Muniversity Lunch & Learn with Jane Angvik and David Reamer

That I have most appreciated for getting my arms around it was this 1977 PhD thesis, as I understand it, A Brief History of Unification. I don't know all that Wanginus was, and I don't know how this has made it through the sands of time to me, but as a quick orientation, folks probably remember that the city of Anchorage starts as this downtown area in 1920, and it grows by accretions. It's hard to see for people in the room, but But we get South Edition, and then we get Mountain View, then we get Rutkin Jack Springs, Rogers Park. Finally, we catch up to Fairview. Takes a little bit longer, notwithstanding the fact that it's right there on the south.

And ultimately, we end up with this shape by 1975. Keep that shape in mind, and you can see a little bit more clearly that that shape exists in our law today. There is still, though an unused, City of Anchorage Service Area. One of the reasons we're talking about all this today, because these historical artifacts still have echoes to the present. So for instance, if you are wondering whether you're in the Solid Waste Services or Alaska Waste Territory, you remember that shape that we just saw, you were in Solid Waste Services if you're in that old strange shape.

And that old strange shape is still the shape that we do pickup, garbage pickup today. So, you know, even now in the Municipality of Anchorage, and you know that it looks like this, How did that come to pass? And that is the story that we're going to present here today, the charter effort of 1975. In order to get the charter, a crack group of commissioners assembled, of which one in this bottom left-hand corner you may recognize. It's Jane Englund.

I'm sure we're going to hear a lot more about this. And by that time in 1975, September 9th is coming around. We're going to vote on this charter. The Charter Commission authors say no sweat, this one's gonna pass, and then it works. English day news in September 1675, we unify after dissolving the old two governments.

Partition comes down as history starts up. I assume this was very easy, there was no—.

Easy cake. We're unified. The old City Council gabbles out of existence, the old Assembly for the Borough gabbles out of existence, and we are off to the races. To help us better understand all of that process, we are joined today by two great guest speakers, Jane Engvik and David Remer. Jane was born in St.

Paul, Minnesota, received her bachelor's degree in arts from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and a master's degree in administration and public policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She began her public life in the '60s where she worked for the Minneapolis Model Cities Program, which aimed to tackle high rates of poverty, crime, unemployment, and improved community development. She moved to Alaska in the early 1970s, and wasting no time, by 1975 was elected to the Anchorage Charter Commission. She was later elected to and served as a member on the Anchorage Assembly in 1979 and 1982, and she chaired the Anchorage Assembly from October 1984 to October 1985. She then went on to be an Alaska Commissioner of Commerce and Economic Development until December 1990 and was the State Director of Lands in the Department of Natural Resources for a spell.

She was also, I guess with some justification, inducted into the Alaska Women's Hall of Fame. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] We're also joined by David Riemer. He is an academic and public historian interested in the intersections of community development and social justice. He was the co-author of the 2022 Black Lives in Alaska book, as well as the co-2023 Alaska Historian of the Year. I think he's known to many folks in the room both as an active member of— I guess it's X now rather than Twitter— and the author of a weekly history series, the Histories of Alaska series for the newspaper.

With that, it's my great pleasure to turn it over. I'll ask the mayor if she has any remarks that she'd like to make. Thank you so much, Bill. Thank you for facilitating this event and that fantastic introduction. And thanks to all of you for being here today in person and online.

It is wonderful to kick off our celebration of 50 years of the Charter and the municipality. I want to note too that we've got two members of our current Assembly here today, Daniel Boland and Erin Baldwin-Day. Thank you so much. You have to wave so we can see you.

Thank you so much for being here today and for your service to our community. David, thank you so much for being on this panel. I would like to present you a print. I don't—. Should I open it?

Well, it's all nicely tied there. Really appreciate you being here today. So thank you.

Jane, happy belated birthday. Thank you. And thank you so much for being here today. I also would like to thank legislative staff who is managing and putting on a number of external events. So, Claire Ross, who I believe is online, thank you, and Jennifer VanEeklozen and Ali Hartman as well.

But once again, thank you all for being here today. I want to especially thank the municipal teams who do so much for our community. Thank you for your service, and with that, happy munification! Let the celebration begin!

Well, I'm going to kick it off with what on earth is a charter, why is it a big deal, and how many times did Anchorage try to get it done. I wanted to start first of all by saying the reason I really came to Alaska is to visit my sister Peggy, who is right here.

My sister Becky was an educator in the Anchorage School District and so for 30 years, and so she knows every person who's somewhere between 40 and 50 years of age because they were— she was their junior high teacher, and they go— it's really quite fun to go to Costco with her because you get to meet a whole new group of people. Anyway, when I came, I was— I went to work for the Greater Anchorage Area Borough. My Churp— Churp— planning job was with Greater Anchorage Borough, and I had come, as you indicated, from Minneapolis where I was with the Model Cities Program. And Model Cities was part of the War on Poverty, and one of the, the elements of the statute that created that is maximum feasible citizen participation. And so when I got here and I was going to work on the, uh, the Greater Anchorage area Regional plan, I tried— I persuaded Jack Roderick that maximum feasible citizen participation meant that he and I were going to go do community meetings on Wednesday, Thursday of every week for the first 4 months of this time period before the snow was flying.

And he said, well, as it is right now, I go to assembly meetings every Tuesday night, and I wait to see what happened at the end of the city council meetings every Monday night. 'And so you want me to give up Tuesday or Wednesday and Thursday?' And I said, 'Yes, we're just going to go from 6 to 7. We're going to have coffee and cookies and we're going to go talk to people.' And he said, 'Okay.' So, Jack Roderick and I were a team of people who went to what used to be the beginnings of community councils, which was places— the whole— we took the whole bowl area and we would go by community. And hold means to say— and when you think about a comprehensive plan, most people don't think about the comprehensive plan, but if you were to think about a comprehensive plan, what you want to do is make sure that it reflects the values of the people who live in the community. And so what you have to do is sort of talk to them and find out what they think is really important and what they hate and what they love.

And so, what you do that is you bring people together and you bring them, and you got to have coffee and you got to have cookies. I want to say again, you got to have coffee and you got to have cookies. And at one point they said, "We don't have a budget for cookies." And I said, "We cannot do this work without cookies." So, coffee and cookies are really critical. And then, and so, this is the '70s, and when you put up a map anywhere in this community, people go immediately to the map and find their house. Now I know where I am in this place, and I— and you've got red over here and blue over here and yellow over here, and what, what does that color mean for my house?

That's the number one issue. And anybody who ever works in planning, whoever works in a community, You need to know they start there, my house, and go from there. And that's, if we're talking about a road, a transportation system, if you're talking about voice control, if you're talking about, we're gonna have a water system that doesn't spill, we're gonna have opportunities.

In different places, a recreation facility, it's all about where is it in relation to my house. So when you talk about a comprehensive plan, you say, in this neighborhood, what are the things that are most important? And so, for example, the whole parks and recreation program, which did not exist in any way, shape, or form except there was a park strip downtown, and And downtown there were— there was a Mountain View Park and there was the one that's down here, the right— Elderberry. Elderberry. That's it.

That's it. And so, and I mean, this is before the downtown gym was the recreation center. There was no Fairview Rec Center. There was no— there was no— there weren't any. So when people talked about community planning, they went, Well, the kids play in the street, so it'd be nice if you could get the cars not to be in the street while we're playing in the street.

Can we work that out somehow so we can do that? And I am sure today you are still talking to people about trying to avoid having kids run over because they're playing in the street. And so what I'm saying to you is communications with people is the key, I think, to how the intersection between the community and their government must occur. And while we were doing it community by community, time after time, what we were also doing is getting information from people, vital information about— in fact, safety, safety and pedestrian safety is really important. And it's not an afterthought after you've built the road that you think about that next.

You have to be thinking about pedestrian safety when you're building the road or when you're going out for the RFP. So, I mean, or before you do the RFP, what's our situation? Situation in terms of all this. So what I'm saying to you is it was talking to people, recording what they said, and making sure that those values were reflected in anything that we did having to do with the comprehensive planning. So that my first— oh, the other thing about doing comprehensive plans with MAPS where people are got their finger on their house, they don't like it if you're going to do something.

They would go, "Well, Missy, I don't know about that." And they would put their gun on the table. And I go, "Wow, okay, we're gonna have a timeout. We're gonna— everybody please go and put their gun in the car. It'd be really hard for us to have this meeting if the guns are in the room." And the people in the room would get up and take their guns out. I was being funny.

I had no idea that the whole place was armed. And that was just for emphasis, I think. I have no idea. Anyway, so in the beginning in Anchorage, government— that's how you say it— government, they didn't like it. And if you were going to interact with them about it, you needed cookies and you needed coffee and you needed to leave the guns in the car.

So other than that, I don't mean important critical issues, but those are really important ones for holding public meetings.

So, we would go out and we would do this, and Jack actually said he learned more from that than he had learned from all the consultants who were coming to tell him about what was going on, because he was actually listening to people. And that turns out, I think, to actually be an important, critical key in any time that we're creating a government structure. So, one of the things that happened here is that we were under change, and the biggest changes were population growth. And we went from in 1970 there were 128,000 people here and on the horizon was the promise of the pipeline. The pipeline was coming, the pipeline was coming, in fact the pipeline was coming for a very long time and they'd get the pipe but then they couldn't get the right-of-way.

They'd get, I mean it was a decade of it's coming, it's coming and but But in the '70s, it actually showed up. And so from 1974 to 1977, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline was under construction. What that meant to Anchorage, far, far away from the pipeline, is there were 1,000 people a month moving into Anchorage, and there was not enough housing, there were not enough room in the schools, there was not enough room for the cars, there was barely enough room for everybody to be you know, dealt with. And one of the things that happens is they start pushing on each other when you end up in that situation. So that the growth was extreme.

So, we went from 170,000 people to almost 200,000 people in fast. And the community, this government had to respond to it. Well, this government— there are two governments, so one government's doing this and one government's doing that. And one— and at least the one thing that did happen that is wonderful is it was the unified school district. In spite of the fact that we had a city government, in spite of the fact that we had a borough, we had one school place.

And that was really helpful in terms of dealing with the families who needed— how many kids are there? And we had a new problem, which was Do we have to double shift the schools in order to accommodate the number of kids who are coming into town at this rate? Um, and so that at least the decision-making structure for the school district was unified for the whole community. What we didn't have was the city government was an entity unto itself, and the borough government was an entity under itself. The city boundary to the south was Northern Lights.

Northern Lights, that is the middle of town now, or that's even on this end of town. And, and so everything south of Northern Lights and everything east of Muldoon was no man's land, which was the Greater Ancudjerry Borough. And, and so where the pressure was for growth of housing was in those places, and what the need was, was to build stuff fast. And what we needed was a little modicum of building code to suggest how you might build a building that wouldn't fall down the first time that you got 4 feet of snow. But we were a little behind on the curve on getting the building code as fast as the houses needed to be built.

And the process for the demand for housing was just preposterous. And so building permits were going pretty fast. And then there were a lot of people Who didn't bother with that building permit stuff? They just built. And sometimes they were even on the land they owned, but not always.

And so I'm just saying it was a Wild West time with great demand. And if you could build a house and get it up and somebody would buy it or rent it very quickly and fill it up with lots of people. And so the motivation was speed as opposed to quality, as opposed to thoughtful consideration of a building permit, thoughtful consideration of how is this going to interact with the transportation, how's it going to interact with any services that would be provided. So the pressure was on, and, and at the same time, the city government and the borough government were not getting along very well. And so how it worked was that the city government would meet on Monday night, and then 4 of the members who served on the city council would join the Greater Anchorage Borough Assembly and be part of the Borough Assembly.

So 4 people from the City Council would come and be 4 people out of 11 on the, on the Borough Assembly. And so they argued with each other, they were arguing with themselves, so that the city would sue the Borough Assembly and the borough would sue the city, and they are suing each other on Monday night and Tuesday night on the same loss. So it's like chaos with a capital C, and it was very intractable. And so what ended up happening is there had been an effort in the past to try and write a charter— is basically a constitution for the local government. So they tried to write a charter that could unify the city and the borough, and the first one went down in 1970 70s.

Yeah, zero. And, and it was— and in order to pass, it had to be approved by both the city people who lived inside the city and the people who lived outside the city. So you needed a majority in both places. You could even— and, and sometimes you, you'd carry the city but you wouldn't carry the people, and other times it would flip and go the other way. So the first one was the '70s, next one was in '72, that also failed.

Both so that this— there was not enough support for it to happen. So the third one is the one I got to participate in, and that one was the CHARM, where, by the way, we spent an enormous amount of time and energy talking to people about it, feeding them coffee, feeding them cookies, feeding them ways that they could— here's some more of those. And trying to create a pathway where people could say, well, but what if you— what if I don't want police service? What if I don't want a road service area? I live out here in the woods and I can plow my own road.

I don't want.

Do that. And so there were very important considerations of what went into this version of the charter. One of the— one and the other, that would be outside the city. They say, I don't, I don't want no government services shoved down my throat by you, Missy. And, and so, and, and so what I'm saying to you is it was really a challenging time And what we created in, in the charter that we wrote was there would be a thing called a service area, service area concept.

And what that means is that from my house at the map, if I go like this and draw a line around it and this becomes my neighborhood, which vaguely resembles some community council boundaries these days, then we in that in that area south of the Northern Lights, we are, but in the middle of sort of halfway between the university and Minnesota is a community. And we inside this community could decide that it is so important for us to have road services that we do want to create a Midtown road service area, and we are willing to pay X amount of money for that to occur. And then we would ask people to vote on that question. Does the Midtown people want a road service area? What it's going to cost?

And now I'll say words that are says 2 or 3 meals, but what it's going to be is taxes of $155 per $1,000 of value. Some, there'll be a number. And people could vote yes or no. And they had to say— and you had to get the people who lived inside to say yes, and you had to get the people who lived outside the area to say yes, because your transportation system was probably going to run into mine. And so, and that became the service area concept, and that became the answer to, "I don't want no government coming down on my throat.

You can't force me to do that." In fact, what we did do is create a process where people could work with their neighbors, work with each other to create a service area for a service that they wanted. The one— so that became a very important consideration. The second really big important consideration for the people who lived inside the city boundaries is they had been paying for their utilities since the beginning of time. And they did not want to pay for the utilities to be expanded to the no man's land that was going to be down the street and out there in Never Never Land in borough land. So what we had to do was create a structure whereby the utilities were owned by the people in this neck of the woods, and that utility was going to be retained in ownership by that— we called it a service area— that place which was the service, the city service area, which you can talk— and that the utility, the assets of that organization were going to stay in the geographical area for a minimum of 5 years after— should we be successful.

And so what people felt was that there was at least a consideration of 30 years of paying into a utility system and an absolute clarity that they weren't going to have to pay for the sewers and the water systems that are going to be going all— they had no idea at the time they were going to go all the way down to Diamond or wherever. I mean, That was no man's land. That wasn't going to be— there was never going to be a water system and a sewer system that went down Seward Highway. Never. There were people on the charter commission.

I forgot to mention who they were. They were wonderful. We had 11 people who served on the charter commission. 3 Were chosen at large, means those are the people that everybody knew. They were the famous people.

And then there were 4 people from inside the city and 4 people from outside the area. And you got elected by this clump. So one of the glorious people who served on the Charter Commission is Mary Froning, and I'm looking for her desperately. And she lived on the hillside, and she's in the third from the right on the bottom. She always wore a hat.

She's a homesteader. She has guns. Always, always. I mean, I mean And she, she was hilarious, and she was faithfully going to make sure that there were never going to be sewers on the hillside. And, and, and in the end, what came to pass is Mary probably had 160 acres, and there were several people that had 160-acre parcels.

And they were going to keep it that way right up until the time that somebody showed up, money, more money, more money, and well, maybe we could cut it in half. And I got 2 kids, and so we're getting— anyway, in the end, subdivisions got started to be created along the highway, but they were still south of town. And then came the Oklutna Water Project. And the reason I say this is you can't really have sewer system without a water system. The Eklutna water system created the opportunity for the citizens of Anchorage to take the water from the Eklutna Glacier and Eklutna Lake and run it down the Seward Highway.

That became the vehicle for us to be able to have water and sewer system all the way south of town. So what we ended up with was the ability to push water up the hill and to create a pathway for sewer to be able to come down the mountain. There was a day when Mary And he said, I didn't sell my land, but those assholes next to me sold theirs, and now there's a goddamn sewer line and they want to know if I want to, um, hakpuka. And then, and then it goes from— it goes— excuse me, I didn't mean to say— they want to get connected to the sewer system. And then the question would be, I don't want to do that, but The people above me do, and the people next to me do, and therefore all around me, I'm the only one with a septic system.

And it became clear that there were going to be no need for more and more water and sewer to be going up the mountain as well as down. So I said a long story to say the service area concept is foundational to the government that we created. And that means that we get to decide what services we want, when, where, and how much money we're willing to pay. The one goofy exception that happened was nobody in the Hillside— nobody, actually it was almost all south of town— didn't pay for police services and the troopers. The Alaska State Troopers were the police force for Anchorage.

And it turns out that the State of Alaska noticed that the people who were living in Anchorage were not paying for their own police services. They, the State of Alaska, was providing full service through expanded trooper services to particularly to South Anchorage. And the Alaska State Legislature passed a law in complete violation of this charter that says there will be service areas for people, and the state of Alaska is no longer paying for you people in the south part of Anchorage. You're on your own, and we're not paying, and you've got to create a service area for the police. And they actually— they broke the law, and they succeeded because they were the state of Alaska, and they did.

That's the only exception to Normally people would be voting on that question, and they didn't vote on that one. It just got— it just happened because the state of Alaska changed the law. Okay, with that, I'm going to say— I'm going to stop talking and say two— one other thing about the process of the people that I worked with. There were, um, 5 women and 6 men who served on the, um, on the charter commission, and there— the— there was one of the women was Arla Strzelski, whose whole history and background is predicated on the work of the League of Women Voters. And the League of Women Voters in the '50s and the '60s in Anchorage were the smart women who could figure out how to solve almost any public policy problem with research and ways of doing it.

So, our list brought the League of Women Voters methodology to the table, and Sherry Holmes was one of the other people who served, and Lisa Parker was one of the other people who served, and me. And the women would meet on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday afternoon, and we would figure out what we would just do in terms of setting the agenda. It was Arliss who said, I'll volunteer to write the minutes. I'll happily write the minutes. I'll happily set the agenda so you don't have to worry about that.

So what she did, she is a conniving person, my hero, my hero. She simply said, if you control the agenda and what elements of the project we're going to take First, second, third, and fourth. And you control— I'm not saying she ever changed what happened to me, but the.

Flavor of the minutes would be reflective of this was a really good— I mean, you couldn't say this was a good idea except it was a majority of people did this and did this and this and with dissent by these two people, they don't count. I mean, me, the members, not the public. So the control of the agenda and the control of the minutes was the League of Women Voters group of women who did not have day jobs that required them to be someplace from 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock in the afternoon before we started an evening meeting with the women. So, God bless Arliss Strzylowski. She's my heroine of all time for having created that process.

We had wonderful people, but the other spectacular person who served on the Charter Commission was a person who served as our chair, and that was Frank Reedies in the top row In the far left, Craig Reed was a quiet, calm banker who was probably the most highly respected man in Anchorage at the time. He was simply the go-to man to solve almost any problem of any kind, way, or shape. And whenever Fred Chai, he's the second down in the bottom with the pipe in his mouth or pencil, he always liked to have a fight. Whenever he got in a fight with Joe Josephson, who's up there, the second from the top, "Break!" He'd say, "I think it's time for a break." And then he'd put his arm around Fred and they'd go for a conversation someplace. And he'd come back and he'd get Fred all calmed down so he didn't have to do it.

And then he'd go and put his arm around Joe and they'd go for a little walk and they'd figure that, work that out. And Frank made sure that any challenge was addressed in a very calm and kind way. We had 6-5 votes on a couple of occasions. One was, what is the form of government? Is it going to be a strong mayor form of government, or is it going to be a council management form of government?

And that was a 6-5 vote. And so the people who had come from the city liked the council management form of government because you've always got the professional staff. This is when the days when we need professional staff. The professional staff were going to be around to be able to do the analysis and do the hard work, and the decision-making was a calmer thing. And then the people who had come from the borough world believe that the strong mayor form of government said you always knew the buck stops here, you knew who, who was responsible, and that that was harder to— it was a more diluted voice in, in the council management form of government.

And so the notion was that we would have a— and again, the proposal before them was there shall be a strong mayor form of government. That was a proposal before us. Therefore, you need 6 votes to make that happen. And if somebody wanted to amend it to be something else, they would need 6 votes to change it. So, so that night, Dick Fisher, who was in the— where is he?

He's far right, top right corner. He was supposed to be a council management form of government guy, and he didn't come to the meeting. And we have a strong mayor form of government because Dick Fisher didn't come to the meeting. I'm just telling you. And he learned about that later, but it had happened, you know.

So, look, then finally, the last thing I want to say is why did it pass? Prior to, we spent a lot of time talking to people about what was in it. And if you had a concern, had we addressed it in some way? Service area concept, uh, taxation— how are you going to do the taxation? Who's in charge?

You're going to have a strong mayor form of government, you're going to have some professional people to help them. We have a strong mayor form of government and a requirement that there be a city manager, so we combined those two elements into one that was acceptable. We have, um, the service area concept was supposed to protect the people from south of town from from being— have government shoved down their throats. And we created a process whereby the city people who had been paying for utilities and infrastructure were actually compensated in for at least a 5-year period of time for their 20 years of paying for those infrastructure. And then— and that the new infrastructure was not going to be paid for by the people of the whole— it's going to be paid for by those people who are going to live on the hillside where there weren't going to be any sewers.

Anyway, so one thing we did do that was— that made it possible for it to be successful is you have to win people who lived inside the city and outside the city. It has to be a positive vote by both of those organizations. And so what we decided to do is on the same ballot Do you like this charter or not? And two had previously been thrown out, or the people were going to run for the office. So I want you to vote for the charter and I want to be the mayor, and my name is George Sullivan.

Or I want you to vote for the charter and I want to be mayor, and my name is Jack Rodrick. Plus 11 people who are going to be on the assembly and another 10 people who are going to be on the school board, all running for office at the same time on the ballot, saying vote for the charter and vote for me, vote for the charter and vote for me, vote for the the charter and vote for me. And that is the reason it passed. So who knew? Some of us did.

Anyway, so I'd be happy to answer questions, but now I want to hear David talk about the structure of the Constitution.

Well, thank you, Jane, and now for rebuttal.

Thankfully, I'm not going to attempt to cover those specific details. I'm indeed the historian, so that means my utility is the backstory, and I'm going to go back just a little bit farther, how we wound up in this mess of having two separate civic governments. In fact, it was once much, much worse.

Anchorage Well, it's important for me first to say that this unification wasn't just some arcane changing of job titles. We didn't just go from, you know, councils to assemblies or chairmen to mayors, or it wasn't just that. This was changing people's lives. It was changing access to services. It was changing the quality of the city, and in some few very dire instances It was trying to prevent tragedies that had happened before because of this divide.

So the real problem becomes in the 1940s when Anchorage suddenly becomes just so popular, ever so popular. After the base is established here, activated in 1940, the town immediately bursts from this just completely unimportant railroad hub, about 4,000 people, by the end of the decade 32,000.

Imagine trying to fit 32,000 people into a town built for 4,000. So of that 32,000, only 11,000 actually lived within city limits. The city could not contain it. The city could not keep up with this population boom. There is no humanly bureaucratic way to keep up with that type of population influx.

You increase services and a commensurate rate, provide access to things, to build up the roads, to build the sewers, to build homes.

So what you get are these little communities just outside the city limits, so they start to form their own identities. You get your Mountain View, you get your Spenard, you get East Chester, which would become Fairview. From 1948 to 1949, these three communities formed what were called public utility districts. Which was basically the least possible amount of government they could have while providing still some very basic, uh, service—road grading, dust control, water, sometimes, sometimes more, sometimes less. And for some residents, certain types of residents, it was really convenient to live and operate outside the city limits.

There were, of course, fewer restrictions, fewer codes to abide by, and outside the jurisdiction of the city police. All you had were the very intermittent presence of what would become the state troopers. By design, these public utility districts were disinclined to start major infrastructure improvements. By their very nature, they weren't proactive.

In the best of years, they would brag, they would run advertisements in newspapers. We're not going to collect any taxes this year. The huge half-page ads like, come live in the East Chester PUD, we don't even have taxes. So imagine how much is getting done there. Imagine the quality of the garbage collection.

Imagine the quality of the school buses.

I apologize, I'm using some notes. I'm trying to make sure I get some dates right. That's the historian of me.

So certain type of people like that arrangement, though. Certain type of people, their lives, their operations, their businesses, some of their activities were aided by being outside of city limits. It could be cheaper. Operate your business, it could be cheaper to live out there. But the reality was this immensely patchwork community.

In the early 1950s, you had 4 civic authorities in the Anchorage Bowl, not counting the Air Force and not counting the Army base and not counting eventual little oddities like Glen Alps or Basher and not even counting things outside the Anchorage Bowl like Eagle River, Chugiach, were just getting started. As Onchukiak started as like bedroom communities and not counting Girdwood, not counting Portage, which still existed.

So you could live in Mountain View, a separate polity, have breakfast in Fairview, go to work in Spenard, at night go watch a movie in Anchorage, traveling around like you're a tourist in Europe, just crossing lines at will. And from the city of Anchorage a perspective, they were furious. As they saw it, they were providing many services, building infrastructure and amenities that served, in many cases, the entire area or utilized people throughout the area, but they were only being supported by a fraction of that possible tax base. So they began an aggressive campaign of annexation, very aggressive. And for a little while there in the late 1950s, they're gathering communities up so much that they actually surrounded Fairview while it was still independent.

In 1959, Fairview was completely surrounded by Anchorage while still being technically an independent community— not technically, was an independent community all of its own— until they were eventually forced by legal changes to be annexed. Essentially, the legislature said that such a community had lost its distinction and would be forcibly annexed into the city. There was a court case, it was appealed all the way up to but not heard by the Supreme Court, but forcibly dragged into the city.

And when I say they were disinclined to action, this is an understatement. Let's talk dogs. Y'all under— can understand dogs. In American history, as towns begin to grow, as they begin to develop into actual urban centers, there tends to be this period in their growth, things start to get a little out of hand, and there are packs of wild dogs, or near-feral dogs, running around.

Normally in American history, we're talking more 19th century, early 19th century Chicago or Detroit. Anchorage, this just happened to happen a little later. We're talking 1950s. Packs of wild dogs, 30-plus. They were known to wait outside of school.

They were known to wait outside of churches. I know of one case where a pastor would go outside with a stick on Sunday at the end of service, make it clear for the congregation. Well-known menace. And people had scars. Attacks were common.

I talked to a guy who was a kid newspaper delivery man He was a newspaper delivery kid in the '50s riding his bike around, and he carried a hammer to ward off the dogs.

1955, A 22-year— excuse me, a 22-month-old Danny Betz was attacked and killed, yanked out of his Bernard home. He was in the front yard, killed.

And again, partially by design and partially by the will of the residents, these communities outside the city of Anchorage slow to respond to issues like this, including glaring issues of public safety. And after Betsy's death, the city of Anchorage— Betsy was in Spenard— the city of Anchorage responded by hiring dog catchers and promptly went out and documented cases, were killing packs of dogs.

In Spenard, they did nothing.

They didn't pay any taxes, but for 3 years they did nothing. 3 Years later, they finally created a dog catcher position. And he captured 28— captured 28 feral dogs in his first 10 days on the job. And he, quote, said that the ongoing threat was only diminished.

This is that hard lesson. That Alaskans have historically struggled with. I don't want no government, but the lesson keeps hitting you over the head that some government good. I'm being technical. You know that saying that you can lead a horse to water, you can't make him drink.

Likewise, you can most definitely lead an Alaskan to a loaded gun, but you can't necessarily stop them from shooting off their foot. Metaphorically speaking, of course. And yes, lots and lots of residents complained. It wasn't just they were all like, oh, we will just let this happen as a course of doing business, as a course of not paying taxes. So plenty of people were very upset by the damn baby.

Any of them complained once they realized the public utility districts weren't going to respond, once they saw the city could not respond, they started bothering the legislators. And the legislators got very, very tired of hearing about it. And so in 1963, they passed a law that is of an uncommon type and name, the Mandatory Borough Act. You don't see a lot of laws that just slap the word mandatory in the title. You don't see a lot of laws that force governance.

The Mandatory Borough Act said communities of certain size conglomerated together had to form a borough. They had to have a government. They couldn't just essentially ignore civic responsibilities where there was such need, which again, just think about the pressures on the legislature. The legislatures in the early '60s were not so inclined to just, you know, force government onto people. This was not the inclination.

This was not the habit. So imagine how dire the context had to be in the far more than the time I have you to imagine that this pressure was enough for them to tell Alaskans that we are forcing you to have government and we're not messing around with the title of the act. Duly, on January 1st, 1964, the Greater Anchorage Area Borough, the GAAB, was formed. Essentially, again, those areas south of Northern Lights.

But you can't change people. Unsurprisingly, given its history, given its origin, given some of the people involved, the borough was not as active a government compared to the city of Anchorage.

Naturally, as a historian, tragedy is my best learning instrument. Tragedy teaches us the best. The Gold Rush Motor Lodge opened in 1965 off Northern Lights between Dawson and Chichaco. Uh, back in those days, one of the first things you would see when you came in at the International Airport was a big billboard sponsored by the Gold Rush that said, "Proclaiming Anchorage as the crossroads of the air world." You may not remember the Gold Rush, but you might more remember the Northern Lights Hotel The old Daraluk that was torn down in 2017, that was the spot of the gold rush. That was that location on that side of Northern Lights.

Sounds like a cursed location. In the borough side. That was on the borough side. January 13th, 1970, fire at the gold rush. The year prior to 3 different state fire inspectors came and discovered several dire violations of the state fire code.

We're talking areas of open construction, just cleared out spaces, no walls, while still having people staying there.

But that's nothing compared to, you know, exposed beams and such. But worst of all, they found 239 alarm pull boxes, just fire alarms scattered throughout the hotel for show. There were no wires. They did nothing, but they put them there.

They knew what they were doing.

One of the inspectors called it an extreme life hazard. He wanted it blown off the face of the earth. But again, it was on the borough side of the road. Nobody pressured the motel owners to fix the violations. Notably, no Nobody forcibly intervened.

Then that fighter see firefighters come wrong side of the street. A few of them go over there into the fire and help. Engine, the fire chief, most of the firefighters, they just stay on that side. The barrel firefighters get there, they have an argument while the fire is going. 5 People die.

They're having an argument with the city crew. I mean, that's who they're arguing. Firefighters are arguing with each other. The fire's there on the other side of the street.

5 People died. This was a moment to be sure a single responsive government could have prevented this. Could have. In October 1969, voters approved the concept of unification for the first time and authorized a charter commission, earlier version. City residents were roughly 73% in favor, rural residents roughly 53% in favor.

October 1970, there was the first actual vote on unification, less than 10 months after the fire and a year after a relatively strong mandate in favor of unification. There's a story that's been passed around, I've heard it personally told a couple times this summer, that the Goldrush Fire changed hearts and minds, that it inspired people towards unification.

The evidence is this: in that October 1970 election, city resident support was down to 54%, rural residents down to only 36%. The unification failed. Support for unification had in fact gone significantly backward. The next election in 1971 fails along roughly the same percentages. In fact, support in the city dropped a couple of points down to about 52%.

It took the changes, it took a completely new charter, it took a different way of approaching it. So I always try and have lessons in my thing, even if it may not seem like— even I'm writing about a silly thing, I'm often trying to slip in a realization, whether it's about the state of crime, whether it's about what culture was like at a given time. And the lesson here is that unification mattered. It was not arcane.

We don't know what lives were saved because of it, but it's not, it's not a joke. It's not an excess of pride to say that there were some.

And that it's good to have these reminders on anniversaries that some government, even in Alaska, even forced upon Alaskans, is necessary and even good.

Well, thank you. I like the lesson. I promise we did not pay him for that lesson. We do have about 45 minutes for continued conversation and questions. I'll see if you— but I think you're happy to continue.

Field them either from folks online who want to throw them in the chat or from the room. First question, a leading question: How many 1975 Charter Commission members were from Eagle River, Chugiak, or Birchwood? None. And why? Eagle River had seceded from Anchorage at the time and was trying to become an independent organization, so Eagle River was not even in the, in the outside the city, it was gone.

They had their own mayor, Lee Jordan's old newspaper.

And the court, the Supreme Court of the State of Alaska, found that the question before the court was, can they remain as independent out there by themselves? And the court said, no, you are contiguous and connected to Anchorage. You have to come back. So in the middle of us writing this charter, we go out to Eagle River because I'm going to do maximum feasible assistance to participation, and, and They are like furious. And so, they hand us all subpoenas made out to us personally.

They said, "This is not the government. This is you. This is on you. And you can't force us to be part of your government." And they lost. But they— so, we tried to talk with them about that.

And in the end, they did participate in the election. And they chose people to serve for, from the assembly from Eagle River, and they got to participate in who got to be the mayor. They just, to a person, did not vote for the charter. In that period leading up to unification, every poll I've ever seen from Eagle River residents is strongly, strongly opposed to being a part of the borough, of being part of the city of Anchorage, of being part of anything greater. The mechanism that forced them back into the city is essentially the same as what forced Fairview to be a part of Anchorage.

That you can't just be an island but contiguous and a given part. That's the argument. I was like putting on my old municipal attorney hat for the lawyers in the room. It's an interesting legal history because there was the Mandatory Borough Act that they said it's a uniform act, applies to the whole state. Anybody who's got this level of population, this kind of qualities, you must form a borough.

And then shortly after that, there was the Eagle River, Cheektowick, Birchwood—. I forget the name—. Borough Act. And the Supreme Court invalidates that in part because there's a prohibition in the state constitution against special legislation. The court said there's no reason why there can't be a uniform regime when boroughs are created.

It's one of the only times that the state Supreme Court has ever invalidated an act as a special legislation. So You have been elected as a charter commission member, you're toiling away, and in the middle suddenly Anchorage becomes much larger. Absolutely. And so we went out to talk to them and they, they were perturbed. They were, but, but, and, and no amount of indicating that they could have service areas and they could decide what the requirements for being part of the greater— of the new government is you have to, uh, used to be subject to community planning.

They didn't think much of that idea because there was no zoning out there yet. Uh, you had to be, uh, part of the school district, and you had to agree to pay taxes. I think of the three services you had to engage in, and they didn't want anything to do with any of that, but They did have to. They were required to come back by the court. I have a question.

I'm going to jump ahead. Do it. Did you ever get any threats, or what was some of the harshest language you got from Eagle River Elder? Oh yeah, well, she was in parking lots, you know, it wasn't on the record. It was, it was a lot.

Okay, Missy. There's a lot of Missy. Um, and I, I mean, Lisa and I, Lisa was 20, and I was 25. We were young, and so they did pick on us. But I'd say, no, I mean, I never felt personally at risk.

But we actually, when we went to the Eagle River for the public meeting, we did have security with us that night because We didn't know what was going to happen. As an aside, I'll say one time in private practice I was asked to be a lot of help with a lawsuit, had to do with some original meaning of some charter language. So I went on the hunt. The virtue of being in Alaska is you can ask Jane what was actually going on. She said, so I've got a box of documents in my garage, you can come get them.

The other was there was a box of papers from the Charter Commission. They're at the UAA Consortium Library. And I believe the lore is they might be Fisher's, but no one is actually sure whose they are. And my recollection is that the minutes that I saw when I was thumbing through the minutes of the Eagle River meeting is that someone has written something like, holy shit, in the side of the minutes. It's a contentious meeting.

A lot like that. Good. Questions from the audience? They were so separate. I taught at Chugach High School from '69 to '73.

That sometimes on the last day of the month they'd say, sorry teachers, no one brought your checks out. We wait till the next week to get our paycheck because nobody thought to come up to Eagle River from the Angers School. Oh wow. Oh good. Manuel, I should also say, um, we were joined by Assemblymember Brawley early on too, but staff production fees online.

Amanda. Okay, I am curious about, as the charter commissioner was having these conversations during this period of rapid growth in the municipality and coming to this compromise of having the service areas, was there conversations about the impact of those service areas as the city continued to grow? And like, I think about today, like It almost seems like we should have a toll tax for the people that don't pay into the road service area, but drive downtown to their job. And so I'm curious about, like, how that— the thought was, like, our city would be able to grow and people would be a part of it, but not invest in it. I understand the question, and the answer is, on transportation in particular, I mean, it's probably worth a conversation.

It's probably worth a look to see where we are, but it might not be worth the war that will ensue from a toll to come downtown, or to use.

But the deal is, because we're Alaskans, the main thoroughfares are state-owned. They're not even ours. And I understand there's effort inside this administration, which is gone, to actually try and straighten it out between the city and the state government on ownership and maintenance to make it make more sense. But on Minnesota and on— You— it's not on us. It's actually state-owned property.

I will say I used to work in elections, and one of the fascinating things about elections is that we have a lot of different ballot styles because we have to figure out who is inside and outside of all of the different service areas. And so you'll have, you know, before we were a vote-by-mail district, people that lived in these hillsides outside of the sort of core area would walk into their polling location and they would have a map. And we got savvy and started color coding them and color coding the ballots and making it easier, but people had to figure out which ballot they qualified for. Right, and I know that you must have a bajillion road service areas that are tiny little thingamabobs, and it may be appropriate to take a look-see and consider a consolidation of some of that geographically, which means you've got to go talk to those people who voted for this is ours, but it turns out all the way to the end of the table on both sides makes sense. Yeah, but it would be a challenging experience in my judgment.

Speaking, speaking, speaking. I love language. I'm trying to find some real-time visuals, throwing on the board, doing that. Hillside's limited road service areas, and as Amanda was saying, we have this odd balkanization of tiny little road service areas that are also surrounded by no man's land, which is sort of the past-to-hat jurisdictions. My understanding is there is a history that I don't know well where this was the prevailing arrangement in Chugach Burchwood, and that there was an effort in the '80s to get everybody on the same page.

And so there's now a subversa, a Chugiak-Burchwood River Road Service Area that tried to get out of this, but no one has pulled it off. The other fun thing that happens with the limited road service areas is that people will decide that they want to leave it or join it, and so then you have to have the in and out vote. Or like water to houses. So, it may well be a time when we say we're done with this and take the heat because the process of managing it is no longer cost-effective. Yeah.

Yeah, I have a question. With the unification vote, who were some of the organized groups, pro and con, that you guys can remember? What kinds of organized groups came to the table to support or oppose? In case folks online can't hear, the question from the audience was, who were the organized factions, pro and con, for the charter vote? There were some people from inside the city who, notwithstanding what efforts were made related to the utilities, were feeling that somehow that they were disadvantaged by the utility conversation and that they had invested for the last 40 years and they didn't trust that it was ever going to be not be fair.

There were a couple of labor unions. By the way, the hardest, most miraculous thing that happened in the implementation is Eleanor Andrews and other wonderful people dealt with the— how many labor unions? 9 Bargaining units who had to be turned into 1 or 2 or 4. Okay, okay, but, but what you've got is completely different, uh pay scales, completely different, completely different systems that needed to be smushed together to be one operational unit. And I think you had a year to do that?

Yes. Got it done. And actually, it might be worth a conversation with you being the speakers with—. Next week. Okay.

Me and Heather next week. Because it is unbelievably complicated how hard it was to do that. And how we kept saying in this, in every way, shape, or form, nobody's gonna lose their job. How are you gonna save money? You're gonna unify the government.

You say you're gonna save money. How are you gonna save money if everybody gets to keep their jobs? Well, you know, we had to figure out the calculation over time. But the implementation, was very, very, very difficult. And I think that they are the heroes of the fact that it works at all.

I don't know how many people had to face down Jesse Carr. That was one of my dilemmas. He was against the unification? He was for the city because they had married themselves to the local union and did not want the world to prevail. So I married the Public Employees Association to Ike Waldrop and the IBEW.

So the Titans were supporting their weaker sisters. Got it. That's what was in there. And there were clearly the people, and there are many people in the outlying areas didn't trust any of it, and they were pretty vehement. But so there were vocal people from inside the city who were, no thank you, and there were people outside the city who were equally, no thank you.

And I actually— so there was— but you— I could be— I've just buried it in my own memory, other than organized— some pieces of organized labor.

But they're— I suspect they haven't all died yet. The people who really hated it, really hated it, really hated it, they hated that it happened. They wouldn't pay their taxes. It was like, get away from me. This was not my doing.

You did that. It sometimes sounded like some Kentucky-level BS.

There were businesses, especially on the borough side, who didn't want any further attention, repeating arguments that you had heard back in the '50s and '60s. I'm killing myself because there was one wild man who sort of made it a personal crusade because he just hated government in general. Went around, um, like, for those who remember, like a Wild Bill Nelson but not quite as extreme. Does that ring a bell?

There were workers for both that were upset because many did lose their job because there was duplication. One thing that George Sullivan gets credit for is he understood the challenge and he made all the people who were working in public works— and the city had public works and the Borough of Public Works— sit together in the same cubicles. These are people who would rather shoot each other than talk to each other. And he made them sit next to each other for a year to see if they could ever get to the part where they could work together.

Ben. Great presentation. I was curious about this being kind of during pipeline construction time, what the thinking or vision or like, was the prospect of oil wealth billions throughout the '80s? Part of the discussions, or what was the prospects for future oil wealth? We didn't know.

We, I mean, I think we simply had no idea about the money. We, the big issue was could much of the employees of local government were leaving their jobs to go work on the pipeline because they could make 2 and 3 and 4 times as much money on the pipeline as they could working here. But the notion that I was on the assembly when the money started, and I could remember George called an emergency meeting and said, we have one week to come up with $25 million worth of stuff to buy. What are you— what help, what are we going to do? And the map was, the map was The map in his office had— if the city owned the land, it was blue.

And so that became one of the chief criteria because it had to be shovel-ready. So if you didn't have to buy a piece of land and you could put a sports arena on it, you could do it. And, and, but it was that tight. I mean, then that, that happened when the money started flowing.

Boeing in whatever month it was, I don't know. By the time the legislature was ready to come in, they knew there was a lot of money and they knew, and we didn't know how much, although somebody had told George $25 million, but it turned out to be $125 million. I mean, it was unbelievable that if you ever wanna serve in public office, do it when there's a lot of money. Really, really a good idea. It's unbelievably fun to be able to say yes.

There were people early on, especially early on, there was several people who were in both sides were kind of saying we need to get our act together. And you know, because when the oil companies come in, we're talking late '60s, early '70s, we need to know who we need to talk to. It'd be really nice if you had one office instead of two. But it did help a lot afterwards, like '75 to '80, the budget for the city like more than doubles. But like mill rates went down in a lot of places.

It was, you know, it was a time where it passed certain, you know— No, I'm going to mute it. Brenda, you are off mute. Wow, nice. He's gone.

We had a question from Chief of Staff Suzanne Fleet Green. Yeah, hi, Jean. Hi, Suzanne. Thank you for coming. Um, uh, speaking of spending a lot of money, um, I don't— I remember the building, but was there discussion about long-term investment?

And what was the tax situation at the time? Was it only property taxes then too? Did we have a sales tax or nothing? No other good tax. No, it was online.

The question was about long-term investments and what the tax structure in the city and the boroughs were. Did we have a sales tax? We do not have a sales tax, and the charter says that, that, that question has to go to the voters. And both Lisa and I have— Lisa and I have reflected that that was probably a mistake and that we should have allowed the government to make that decision. And therefore create a sales tax and take all the grief that comes with it.

But if you had that today, that would be a better situation than always having to rely on property taxes. But right now, and I did ask how many times that it's been amended, the charter's been amended 40-some times, and many of those have to do with questions about sales tax. And, and over and over and over again, a question would come up that said they would— they don't want a sales tax, therefore we'll make it so that you have to make it a higher and higher, higher level. And so unfortunately, I, I think we're at a place where we're never going to persuade the voters to do it, and I suspect it would be a politically challenging to change it without voter approval, or it would be the last act of somebody. And that's too bad because it would, it would be, it would make more sense in a thousand ways than we do.

But also the long-term investment, you know, I, I, well, first of all, we— there was no conversation about long-term investment at the time of the charter. We were not in the business of saving money. We were in the business of managing money as best we could, any way we could. And if we could reduce costs, that would be a good thing.

But— and then when the money came, there should have been a conversation that would have occurred In the first 3 years of the largesse of the oil, and there wasn't— I was on the assembly, we didn't do it then, and that would have been the time to do it, where you would just set aside some portion of it so that today there would be a resource. Enormous amount of time and energy devoted to the management of the money. Enormous amount of time to bonding and, and what the long-term— how was the volume of debt that a new government can accommodate without harming itself. And I mean, I just didn't— there was, there was a lot of discussion about financial management of the resources and creating a joint bank account of, of all of that and And so, you know, the best— again, Eleanor knows how to sweep accounts where you have capital projects that where they had $2 million left here and $5 million left there and $3 million left there and how to sweep that. And she's turned that into the Fairview School with— and I'm just saying to you, there's a place to look in terms of old capital projects that didn't spend everything, and what can we do to repurpose those funds.

We had a question online from member Anna Brawley. And do you want me to read that in the chat, or would you like to just jump in?

Um, yeah, can you hear me? We can hear you loud and clear. Go for it. Oh, great. Um, yeah, and thanks.

I've been listening. Um, so other than the piece of the charter about the sales tax, I'm curious— this is a question for Jane, and thanks for being here. This has been a great panel. Um, I'm curious kind of what you think the that the Charter Commission's best idea was, like something that works really well now, or something that even worked better than you guys might have imagined? And then what was your worst idea?

Like, what is something that you regret or think maybe should have been done differently? Other than the sales tax. Well, I do think the worst idea was requiring the voters to vote on the sales tax. That was the worst.

I, I think the best was having them run for office at the same time that they were going to vote for the charter. That, I mean, that, that worked better than I could have imagined. And, and I'd say structurally, structurally, I don't know how it's actually worked out. You guys might have a clarity about the The relationship between the assembly and the, and the administration, and what I think is that it was strained during Bronson's time, and it might still be strained a little bit, and I don't know how to fix that. But it might be, there might be some teamwork that is not even addressed in the charter, but it says you have this job and you have this job and everyone's going to later, but I think the conversations about How do we, uh, do some policy stuff that isn't simply an ordinance, yes or no?

It's actually a longer range stuff. I'm babbling. I don't know. We're all friends now, it turns out. Okay, that's good.

It's all good. It's good. I'm glad to hear that. This is really good. I think the end time for assembly meetings is something that I want in real life.

Play out that like good decisions do not happen when it gets later at night. And that was— I remember when I served on a commission with you, you told me about that, and I think about it all the time. That absolutely— no, no business after midnight. Is it midnight? Like the meetings end at 11, but they can be extended till midnight.

Okay, so that's a really good idea. And I had sat in meetings at 3 o'clock in the morning. That's not a good thing. So that was probably good. They couldn't believe that we would do that.

Really silly. Any other good ideas, bad ideas, good ideas? I'd say, uh, oh, I just had a question. Sure. I was curious if you had any certain type of feelings when the charter has been changed over the years.

Any specific incidents where you were positive? He wants to know if I had any response to some of the proposed, some of the successful amendments to the charter. And I have to say, I don't have any that have caused me heartburn. I— other than the state of Alaska imposing its will on us about police, but I concurred with the outcome of that. I just didn't have— I just thought they'd sort of trampled all over it in the process.

But I don't— so no, I don't have any, but I also don't pay that close attention to what How it has been amended. And I'll say we looked at it this morning and there's something like 48 different amendments to the charter, but a lot of them are things like removing gendered language. So the mayor is a he. A lot of them are cleanup things. There haven't been wild structural changes with the potential, with the strong exception of the tax cap.

That is the big thing. But the tax cap wasn't in the charter. It wasn't. I mean, that way, that, okay. I get it, I get it.

In fact, I voted against that. So I, when I, I voted against it on the assembly and I voted against it when it was voted on, but I do remember that they got it in and it's, I, the trouble with citizen-initiated amendments that pass is you're stuck. They, I mean, you could.

Wait 10 years and try it again, but problem. Well, mindful of the time, I think we'll take maybe 1 or 2 more questions. I'll loop back to Amanda's question just to note for those who have online the new governance for Anchorage document or are still passing it around. Amanda was actually referencing a portion of our local Bill of Rights, which is all residents of the Municipality of Anchorage have the right of immunity from official actions of the assembly taken after 12 midnight and before 7 AM.

Which always was wild to me, but I appreciate that one. I put that on a list. Honestly, me too. Let me just say that the Bill of Rights was completely engineered by Josephson, and he actually worked really hard on the language, and he didn't even like the language that we used for that. He said, I want to be really clear, what are the hours?

Okay, okay, okay. But he— it was It was Joe's idea that the Bill of Rights would give people some comfort that actually this is all about them as opposed to the government. And I'll say before we go back to the audience, we did do a version of this panel with Jane and Joe Josephson in 2015 or '16, and Joe Josephson, when he was giving his overview of the Charter, as I recall, highlighted the Bill of Rights, I think the Ombudsman and the Equal Rights Commission, all as features of the 1975 Charter that didn't exist. Exist in the failed '70 or '71 charters. Barb Jones.

Well, two things. One, Joe Josephson did a presentation in 2009 for the 40th anniversary of the Equal Rights Commission, so he was there for that. But one of the things I love about the Charter is that Bill of Rights is the second article. So we're not like the U.S. Constitution where we have to add it on at the end to get people to approve it. It's right up front, and I think that says a lot for citizens.

So thank you. Yes. Ben, do you want to take us home? One more question about that kind of map of service areas where we got all the building service areas. There's also some parts of Anchorage that aren't part of the parks system, to understand.

I was curious if you remember the discussions on that.

You can create a Park Service area, but you have to get your neighbors to agree to it. I mean, many, many have been added onto the parks. It's not an area-wide service guaranteed in this government. You have to say, I want parks and I'm willing to pay for it. So if there are areas that have some spectacular stuff that you think should be preserved and something, then I would say that that's the building block for a service area.

Area for recreation.

Yep. Amanda, so my understanding is that there's a Park Service area based on elections, fire service area, police service area, and the road service area, as well as the different limited road service areas. So there are people in Anchorage that are outside parks, fire, road.

And like, their taxes reflect that, their ballots reflect that, their services reflect that. I assume if you're outside on fire that you have large, large lot so that you're not accidentally burning down your neighbor. I mean, I assume that, but I don't know that. Well, with 15 minutes to go, I wanted to do a little bit of housekeeping items. First, I want to let you in on a closely held municipal secret.

It's actually not secret at all. If you are interested in diving more into the history of the Anchorage Charter Commission, there's a hack. Let me give you the hack. You go search for Anchorage assembly meetings that happened in 1975. You will not find Anchorage assembly meetings, but you will find digitized versions of the Charter Commission minutes.

And I think credit is due to Dennis Wheeler, who as municipal attorney found an old box of reel-to-reel tapes and had them digitized, transcribed, I think due to a grant from the History— some humanities forum maybe, in about 2000, somewhere between '09 and '15. So you can listen to the reel-to-reel tapes, your 25-year-old Jane Ingvik with Arliss Derzelusky doing the people's business, and then there are also about 6,000 pages of commission transcripts that are all available online. Great. And Bill, actually, you did make that happen with an intern. You had an intern load these up onto this website.

It's a small piece of the puzzle after all, but hey, the thing's mostly done. I want to also let everyone online and in the room know that I think this went well, so we'll do it again. So this is the first of the series, and I want you to save the date: Wednesday, August 20th, same time but at the Permit Center in Tudor and Elmore. We are going to have a panel discussion about the second decade through 1985. and we will be joined by former Assemblymember Heather Flynn and former HR Director Eleanor Andrews. Yay!

Tell us what it's like when you get to see $100 million as a gift from the state. Easier, easier. Then we will keep the story going August 27th, again at the Permit Center at the same time. We will talk about the '90s, and we will hear from former Mayor Rick Maestrom and the Olympic bids and our lights and flowers. That will be facilitated by Barbara Jones.

I should have said the previous one would be facilitated by Suzanne McQueen. And then finally, we will close out the series on September 3rd here again in the mayor's conference room. We're going to bring it to the 2000s, and we'll have former mayor and former Senator Mark Begich talk about the Denaina Center and others. And Becky McPherson will facilitate that conversation. And then we've got to end it all with a big party.

So we will have a Friday, September 5th, 5 to 8:30 over in Town Square Park. We are vitalizing and activating wherever we can with a kickoff night market of live music, local vendors, company friends, and neighbors. With that, thank you so much for attending. Really appreciate your interest online and in the room. And once again, a very hearty thanks to our panelists.

Jane, please make the happy—. And, and there are more of these. You might want to have some of them yourself. And we provided— we attached those to the invitation so all the beauty employees have access to them. Okay, okay, good.

And these— this is the background piece that is Lisa and I, and you can have this for your purposes as well. Can I provide that to people too? Yes, absolutely, absolutely. So you said you found Paul Wagner's.