Okay.

And to support us, you know, for our programs, there's our tax ID and our mailing address if you want to even think about supporting us or thinking about what you can do to help us through some of our programs. I really appreciate this opportunity to bring this presentation to you so you can know what Polynesian Association of Alaska do. Thank you very much. Any questions? I had the joy of speaking at the event a couple of months ago now, the Color Blue event, and it was absolutely lovely, and the amount of traffic for that room was impressive.

Thank you. Thank you. Looking forward for next year. Um, looking at the immense amount of work you do, how many employees? How many volunteers?

How many employees is there? We don't have employees. We have 21 members. Okay, we have members. That's, that's incredible.

That's— we got 5 board members and 21, uh, members. The, the amount of output and work that organization does. Yeah, like, are you the only full-time staff member? Um, that, that's just, that's extremely impressive.

I used to work for the state of Alaska. I retired after 27 years with the state, and, um, I said I'm going to put my time into my nonprofit because I want to help my community. But then working with my community, it's not just my community that I see the need It's more than just Pacific Island community. So the work that you all do, you know, trying to house everyone that don't have a home is, you know, I can keep my, you know, hats off to you guys because it's not an easy job. For me, I look at my board member and they said, how do you do this, Lucy?

I said, I've been doing this for 21 years. So, you know, I, and I keep adding Project on it. So my husband said, cut it off. That's enough. You won't have time for anything, you know, but that.

But thank you very much. And that is what we do. So, um, I had met with, um, with, um, Frankie and them, I think, a couple weeks ago or so. And I had a question on, um, some of the grants that the city have. Because I thought I would not be qualified as a small nonprofit.

And I said, how can we tap in to get some help from the city or from what organization to help us with all this work that we do? Nobody knows what we do except us. And so I wanted to bring this presentation so you all know that there's a need out there and there's work that nobody can see, only us. You know, and I want to share with you all, if you ever see my application come in at some point, somehow, you know, you think about what I, you know, what I do or what we do. We don't have any paid staff at all, not like other organizations that pay their staff.

You know, so we all volunteer and we pitch in and do our fundraising out of our pocket because sometimes we don't get the grants. Sometimes we don't have the money. But the program needs to go and the people needs to be taken care of. So, any other questions? Thank you, Zed.

Um, I had mentioned that it was your group that does the pancake feed for the 4th of July. Yes. My family and I have done that as a tradition. We come to your event, but we missed finding you last year. We didn't have one last year because the guy that's taking over the food thing, he was charging me the tent, the big tent that everybody sits under to eat their pancake, and charge me tables and chairs and charge me for my food booth.

I can't afford it. And, and I said, I've never done that before. The one that hosts before you always provide that for the veterans, and I love to come and cook the pancake for the veterans, but when you 'Give me all this.' I can't afford it. So that's why I wasn't there last year, but I'm bringing it this year, but smaller, you know. So I'm gonna do what I can do to provide that service for our veterans.

It is so much appreciated, anything done for the veterans. I just— we missed you last year, so I'm glad to hear you'll be there this summer. Yes, we'll be there this summer. Thank you. You're welcome.

Anybody else have a question? Is there anything the Commission can do to help you and your organization? Um, well, I don't know. Uh, you can talk about amongst yourself and see what kind of funding do you do. I mean, I don't understand, you know, maybe just homeless or housing or what, but, uh, coming today to do my presentation, I'm hoping that people will see, you know, what kind of, uh, what am I looking for?

I'm looking for funding for any of those programs. You know, if you can fund me for the rental assistance program and utilities to keep people from getting evicted from their home, and that's what our program is for, for that, is to keep them from not evicting from their house. And so we try to keep them once in a program. They cannot apply twice in a program, so they can only apply once. And if they apply for the rental, they cannot apply for the utility or the other one.

So we can refer the utility and a gas to another organization that does that. We do that. So, is that, you know, any other question?

Thank you so much. Thank you.

General public comments.

Let's get that Slack up. Is there anyone online that wishes to give public comment?

Looks like it's all Health Department staff.

Thank you. Let me know when you're ready. You could just, uh, identify yourself for the record. I think Jason will ask to— cancer there. So, where, where?

To be the last. Um, but yeah, I was very impressed by— and I'd like to say thank you. Um, I've seen a lot of coalitions outside in the past few years, uh, community. And so particularly American Samoa, there was two Hawaiians, and then sort of the cost of the private designers, you know, your land. There's something that happened after the fact, there's still, there's still not enough people right there, but, um, what happens is you would have people out there, they have a history today, and sometimes they embrace and they have all ears and say, hey, reach out.

And to a certain extent, you know, there's roots in communities and people outside that they found all these huge people and they look out after each other, but Sometimes even from ostracized, but when you really point back, ignoring the society at large, you can't. So yeah, I see lots of things outside, and they sort of got out here before. It's still kind of shocking to me, actually. So it's sad to see the Marshallese going like that. They don't have— they don't have a place to really go.

Shelter is important. And so, you know, hundreds outside, I just suppose they're mostly not ready. I know people here probably think the same thing. We're the same, but we're weird to your minds. We're funny to your minds.

So they're just playing around, it's getting worse, and so this is talking about police to be made to release all holding, and there is the attitude that they're certain paths that the last stating the part of the character, and I love the Trevor, and before I lastly quickly told relationship with last woman, right, despite to be displaced, displaced community, that's relationship. So, uh, this movie is great, great depictions of the 19th century, I don't know what exactly I'm saying. Clearly there are not places you could even go and actually say something. I think that was the new direction.

So I don't know how much more I say today, but yes, thank you very much for your presentation.

If anyone else— I don't think so, but just Check. I'm not seeing any— online. Thank you. Mr. Thomas, we have no reports. With that, I would entertain motion to adjourn.

So moved by Dr. Johnson. A second? Any opposition? No. Hearing none, we are.