Assembly Retreat

Hello everybody. For the record, it's November 13th, 2025. We're on the calendar from 1:00 to 5:00 PM. This is 2025 Assembly Retreat. We're meeting at the CH2M Hill boardroom, the Carl Gottstein Building, and we'll just go and do introductions around the table.

Christopher Constant, Chair. Anna Brawley, Vice Chair. Andrew Boldt. Joachim Silvers. Peter Zuberow.

Erin Baldman Day. Jared Gerber. In the back. Jamie Hines, Municipal Clerk. Jennifer, assembly staff.

Claire Ross, assembly staff, legislative services director. John Gregoire, facilitator. Alright, so that's everyone in the room. We're missing a handful of members, Scott, Zach, Cameron, Keith, and we have an agenda. I think it's got a lot of work.

We may get done a bit early or not. We'll see what happens, how on point and ready to work people are. So basically we break the day up into really 3 parts and then a quick closing. So the first welcome introduction, a brief agenda, some exercise. Also then the next section is the work plan and goal prioritization exercise.

Then there is a conversation about capacity and workload. And then closing comments. Claire had asked that Felix and I provide some kind of homily on the kind of— we are, we are, we're soon to be departing. And so, but we'll see if we get there. It's not on the agenda per se, but we have been asked.

You probably hear enough of that coming from us over the next 5 months that you don't need it today. But so, but before any of that, I'm going to ask Jamie to take the lead because we had a really fun—. It's been a fun day—. Fun with an exclamation star up at the side article in the New York Times that is kind of a bit misinformation wrapped around in bad information wrapped around in political activism. So it's really into our election system.

So Jamie, you have the floor. Thank you. So this morning, I sent you all that email recently too. I was approached a couple of months ago by a local asking if we would be interested in talking to the New York Times about our security secure document portal system, which we, um, we piloted in 2025. In 2024, we brought Democracy Live to a Quality Municipal Services Ethics and Elections Committee, and they presented on their secure document portal option for voting.

And it ultimately— the committee gave us the green light to go ahead. We put, uh, the amendments before the assembly on an ordinance to use the Secure Document Portal option for voting. And, um, we got the contract signed really late, um, and so we weren't really able to publish it too much, um, before the 2025 election. But we did use it. Um, we put— it requires a paper application that people print out from the website.

And so when people would call and ask to vote by email, we would ask them if they wanted to vote by email or Secure Document Portal. Most people requested to vote by Secure Document Portal, and I'll explain the nuances here in just a moment, but I can't remember how many people we had use it. We had a lot of people who used it were very appreciative of the system. Um, it's— Democracy Live has been used for over a decade by over 36 states and over 2,500 jurisdictions. Um, and so we were not new to this.

I toured a couple of jurisdictions in Colorado back in 2022, and all of the jurisdictions there used Democracy Live and the Secure Government Portal system.

And because I get the phone calls of— from frantic voters saying, "I'm out of state, I'm out of country, I'm getting on a cruise ship, I need to vote," it's very difficult to tell a voter I'm sorry, Dr. Locke. And so to be able to ask— and even with, with email voting, they have to submit— they would have to print out an application, they have to fill it out, take a picture of it, send it back, we approve it. Then they have to be able to print out a ballot, uh, affidavit, and instructions. And then they have to be able to fill out the ballot, and then they have to be able to scan or take pictures and email it all back. It's email.

It's sitting in our email servers, their server and our server, and so it's not exactly secure. Part of the affidavit is a waiver that they're accepting the fact that it's not going to be a secret ballot.

And so the thought behind the secure document portal is that they still have to fill out paper applications and submit that, and we then send them a link with instructions on how to vote. Um, they get a link, um, they get a special piece of information. Like, this is— it's usually like, uh, a personal identifier, whether it be the last 4 of their social or their voter ID number, is their password to be able to access the ballot. They're provided their actual ballot So when they hit submit, it comes back to a secure document portal that we have access to. We print it out, but when we're printing it out, we're printing out ballot stock.

The nuance between an email and a ballot stock is that email is 8.5 by 11, and we are then— the facsimile team is pouring over that ballot and voting the ballot the same as the voter did on ballot stock, and then it's run through the tabulator. So with the Secure Document Portal, we submit it, we print it out on ballot stock, and it doesn't have to go through the facsimile process, and it's then submitted through the tabulation system. The article sort of sounded like we were piloting this whole new mobile voting thing, and Democracy Lab's been around since 2008, so it's not new. We're not the guinea pigs here.

It's been around in many states for quite a while. And as in the articles, said everybody who used it was very appreciative of the system.

I will say that Liz and I very carefully crafted what we were saying to her, and pretty much none of what we said actually made it into the article. So it's clear that it was a political play and And I regret that part of it. Um, our great local reporters lulled me into believing that— that reporter— I have always had a fear of reporters, and this is why. And I have never had this experience before. I've always had really great experiences.

But we will— I can tell you that, uh, Alaska Public Media and Fox have already reached out. I'm sure all the rest of them will be reaching out directly. And so we will be correcting it as much as we can. So I apologize for it being not the way I expected it to go, but—. I would just add the one thing that the article portrayed was that we are making a move to vote by phone.

Yeah. We are not making a move to vote by phone. That has never been the intent. It is not on the agenda. It is not authorized.

And so that is what was presented in that article. We're not involved in that. And so if there's one takeaway I hope people hear is that is not and never was the plan, despite what was presented as the case. That was an activist using the New York Times to push their cause and using us as an example of what they want to see so they can move their ball forward. But there is no intent, no effort.

Um, I will say that in about 2018, 2019, um, there was consideration to get rid of vote by email. Not a lot of people used it. 2020 And beyond, it has— vote by email has been used quite a bit. I think 400 people have used vote by email. Um, and so how do we This is obviously a need.

We don't want to tell these 400 people that we have no way for them to vote. And so 400 is the upper limit of what would be used in this borough. And so—. [SPEAKING GERMAN] [Speaker:CHRIS_BREMER] No, a little more accurately, 400 is the upper limit of what has been used. And there is no cap on it, but practically speaking, we're not advertising it.

We are not pushing it out. It is only used by those who call and say, I've got a problem. I can't vote. I'm out of town. It is impossible.

And we already have a solution.

Circumstance or situation set up for that, which was the vote by email, which is the least secure method. And so this is just one path. Jerry? Yeah, is there any way to track who's voting by email right now? Like, when you're looking at the election results, you can see, you know, by precinct and the state, you can see that.

You can't see that at all? Well, you have the number of ballots cast by electronic. You have numbers cast by— they came in by mail, they came in by—. We have counts by source. Yeah, so I can tell you how many, the number, but I don't have it separated out on the results themselves.

Yeah, but it is called out separately. It is called out separately. It's in a category unto its own. And so, yeah, the statement of votes cast probably doesn't associate to a district or precinct because we haven't built that in. But no, when they're printed out on their ballot stock, and so they are distributed to the district or precinct that it was—.

But you could not generate a list of all of those who voted by email? I could. You wouldn't want to. We follow our retention schedule, so those applications are shredded, right? Retention Schedule.

So the information at the time is viable to secure, right? And so, yeah, you can then go— it's a laborious process. It's only 400. Somebody could sort by some identifier that's generated that can connect to which precinct, but that's like not the election's concern, that's the outside concern. It's kind of odd to me.

I mean, there's so many ways to vote, like how do you get to a spot where the only way you're voting is via email? How does that actually happen? Okay, we have an example. Please help me out. But wait, let me set the table a little bit.

Imagine, if you will, you are either running or will be running or have run for election, and you pride yourself on voting in all your elections and your travel schedule screwed up such a way that you didn't get it done and you are no longer in town and you are going to be the one at risk of not voting. And then forever, he was in office and didn't even vote would be how you were labeled. Daniel?

Yeah, we get calls, um, people are on vacation, they are near the Grand Canyon, they don't have great service, they, um, I mean, we get all kinds of stories. Specifically military overseas, it's very difficult for the ballot to get all that way and back in the number of days that we have, um, mailing options. So, um, I also have a constituent who's Parents, so they're seniors. She's my age, a little bit older. Her parents are really old.

They were out of town and they didn't get their ballot and they had forwarded it, but something happened where the ballot didn't come and it came pretty late for them to figure out they needed to do something. And my constituent was complaining they didn't even get to vote. I'm like, oh, but wait, there's one more chance. Here's the application. And they got that done and they got to vote.

Never missed an election in 60 years. But their ballot didn't come. And Jamie, just for reference, you can also vote by email in state elections, correct? People can have an alternate way to vote in state elections? I'm not entirely sure.

I know that there was— they had vote by a secure document portal option in the past, and I don't know— I think it was self-built, but I don't know off the top of my head if they can vote by email in the state How long did you say Democracy Live has been? 2008.

They are the only company that, um, I can only say, um, Department of Defense, and that's the only one I can say off the top of my head that I've been struck by. This is important. By many. Yep. So, and I have a question.

Yeah, just because I— so we can't vote by phone, but this does seem like a good education opportunity for talking to local reporters to just like re-enumerate, like here is how it works, right? And so I'm curious, what are the functions of phone? Because I know there's a voter hotline, but like, so I know you're not calling to vote, but what situations are people using the phone? So before you get there, I will offer that Jamie and I made the decision today that we are going to have a work session at the Election Center sometime in December where we're going to physically go through all of these kind of procedures and steps before the election opens in January, so that all members and an invited slate of reporters can come and join us for the fun, so that you'll get a firsthand kind of opportunity. A number of us have been through it and could chapter and verse cite how it works, but new members haven't, and you have the opportunity.

So feel free to answer the question, but for everyone who is kind of curious, We will be having an official meeting down there where we're going to do that whole thing. Yeah, so it's called vote by phone is what they reported on. You're getting a link in your email, so if you could vote by laptop, you could vote by computer, you're voting by whatever you had in hand. So you're not making a phone call? It's a link and you tap the link and you put in your code and then your ballot is before you and you push the buttons and you see and then you hit submit.

And that's after you've opted into this whole process, right? Yeah, you filled out a paper application, you signed it with your pen, you've submitted that somehow, whether it's by fax or usually email, and we have confirmed that that voter is an HRH voter and that the signature matches. Okay. Is that the only thing you match? I'm sorry, is that the only thing you match?

The signature? If the signature doesn't match, we'll look at the identifiers.

Um, there's an identifier, birth date, social security number.

So really the same as you would if somebody walked into a precinct and handed you their ID. They were looking at it to make sure it matched. Yeah, yeah, but it's not a precinct, voting centers. But yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that this whole conversation has made an clear that we have an opportunity in December to do a tour and exploration of our elections process again in advance of the 2026 election.

Notice of vacancy, which will go out the first meeting in January. And so look forward to one more meeting and we'll do it down there for fun. One more kind of tour in the world and invitation to folks who might have concerns or thoughts to come in and witness at least what we're up to. So work sessions don't really allow questions from the public, but Yeah, could we send—. Make sure we send it out to all the candidates who have filed as well?

I'm sure this is something we'll be getting asked later on in the campaign. Absolutely. And those— every candidate, right? And so we don't have that paper, but every— we'll see what we can— yeah, we'll see what we can do there. But we'll for sure make it known that this is available for them to come.

And the clerk does offer campaigns kind of come in and see during the campaign. So that's a built-in part of the process. I also intend— I'll be gone— but to set up in December an annual work session. Future chairs want to do it, to go down to the election center in December so it just doesn't get left behind. It's not because the clerk was like, well, maybe we'll just invite everyone to come down.

I'm like, how about we do it officially on the calendar? And so OK, now my friends who have organized this strategic plan would probably like us to move on, but if you have questions, Jamie is the person and we'll come to the discussion about elections in this process way, way down the road. But our role is unique in our elections. It's to stay out of the clerk's way and make sure that it's done right, but really it's to stay out of the clerk's way. So, but we'll talk about that when we get there.

So now, John and Claire, you have the floor. I'll start with some housekeeping. There are snacks behind you and some hot tea. We don't have any water, but there's a water fountain at the end of the hallway and cups that you could grab. And then there's bathrooms at the end of the hallway as well.

Um, so I'll hand it over. We, uh, John Grégoire is with Professional Growth Systems, and we've used them for consulting, for facilitation for a number of years now, and they seem to understand the assembly process, so we invited John back to help help organize this session. So I'll hand it over to Joe. Thanks. Uh, I did bring a bowl of presents, so if you want a little fidget toy, grab one.

You don't have to put them back either, they're yours to keep. So great. Um, I want to get started with a little introduction, and because we're doing a retreat, uh, before we go into planning and business, it's always nice that I can force you to do something a little different and personal. So I wanted to go around with introductions and have everyone just sort of share a bit about who you are. Uh, not necessarily your platform, but, uh, what brought you here, what's your, what's your story, what's a day, a week in the life like for you, what matters to you.

And then if there's any little detail that is important that you're bringing into the room today so that people know Like, you know, I've got a bad foot, so if you see this nonverbal, it's my.

Toe hurts, it's not you. Any little thing like that you want to disclose as well. So I'll go ahead and start, um, model the way. Uh, I graduated high school in 1993, and in 1994 was doing, uh, nothing good. And my uncle who was stationed in Anchorage came to visit New Hampshire, and I got in a camper and drove back with him to Alaska thinking I'd be here for a summer.

Fell in love, haven't left. And specifically fell in love with Anchorage. Love this community. I've lived outside of Fairbanks for a very brief period of time and could not wait to get back here. Also, at one point moved to Seattle for grad school thinking I was like done with Anchorage.

And then like 90 days of rain, I understood grunge music and was like, "Ugh, I hate this place." And could not wait to get back here again. Personally, really love it here. I just turned 50, so I'm dealing with that. It was last week. I know, it's a wild experience.

I have 2 kids. My wife and I have been married going on 18 years. I met her when we were both 22 at Chilku Charlie's. Hahaha. Remained friends for over a decade and then finally got the courage to ask her to marry me and she said yes.

So there we go, pretty wild. I'd say what matters most to me is my family and creating a world that they will remain around us. And then fishing is probably the other thing that matters most to me. This has been a summer of fishing. My son is obsessed with fishing.

He's 16, just got his provisional. He's a very good driver, so it'll work. And he continues, even though he doesn't need to, to invite me to go fishing with him. And so I'm just I'm just going to keep saying yes until he does it. And that's about me, and I will pass Pablo in this direction.

Oh, we're doing staff too? Yeah, why not? You're here. I hadn't prepared. Neither did I. I celebrated a birthday too this week.

I born in Washington State and grew up in Seattle. Worked— my dad worked for Holland America Cruise Lines. He got me a summer job at the SeaTac Airport after my senior year of high school, like holding up the sign and helping people get their luggage off the baggage claim. And that led to a job in Skagway, and I worked in Skagway during summers in college. And then when I graduated, I bought my first car and packed it with everything I owned and moved up here.

I have a husband and a son. Son is 26. We fostered him at age 17 and a half. Wanted to be parents for as short of time as possible, but then he stuck around. We ended up adopting him, um, and he— I think a lot of you know his story— that he has a head injury and he's pretty high functioning but, um, lives at home and can be a little bit extra sometimes.

So I feel like maybe We got a little more parenting than we wanted to, but he's great. We love him. And I enjoy being outside as much as possible. I ski and mountain bike most days after work. That's me.

Hi, I'm Jared Kirby. I'm an alcoholic. Moved to Alaska in the early 2000s. My dad was in the Air Force, so we got stationed up here. And then he got orders in 2005 to Texas, and I had to make a really tough decision of whether I was going to move with my family or not.

I was like, well, I'm 7, I should actually probably go. So I did. Yeah, lived in Texas, Montana, Japan, graduated high school in Japan, did college in Texas, and came right back to Alaska right after.

Lived in Juneau for a few years for work. Also hated it due to the rain. Uh, it's totally, totally over it. On a nice day, Juneau is the most beautiful place in Alaska, I think, but those days are very far and few in between. Um, live in Eagle River, it's very 100%.

Um, have a son. He is involved actually probably better than I am. He's even been tipped by a few community meetings and stuff, so I appreciate that. Um, yeah, that's about it.

You can't hide, Jennifer. I tried to, Chris. Allie's the only one successfully hiding. She's not in the room. Okay, hi, Jennifer.

Um, let's see, I grew up in Texas and got out of there as quickly as I could at 18.

And I moved to Colorado for college. I lived in Colorado. My family mostly also lives in Texas, so we do get to go back and see them. And also spend a lot of time in New Mexico. Um, let's see, I met my husband in Colorado.

We worked at a bar together, and, uh, we've been married 18 years, I think. I have a 10-year-old son and a 16-year-old daughter. We moved here about 7 years ago. We bought our house about a month before the big earthquake, so that was exciting. Never been in an earthquake before.

Um, and I just say I love Anchorage so much and also find Alaska a really hard place to live sometimes, so it's like it's both. Um, so Jamie Hines. I was born and raised in Cody, Wyoming. Actually, Loppy, Wyoming, which is 30 minutes outside of Yellowstone. I have a very different opinion of Yellowstone than most people.

Um, I get carsick and I was forced to sit in the back seat with large bullfrogs going by my brain like this. And anyway, you mean like actually Yellowstone, not the show? Yes. Yeah. Um, I moved up here Directly after college, I met my husband at work.

We both worked at Moore Heating. I was a dispatcher, he was a parts driver. Um, he started working for First National Bank Alaska, and in his elevation through their system, we moved around a lot. So we moved We moved to Kodiak, we moved to Glenallen, we moved to Skola, we moved to Haines, we moved to Eagle River, and I thought we were done moving. And then he got another opportunity and we moved to Kenai.

And, um, and then I thought we were done moving again, and then he got another opportunity, and then we moved back to Anchorage. And I thought I was gonna divorce him at some point. Um, I fell into the clerk profession in Haines. Um, agree with Jared that there is, um, 364 crappy days a year in Juneau. There is one nice one.

Um, I became a deputy clerk in 2009 in Haines. We moved to Eagle River in 2012.

I started for the Anchorage Clerk's Office in 2014 as the Business License Official. I think it was 2015. Um, when we moved to Kenai, I was the Deputy Clerk in Kenai, became the Clerk in Kenai, started as the President of the Alaska Association of Municipal Clerks, or went through that rotation in Kenai, and then I decided not to divorce my husband. I'm going to have to anchor to him. I'm going to be election administrator starting in 2022.

Um, and then Barbara said she was going to retire and encouraged me to apply for the job, and here we are. And I have two kids. One is 14 and one is 18. They both have torn ACLs. That's a new teach them how to ski at 2, eventually you will be replacing their ACLs, I think.

Fair warning. But Paige is going to college in, um, Billings, Montana. She got a ski scholarship just by having a torn ACL, and so we'll see how that goes come January, middle of January. And Chandler is missing this year again because he tore his ACL again in September. So it's been a rough year, but that is your book.

I am Erin Baldwin Day. I am Anchorage born and raised. I grew up in a little neighborhood right across Northern Lights from Weather Junior High on a street called Lovejoy. I had my first kiss at the corner of Northern Lights and Lake Otis, just outside of Gunnar Junior High, and had the mortifying experience of having, because of Cambridge, one of my mom's best friends passing through the intersection at that exact moment. She called my mother and told my mother that she saw me kissing a boy, and that was a whole conversation at dinner.

Um, what else? Um, I graduated from East, went to Texas for college, was in Texas for about 10 years.

I married a New Mexico boy that I met in school, and he was very persistent, so we've been married 20 years. And we have two kiddos, a 19-year-old and a 17-year-old. My daughter graduated from West last year and is hanging around Anchorage still because with our political environment being what it was, she was unable to get her student visa Lisa to go to the school she applied to and was accepted to in Madrid, Spain. And so she is trying to figure out what to do with her life while her admission is deferred and we figure out how to, uh, get all of that taken care of. My son is a senior at Polaris and, um, is looking at a whole interesting variety of schools, but it's really, really strange to be in this world where, like, I'm watching humans out into the world.

Um, let's see, I, um, I really, really enjoy fat biking, mountain biking. I am a terrible cross-country skier even though I grew up here as a kid. I didn't actually learn to cross-country ski until I was an adult and my son taught me. Um, and so I cross-country ski badly, but it is an activity that I enjoy. It kind of keeps me sane during winter months.

I love barbells. I spent some time as a CrossFit coach in about a decade actually, and I really love that. So I'm, I'm a strength training enthusiast, I guess you could say. Uh, less so now than I was pre-COVID, but it's still a part of my life. And yeah, I love to cook.

That's actually a way that I decompress from that better state of things. I really like to eat delicious food, which incentivizes learning how to make delicious food. So I really love to cook, and I love to have people over. We have a 12-foot dining table in our upstairs, and we like to have people. So that's a part of our family culture, is just hospitality.

We have a very open-door policy, and for that reason I very frequently have an indeterminate number of teenagers hanging out at my house on any given Friday or Saturday night, because they know that we're a house that people just kind of come and loiter, which which is great. Sounding like it. Uh, let's see what else. Um, I am actually feeling really low energy today, uh, so in the vein of sharing something about where you're at, um, I am feeling so emotionally beat down, uh, from just some like really contentious, uh, public engagement work that I've had to do recently, and I'm just really, really weary of managing other people's feelings. So just so you know, um, I'm a little, I'm a little weary, maybe a little tender today, so be excellent.

If anyone feels the need to cry, you come to me. I also spent some time as a pastor, so I'm also very comfortable with other people's tears and feelings. But just like, emotional management for other people is like exhausting sometimes. So anyway, that's why I'm not today. I'm really glad to be here with you all.

Great. Um, hi everyone, Felix Rivera. Um, unlike Erin, I did not have a nosy neighbor tell someone the first time that I kissed a boy. I was able to tell my mom, so— hey! Um, but, uh, yeah, so, uh, grew up in the military family.

My dad was in the Army.

Like a lot of Puerto Rican men, it's like the number one way that men get off the island is by joining the military. So I was born while my dad was stationed in Louisiana. So I remember one time this reporter called me a Louisiana native, and I'm like, that's Strange, because I left Louisiana when I was like, I don't know, 2 years old. I don't even have any memory of it, but sure, call me a Louisiana native if you want. Grew up mostly in Texas.

When my dad left Army and then joined National Guard, we moved to San Antonio. And much like Jennifer, was looking for my first opportunity to get the hell out of there. So I left Texas after I graduated high school in 2008 and actually went to this fine institution here, APU. So I actually have some good memories of this boardroom because I was the student body president, and so I was invited to be one of the people to sit in those side chairs. I wasn't at the big boys' table, I was at the side chairs.

Um, but yeah, so, uh, came up here, studied at Alaska Pacific University, and I think much like a lot of other people's stories, just fell in love with the community, fell in love with the place. And I felt like this was— much to the chagrin of my parents who still live in San Antonio, Texas— they thought this was going to be like a little adventure for Felix and that he would come back. But no, that was not the case. I ended up staying here, and after I graduated in 2011, did a lot of political stuff, a lot of nonprofit work, and I think a lot of all of those things is eventually what got me to serve on the assembly. I guess since we're sharing a little bit about other things that we like to do, um, yeah, I, I, as most of you know, am an avid gamer, so I like playing video games.

I like reading. I like the idea of cooking, but actually, like, make it time to cook— I like watching other people cook. I like watching a good cooking show.

Um, yeah, um, that's probably—. I don't know about you. You can translate it in my tongue. I'm gonna do the last one.

Miaro Silvers. I don't like talking about myself. I'll preface this with that. Um, I was born in Glenallen, two kids. I have a dog.

Um, moved to Anchorage when I was 6. Lived in Colorado, that's where I graduated college with a degree in environmental science. And what else was I supposed to say? Um, I like to garden. Um, and that's about it.

Um, when Yara says she likes to garden, what she means is she has the most gorgeous— like, I don't even know what to call it— hour— what is it, like your, your backyard? My front yard? Yes, yeah, huge. It is. She's not just like a gardener, like, the lawn to replace it with flower beds.

It's stunning. It is she's like a Master Gardener, so don't undersell that.

Daniel Voland. Um, I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, Federal Way, Washington. Um, my favorite house that we lived in was a little hobby farm, so we raised pigs and horses and dirt bikes and goat. That was really fun.

Went to undergrad, studied biology at Pacific Lutheran University, which is in Tacoma, and then went to optometry school in Forest Grove, Oregon, which is really pretty farm and wine country about 40 minutes west of Portland. It's also kind of close to the Oregon coast, which I really love. Living in that area is where I think I first fell in love with active transportation, being able to ride my bike from the campus 15 minutes to Hillsboro and get on the MAX and take that downtown, explore Portland on my single-speed hipster bike. That was really fun. After I graduated, I moved— I was really loving Portland, but I moved back to Seattle, moved back in with my parents for about 6 months.

That was fun. They were living downtown Seattle at that at that point, and up the hill from the International District. Then I moved to Capitol Hill and then Ballard. So I liked that season. But my Alaska origin story is that I started coming up to Alaska every other month to do remote eye care, so traveling all over the state.

I've been to over 30 communities doing that. And yeah, it's just been awesome to be able to volunteer at dog sled So I would see my patients out on St. Lawrence Island go on a whale hunt. It was very just immersive and felt totally foreign and different to me as kind of a city guy to be able to explore Alaska. And now I love anything outdoors. I'm really into wild ice feeding, as a lot of you know.

I need to disclose that at an upcoming meeting. I'm not sure about wildlife skating much. But I love backpacking, downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, or just walking Juniper on the coastal trail. I feel like I'm doing my Hinge bio. Single, let the record show.

Anyway, yeah, and I genuinely enjoy most days being on this side. I think we get to dig into really interesting topics and there's always something more to learn, and I enjoy being able to help my constituents. There are days where, yes, I too feel drained by some of the public engagement, but happy to be doing this for the time being and really appreciate Hi, I'm Anna. I am from the Midwest. Also, I'm using my emotional support notes, as I like to say.

So I'm originally from Ohio. My family is from Chicago and Upper Michigan, like the UP. I don't have an accent, I don't think, but somehow in there I might have acquired some pieces of one. My background is actually, I would call myself an art kid. I really like to draw.

And these are all things that I feel like is a past life of myself. That's really what I first wanted to be. I got into writing and then eventually discovered history, became overeducated and thought I was going to become a history professor, decided that was a terrible idea, and then found planning when I lived in Chicago. And so I ended up going into city planning, and that's kind of the pipeline that both led me up here. I got hired to do a planning job with a consulting firm and then ended up in, you know, not the same as planning, but a lot of what we do is in the same realm.

Also, my parents are joiners, I would say. Like, they were involved in their church. I'm not religious now, but my family was raised Presbyterian, and just, you know, my mom was on the neighborhood board, whatever, right? Like, whatever was going on, she would hand out the candles during Christmas because they would do those little, like, you know, put lights on the end of your driveway thing. So that's probably my origin story as far as, like, why I sign up to do things like this, community council, all of that.

Also, I am a mix of a bunch of things, so I am Scotch-Irish, Serbian, I'm an eighth Filipino, which is why I get involved in Filipino things even though I look white. If you looked at my grandma, you would see she looks Filipino, but that was never part of our family culture, and so I feel like I am a mix of a bunch of different things, and yet none of those things, which is an interesting place to be as an American, I think. I am hyperfocused on work. I could probably make other choices that would make my life easier in a lot of ways. And somehow I don't do that.

And then I gravitate between, this is a great idea and this is a terrible idea. So I think it sounds like we all feel that way sometimes. Also, when I moved up here to Alaska, I acquired a family. So my partner James, we are not married. We will hopefully be soon, partly for health insurance reasons, to be honest.

But we lived together for a long time. He had a very different path than I have. He's from Wyoming and Valdez. He has two kids that he had early in his life. And so I acquired a family pretty soon after I moved up here.

And so one kid is just turned 21, lives in LA with her grandmother, doing good. Other kid also at Polaris and is a senior. And so that was also interesting to kind of step into that, because that was not in the path that I had imagined for myself. I also have— I consider myself straight, but I have a number of queer people in my family, transgender, non-binary, even probably multiple generations back, and so that is a very personal issue for me, even though it's maybe not one where I, you know, I'm in the space of ally and not identifying that way myself. I have been trying to rediscover all the hobbies that I enjoy, so things like gardening.

I like being creative. I like color. As you all know, because I talk about it a lot, we've been fixing up this house, so learning how to do that. It's very gratifying to be working with my hands, and that work's never done, obviously. So I've been joking it's been the year of labor for sure, all my free time too.

And lastly, I would say when I meet with folks, just to kind of get a sense of who they are, I always say, "What's your deal?" You know, and not in a negative way, but just kind of like, "What are you about?" You know, not just your story. And I would say my driving force is really that I feel, from all of what I know about history, nothing is guaranteed, right? There is no— I don't believe that there is a set end date, that things inherently get better no matter what, all of those things. And so I am driven by the fact that it takes effort to make things the way that you would hope they would be. So that's why, at the end of the day, why I'm here.

All right, that leaves me. Wait, Ellie came in the room. Hey, hello everyone! You want to share a little bit about ourselves? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great.

Um, hello, um, I moved to Anchorage from Denver in 2017 and worked at UAA for 5 years advising student organizations. Um, I was in student government myself at CU Denver. And found that to be just such a fulfilling evolution of my being in college and a way to make an impact. Actually, fun fact, if you go to Denver, you're driving around downtown, you drive down Speer Boulevard and you'll see a building in the CU Denver campus that's right there downtown with a huge rock wall that hangs over the boulevard. That building has my name on it!

I helped, um, carried forward a student referendum for a student fee to fund this student wellness center. And it's my maiden name, so RIP Ali Creasy. But it was this really profound moment that helped me realize that one person can make a big difference. I had a great boss right out of college. I worked at the institution in institutional communications, so branding and speech writing.

For the chancellor, and my boss encouraged me to get a master's in public administration. So when we had the opportunity to move to Anchorage, I pursued my MPA at UAA. Pro tip for anyone who's looking at higher education: you should work at the institution and use that tuition benefit for your own gain. Take classes and get a degree for cheap. Um, and Being involved and seeing the way that students live in the community, right?

UA is a primarily commuter college, so students living out in the community are affected by the choices that you will make as the assembly every day. It got me very quickly connected to local government and paying attention to the legislative process and the issues that you all were dealing with. It was super fun to talk with students about things that the Assembly was working on. Uh, the plastic bag ban comes to mind as one that was just a really fun debate among students and something that they got to see their own input and participation in the public process, um, reflected in the outcome. So that got me tuned in.

I got the chance to connect with the elections team and do some work, and there too for Unite with Claire and Jamie and join the team. It's been a super rewarding few years. I tell everyone who asks that working for the community has just been an amazing experience and super rewarding to pour oneself and one's talent into the community and see that benefit the residents for years to come. So thank you. All right, 166 days, 6 hours, and no minutes.

That's where I am right now. Um, Not that I'm counting. So I am from California, born in Santa Maria, small farming town. Um, lived all over that state, in the north, in the central parts when I was young. Went to college, Cal Poly, um, and came here out of college.

I went to DC for 6 months and really hated it. It was too Mendacious. And so, but I came up for the holidays to Anchorage. I have family up here. And the airline I came up on was Western Pacific Airlines, which no longer exists.

It routed through Denver. And I should have known something was up because as we're pulling out of the gate at Denver, there's Bart Simpson, like 15 feet tall, on the plane next to me. And that was a Western Pacific airplane. And I flew up to Alaska, and the next day they went out of business, and I had no flight home. Back to DC.

And I took that as a sign, looked around, and realized Alaska claimed me. And that was 1997, a while ago. And so my first work was in like Covenant House, helping kids who are homeless on the streets, and the Volunteers of America ARCH program, which is a residential treatment center for adolescent addiction, serves kids from statewide. And I did that work for a few years, became a counselor, kind of the highest level counselor you could be in the organization. And there's this one kid— our ritual at the end of a treatment course was to have a final group.

The group is called Hopes and Fears, in which everybody gets around the kids and tells them, "My hope for you is this, and my fear for you is this." And there was this one kid who graduated, and I couldn't find any hope for him. I had no hope for him. And I realized that was a me problem, that I wasn't cut out for clinical care.

Because they need someone who every time can find something to hope. And so that was the point in my career when I moved towards policy and started working on the state's behavioral healthcare system by contract at the company I currently work in my day job, or my whatever kind of job you call that whenever I'm not doing this job. And that was on the downsizing of API and the upsizing of community-based supports. The rumor of the upsizing of community-based supports and the integration of comorbid care, dual diagnosis, kind of making sure we're treating the individual's addiction but at the same time their mental health and other issues. There was a real shift at that time.

So I did that work for a number of years and then got involved in community and civics work. Actually, I met Diana Tillian. I don't know if any of you knew who she was. Clem's wife. Octopus Ink.

She painted with Octopus Ink. I dated someone in Homer, and so we would go down there all the time, boat around Katchemak Bay. And this lovely old woman said to me, you know, it's the strangest thing. I could teach at Yale, but I can't teach at the University of Alaska because I don't have a degree. And I've lived my whole life on an island in Katchemak Bay, would never have had the chance, but I've traveled the world with my girlfriends, painted art everywhere.

And I just decided that day I was going to get her an honorary degree with the university. I ran that up the chain, figured out all the steps. My friend Susan Ruddy put me in touch with Lee Gorsuch, who was the UAA chancellor at the time, and he said, "You need to get letters of support." So I went to senators and I went to the governor's office and I met all the people. And I think only one person out of the hundreds I talked to gave me a partisan, like, "Why would I do that for them? I'm not like them." But everyone else, no matter what their stripes were, like, yes, they signed on board.

And that connected me with Alaska's civic culture from the pre-statehood to the statehood to the kind of 50th anniversary era. I was the vice chair of the state's 50th anniversary statehood celebration commission appointed by Murkowski. And in fact, our meeting on Friday was really interesting to me. I wrote a letter to the editor that will probably go out soon. About Friday where governors and mayors and like all kinds of people were there.

My reflection of my experience in Alaska goes back to '97, and Mystrøm was the oldest mayor who was there, who was the mayor when I first came. And it's interesting, Anchorage's first 50 years, seeing back, thinking about Alaska's first 50 years. Vic Fisher is gone just a year or two ago. So we're in Anchorage at that point now where The first wave is gone and the second wave is still here. This is the third wave, I think, in some ways.

So it's good and interesting to be part of that. Then I have just a couple of notes. Jared, you disclosed that you were an alcoholic and joked. Was that just a joke or was that a truth? That's a joke.

I'm good. I'm good. I just want to clarify. There's no judgment on my part. And Jamie and my first contact was was actually when I was working to, um, end a liquor license that was not working very well, and it was causing more harm than good to a high level.

And I have letters that I found as I was cleaning up my office that were signed by Jamie in like 2012, 2015 or something. Like, wow, this is the world's— how they collide. Huh? It was Spirits of Alaska, and it was the second one in the middle of the Fairview neighborhood, and Now there's none, and the neighborhood is better for it. And I'm not anti-alcohol, but that was a real harmful operation— drug dealing across the counter and sex trafficking in the streets and big parties overnight.

And it was really intense. It was a traumatic assembly meeting for me as well. Yeah, it was. And the right thing—. They came in and put the microphone into my mouth for me because I apparently couldn't talk loud enough.

What's interesting is the power of assembly members. The assembly as a body is really great, and Dennis Wheeler was the municipal attorney at the time. We killed that liquor license, and there was no procedure for a liquor license to be revived. It was dead. Once it's gone, evaporates.

But Dennis negotiated to keep us out of court with the owners of the Spirits of Alaska, that they could, if the state would allow— we didn't object— recreate that license for the purpose of selling it so they could be less harmed, because it wasn't them, it was really the environment. And so the assembly agreed, and because of that agreement, it made this kind of miracle happen. So you have a lot of power. And Aaron, we need to do some CrossFit and make some food. Like, I don't know, and mountain bike, but it's not the season.

I don't love fat tire biking. Felix and I met when he was in college. My roommate at the time was in leadership with him at APU, so that's been a little while. And Ali, the plastic bag ban is such a thing. We get credit for it.

But really where it started was Fort Yukon, Alaska. First bag ban in the world. And so it's an Alaskan thing because they were just so sick of seeing plastic that they couldn't get rid of blowing along the tundra. So we were just followers on rural Alaska, which seems to see things first. So I'll end where I started.

166 Days, 5 hours, and 53 minutes or so, depending on when the certification vote happens. So with that, there you go.

Do folks want a quick 5-minute break before we get into work? We're only half an hour behind. We're actually—. No, we're, we're doing great, especially with the small numbers. Yeah, George, George is around somewhere.

He might show up. Okay, okay, okay.

Black womacka. You guys want to see her funny thing? [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Oh my God, I'm gonna enjoy that. I'm sorry you got suckered into that letter. That letter?

Yeah, your name is in that letter. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Right, so I might follow up with them and just say like, hey, look, this is a conversation. You know what I'd like to do with them, but it's a risk, is appoint them in some point, at some point, very narrowly to convene a group that talks about how we square the two impulses, that we need housing and we need neighborhoods demand protection. Like, so get them actually up to speed on the matter, right? The problem is where they're all at.

It's where they're all from, you know, the city's human eye. It's in the plan for 25 years, right? Then are we still doing that, or are we doing something else? Right, but they're supposed to be a trusted convener, right? And they have a process for doing it.

But the risk is their president is Roger's book. Right, it wasn't even Patty, it was that. But Patty just got in front of it because she had been hearing. It's fucking amazing. I'm asking in the realm of fights, like, I just don't see how this community moves forward on anything without having huge fucking fights every time until you resolve it.

Where'd you go to college, Daryn? So maybe that's not possible. Well, it is possible, but what is possible is taking marginal steps, coming up with agreements, civil agreements for how we can make decisions because we're not going to agree on this or that. And what they're trying to do is elevate every change to Title 21 to a concrete total revision. Like, oh yeah, right.

And it is, and it's been in every plan since. And if what the specifics aren't working because we wrote it 25 years ago in different conditions, then you either have to change the plan or just say it's okay. Or have a process for working through specific— [FOREIGN LANGUAGE].

Hey, like, great feeling, you know, so it's like seeing the—. Holy cow! But that doesn't mean I'm gonna give in. No, and it's okay, you know. Well, and my point is like, okay, there's two alternatives.

Right. And you gotta see it on balance, like all of the things, and in the end they're happy with the work we're doing. That's the reality. On any specific issue, and that's why we kind of generally have a practice of doing our best to keep hot items off the agenda for January I told people, you know, like, just do your best. Of course, some things make it through because time or reality just demands it, right?

But we have the power as a body to like, okay, let's take this up with Ben, you know. And so it's a pretty important impulse, in my opinion, to keep good order, stability, is to tone it down a little window. And then go hog wild. And they remember the last thing. Oh, you got your house housewife?

I should get one of those. It's a nice feature. Yes. Speaking of the old days, I was going through my stuff, you know, because like just consolidating. I found this like like, you remember how much community work they've done?

Oh yeah. And I found that for the Bernie Sanders operation, and it was like this little poster they were doing. Nice. And so I was like, oh man, that's a different world now. Oh, what a different world.

It was literally just 10 years ago. It wasn't that long ago. It was funnier just to think back, like, all right, that's like 2, like, 10 years, like, much more like, yeah, that was a long time ago. But definitely still remember the Bush Council, like, the very first things.

Hey Jamie, would you check the article? It's been updated. Yes. And verify the updates are good. I mean, they made the switch from— as long as they say it means democracy line, not the— that's the only switch he said he was playing.

I can't tell. I don't know if democracy line is still— confusion on his part about the technology because— Yes! When he said, can you make this change, he said, I'll reach out to Bradley and Brian. I was under the impression this is a story, and then he replied back again, I will do it.

Well, in other states you can get that online, right? You can, you can go, uh, a link or website and you can apply for it. That's a different system where you put in your voter ID number and then it gives you your ballot. Whereas you're doing verification. Yeah, yeah.

We get an application where we confirm that you are who you say you are and then we send a ballot to Where did you teach CrossFit? Um, a couple of places. So I was at CrossFit Alaska for 2 years, and then I helped open Redox CrossFit, which just closed actually. This is sad. But I took— once I retired from my regular routine in 2018, I needed to reclaim some time in my life.

I continue to do rehabilitative programming on a case-by-case basis and have worked with a lot of NBA basketball players who are kind of in the like weird shadowy middle ground between being discharged with therapy but not being quite ready to return to sports. So I freelance work with some of those guys and wrote programming for friends. I'm a post-traumatic sort of Give a run across Bill Miller. I used to take classes with him, but a lot of people in the CrossFit—. Like a little short stocky, no?

Yeah, bald, ex-cop. Bill Miller, that's CrossFit Northern Exposure. Yeah, is that where he is?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was at CrossFit Alaska before Northern Exposure opened.

Vic Nicholas. Yep, he's a firefighter now. Yeah, I know, I know. And like, so the coach that hired me was Tommy Francis. So now is that—.

Um, I mean, I guess that there was a period there where CrossFit Alaska City I did, yeah. That's how I know Yarrow. I trust her husband. Just finishing. Yeah, so let's jump back in.

We're transitioning to the work plan and goal prioritization exercise, which is really a bulk of the time today, is to dig into the work plan and try to identify what your priorities are before we then go into the capacity and workload brainstorm discussion.

Um, I believe I'm to pass it to Felix to sort of set the stage about this for you, give you some background of how this work plan came before— I'll pass it to Felix and then I'll get you set in the exercise that we're going to do and how we're going to do it. Wonderful. All right, so, um, yeah, I'm just going to give you all just a little bit of context and history of where the work plan came from. So in 2019, I became chair of the Assembly, uh, after we reorganized during our normal process after we certified the election in April. And this was one of the first projects that I kicked off as chair.

And went through many months, and we got done on December 17th when the Assembly formally adopted this resolution which adopted the Assembly's vision and goals for 2019 to 2021. So it's really a strategic plan, strategic vision document. It was a lengthy process. We actually hired a professional facilitator to help guide us through that process. And in the end, what we ended up with were a variety of buckets.

We ended up with 5 different buckets. And so you'll see, like, where we started and then where we are now. Communications, homelessness, quality of life, public safety, and economic development were the buckets that we started off with. And we really, in each of these, defined what do we know now, what's the landscape, what don't we know, what questions do we still have, what are our short-term and long-term goals, who are we going to work with to get these things done, and how are we going to hold ourselves accountable to getting this work done. So in the end, that produced a 12-page document that was arduously edited paragraph by paragraph by all members of the assembly.

There were some Assembly members who I think weren't as jazzed about this project, but I think most Assembly members were very interested in this idea. So that was like a little bit of what we did. A little bit of the why. Um, so when I, uh, first became chair, and really leading up to me becoming the chair, I knew that there was something missing on the assembly side. And, uh, and I knew that because in so many of the conversations that I had with current and former leaders, so many of the conversations were centered around what is the mayor's vision for the city and really minimizing our role.

And we were just supposed to do whatever the mayor said our vision should be, right? And I had actually worked in the mayor's office prior to getting elected And we spent the day— I remember working in the mayor's office. We spent the day in Russian Jack, uh, where all of the, uh, top execs came together and we formed the mayor's strategic plan for his first term. And it's something, uh, I was— an experience that I really remember. I also worked like I introduced a lot of different nonprofit boards, so had a lot of experience from that board level of strategic planning.

So I really thought of this from two perspectives. We need some type of communications tool because, um, for— I'm sure for some of the new members, but certainly for some of the members who served a little longer, you probably get asked a lot, what is it that you do as an assembly member? And sometimes it's a little bit difficult to answer that question in a, like, a succinct kind of way because we do so much different stuff. So really using this.

As a communication tool to the public of here are our priorities as an assembly. And then really try to craft some sort of shared strategic vision. Now this vision was never meant to put anyone in a box, right? We're all independent sovereigns. We don't have to stick to just what our strategic vision is, but it did help us to align some of our work where we could find alignment.

So this took— this document took us through mid-2021. And then around there I started asking, so what are we going to do? Because we are going to get close to the end of this document, and do we want to go through a whole other process to update, do another 3-year strategic plan? And that's when we came up with the idea of doing annual updates instead of just doing a 3-year cycle. So, um, yeah, that's just a little bit of like how this started, why we started it, and why now we're on annual.

I guess I would just add to really tap into what you made a point about. This kind of—. It's interesting because there's a strategic plan of direction. It's general guidance. Here we're going, these are things we're working on, but every member has the right to be doing whatever they want to be doing.

Some people look at that as kind of a hazard, like we have this plan or we can't have this plan because we have these individual efforts. I have come to conclude that having those two directions, if you will, that are parallel-ish, that are happening simultaneously, might be going different directions, is an asset because we are all independently connecting with our neighbors and our constituencies and have our values, and we have these shared efforts. I think we heard someone last week arguing that it's not like a a regular board where the board gives direction and the, you know, the administrators do it, right? That's actually the beauty of it. That's not the bad part about it.

So I just would offer it's worked out really well. Sorry.

Yeah, I think that's really good context, and I think there is this interesting tension where we do make decisions as a body. And we're individual rights, so we're legislators. We're different than what you would think of as serving on a board where ultimately you all walk out of the room and this is— that's the direction. But I do think it's valuable and something I guess as I've been reflecting on thinking about this retreat and why it matters is because in terms of the culture of the organization, it changes with all of us, right? We have our staff that is some continuity and depending on how long folks serve, they provide continuity.

But ultimately, we have to continue to build the culture of the Assembly, the culture of the institution. And so this is one of those ways to do that. And so it doesn't mean that we all, you know, say this is the only thing we're doing, or that we're not— that we're hemming ourselves in. But I think it is something important to keep in mind. And then I think I would put on the table that every member has some responsibility to contribute to that culture institution in some way.

So it doesn't again mean like we all agree on this, or we all are saying we're only going to be doing these things, but I think like because of term limits and just because of the nature of this job, it is up to the 12 of us to take some ownership of what this body looks like. And so that— I think that's part of the goal too. And so it doesn't mean anything should change. This isn't the only way to do it, but I guess that's a question I want to put on the table for all my peers to keep thinking about through this process. Oh, and those 5 categories that Felix mentioned turned into these— this is the backside of the 2024 accomplishments— turned into these, um, 6.

And then last year it got turned into these 7. So that's every year the body has kind of tweaked it as needed for the times. And then at some point you started adding top priorities of— and it's kind of weird, and Cameron is kind of complaining like, how do these match this? And for the most part, all of these smaller categories fit into one of the priorities, and these priorities are just a really helpful way for you to focus on what, what needs to rise to the top if you're dividing your time. I would offer a slight nuance that all of those things that are on those lower boxes are things that people have said, I'm going to work on this, right?

We don't have a team of staff that we send out, go forth and do We have teams of staff that help us go forth and do. And so every one of those items that makes it on the list are with people who have raised their hand and said, I will work on that. And so if nobody worked on it in the year, it's fair to take it off. No one's going to actually work on it. But this is not us projecting on a staff that doesn't exist to do things that we want done but can't get done.

This is where I raise my hand and say, I'm going to do this work. That's a very important piece for people to recognize. We do the work supported by the teams. But I might also just add that, um, to Felix's point, it is also a communications tool. And one of the coolest ways that I've seen the work plan used is as, um, new— or as Jamie and Claire met with department directors, being able to hold up the work plan and say, this is what assembly members are looking to do this year.

And so to the extent that the administration can support or provide that staff assistance, right, it's helpful to be able to say this is where some of the responses are. Would somebody mind sending me a PDF copy of the worksheet? I'll have the most updated version.

I work on one for two, and that's not on state. So what our goal for today is to try to identify what your priorities are going to be moving forward. So to start, in the interest of making it somewhat manageable, we're working with these four: housing action, energy infrastructure and transportation, public health safety, quality of life, and good government as the four areas. The idea is I'm pivoting a little bit because the numbers are small. I'm going to break you into 2 groups and we're going to complete a World Cafe style exercise where you will rotate to each of these different categories, brainstorm whatever it is you— legitimate brainstorm, thoughts, ideas, whatever you want to put out there.

Then you want to evolve that brainstorm into actions that you think should be assembly-driven and actions that you think should be assembly-supported or have assembly involvement. And the idea of doing the brainstorm first before you go to the actions is that you'll evolve what you articulate in actions and write a better action, something that could be done. We'll have you go to all four categories. There is a fifth category over here that's other. And that is you feel like what this thing doesn't fit in any of these 4 categories, but we want to get it on the table and note it.

And so at any time during the exercise, if you have an other, write it down on your piece of paper. Did everyone grab one of the— I don't have the example of your—. Yeah, they each have it. The work—. Your own.

You have your own work plan notes page. So just write that down, and then when we're in transition between, you can walk over to the other and add it to it. So we're going to do this in iterations. We'll probably— you'll probably visit a couple of them more than once. We'll have sort of a lightning round at the end for you to get— take one last look at it, see what the other group wrote, and then we'll prioritize.

I'm going to give you 4 stickers and let you choose 4 things 4 things that you would prioritize just to see what emerges. That doesn't mean that all of the other things won't happen or that you can't prioritize something else, but if you were forced to say, "These are the 4 things that I'm gonna make sure happen," you'd do that. Once we have that picture and you can step back and see it, um, then we'll transition into the capacity and workload discussion. How are you guys gonna make this a reality? How are you gonna work as a team to execute these things.

Um, and then also, uh, photographs of all of these will be taken. It'll be then documented and come back to you to see after this, so it won't just disappear. Any questions about that?

Okay, so for— before we transition into groups, I would say take a look at this and go through it and then make any notes capture any of these items that you want to make sure, especially if one of these bulleted items is still in process, isn't done, needs to be done. If one is done, then it's not— you don't need to put it up for future priorities. If it's accomplished or is going to be accomplished in the next 60 days, you don't necessarily need to put it up there. Uh, so go through the bullets, identify the ones that you want, and then begin brainstorming, thinking about what's not on here that you want to add. And then the groups I have are Chris, Aaron, Jared, and Yarrow, and Felix, Daniel, and Anna.

So Group A, Chris, Aaron, Jared, and Yarrow. Group B, Felix, Daniel, and Anna. And I'm going to start Group A over here in public health, safety, quality of life. And I'm going to start Group B over here in housing action. My name is—.

So you're going to have about 20 minutes, 15 minutes to brainstorm. And for the first round, I really want to focus on brainstorm. Hello. Hi there. Hey.

I'm going to use pens for our usage. Yep. You got some markers here. You got your own— I'm not going to say I'm illiterate, but—. Do you want me to describe it?

I'm happy to be described. I actually have managerial— yeah, I'm happy to translate. One thing I would love up there is really starting to appreciate the various dashboards that are being pushed out. They give us real-time or real-ish time information on what's happening, what we've asked for. Homelessness, that's on that.

Police enforcement of certain laws. That's on the Korea. And so yeah, real-time data. We're going to real-time releasing, we should have real-time data. And so I don't know, it's good.

Yeah, I also would like for us to actually have user computer, like, data collection systems that talk to each other. Yeah, but that has to come with money. But don't allow it, you know, put any smush on your ideas right now. This is just brainstorming session. Yeah, just brainstorming.

Yeah.

—Fill out one thing with one department, it's able to communicate with another department. Yeah. Or that when you're in that same county too, get more out of it because you don't have 3 people running the exact same thing. Exactly. Like, AFC fills out this about their people, the PPB fills out this thing, and they talk to people in the health department, and then there's another thing, and it's like, wait a minute, why is—.

Put Scott Bigelow in parentheses. 4 O'clock start time. He's got an idea.

I think he might be why we're in the zero trust today. Is that right? Yes. That's so funny. But, but— Dang it, Scott!

It's not just on the application side, it's on the interoperability of the reporting. That's what I think also you're talking about, is that the various tools that various departments are using, figure out some way to uniformly report in a simplified system of public access so that it's like You don't have to go tracking here, you don't have to go tracking there, you can find it. So maybe even a portal.

I don't know how much assembly members we have, but I've heard we have to do a PBR before installing the systems. I think the owner wants to still modify this. I would like a new— well, on technology, I would like a new grant system that is not so direct. I'm actually working on that. They let me work on that.

I just haven't really got it. Are you including not requiring the staff insurance requirement? Like, is something going to happen? That's part of why I was— yeah, the insurance requirement is for the, for the, like, small grants and stuff like that.

I'm just helping them make a new application process, but this is tax incentives. You're shifting insurance burden. That's what that one is, really. That's the question. Well, yeah, eliminate it for the bidder, shift it on to the—.

Well, sure. And but like, so I understand why if you're contracting like Lincoln to do something, then yeah, they should have their own insurance. But like, a child care operator shouldn't have to insurance in order to apply for your lease. So I mean, I think like for small operators or something like that. For where it's— sorry, where it's not a public safety.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's in the public health. You know what John said? You can put it in multiple places. Okay, sorry.

So as long as it doesn't remind my office right now. I'll say PG. So if we're directly related to public safety, yes. I I think that we need to start addressing better illegal drug use, public drug use in our community. Goddamn enforcement.

Write that up. There you go.

That's simple enough. Yeah. Um, I just going to offer that we need the police officers to do it, and even if we get to our full complement We don't have enough for the demand. That's the reality for me.

And at the NAHD, I'm working with— it's something I'm actually already working on— I'm working with Cameron on a human trafficking push.

So I think that would be a good— anti-human trafficking. Anti-human trafficking. No, that's important actually.

But I think that'd be a really good thing that we can partner with, I don't know, as much, you know, government in the last few years to go on to make sure that we're working in a coordinated effort. It should be with the whole Alaska. It should be, but you know, that requires state money. Well, but the reality is folks are coming in on airplanes at Ted Stevens Airport and entering into the sex trafficking scheme. The invitation is open.

Yeah. Who's in it and stuck. Yeah. Right, and so— We've got about 10 more minutes. Yeah.

So if you're going to reach out to them too, you should also include—. Well, I mean, we have local partners here, right? Like, we do have like— yeah, yeah, I would love to see this. At least the Office of Rural Affairs is like a building that is going to be— rural Alaska needs it. And, um, is that here or is that there?

It is a part of the Department of Fish and Because ultimately we end up owning and possessing people who are coming in from there, and they fall into the skids or the traps in the camps, and then they end up in the sex traffic or the drug traffic or on the streets, or— right? And so it's like— so we have somebody who's getting destruction from camp, you know, I got—. Destruction camp. Yeah. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] to energy, infrastructure, and transportation.

That's gonna be me. That's true. That's your jam. Yeah. Well, you've literally been in state custody where they have verified your identity.

Why do you not get this? They give them a voucher. But if you lose the voucher, that's— and also like D&D doesn't always have the best staff. And it's shocking. Yeah, yeah, shocker.

It's just crowded and underfunded. There's not enough of them, and there used to be more. Um, I added a second Nancy Academy 2020. I agree, there may be a third if they do get to the 80 retirements and then identify. I'm not sure if there's somebody who wants to— Kevin, who asked?

So they only have one play? Yeah, generally they only do one a year. And they did none for a couple years. And now we are—. Not because they didn't want to, maybe opportunity.

That's crazy. And it was also like a 2020 setup thing. I'm like getting worried about this. I hear there's a story. No, it even happened before.

It's just the inevitable punching bag. It's always there. Budget is very mean. And so is the sponsor. Anyhow, there are some years where you don't even get one.

That is an unarguable statement without any latent political values. And we have leave and retirement. A massive leave and retirement. And we have voluntary separations as well. So, and is this just homelessness or is it like how HSP and.

I think it's keep the focus on the 10-year gap for the 4-packs and the change of the structure, right, that takes the burden off of folks having to work those huge terrible shifts. That's like a major— that's beyond any of your terms even. I mean, I think we need to start, and I think it's already started, I think it's in process.

But I think continuing the work around getting a lot of these mental health calls to all of the other places. Yeah, MCSE. Yeah, like that's work that's definitely started and that, that has been, I mean, and that's been workable, but we, we need to not go to sleep on it. Yeah, it's in the code, they agree, but it's still good. They kind of call it fire board meeting at the volunteer fire department.

And it's like, you have to scramble to get up away. You give about 2 more minutes.

That's a traditional fire department. Yeah, get out of the trees.

Well, some will, some will die. I was, I was over at some of them. I was over at Station 1 for a visit, and the entire time I was there, like, nobody came back. There were so many Jamie, I think I got that. They're like, here's a hose, bring it to work.

Um, anything else? All right, let's have you rotate. I'm gonna have this group go over here to get a government.

Hey, welcome to Energy, Infrastructure, and Transportation. Thank you. I'm here to be a point of reference for this station. So great.

I'll start by posing a question because I've been posing this similar to the affordability. Is where do we take a role on energy issues? Because obviously there's like But there's all these things that are like not noticed, but I wondered what if anything were used to support that. I'm really curious about how to tangle. I think schedule a work session or something about the undergrounding, until the undergrounding is done.

Yeah. Because I'm curious about what's happening, how those things get programmed. Right. What do we do for that project? I don't know about that.

Yeah, by the way, all these like outages and stuff, like that's being stopped. Yeah, I think, yeah, I think, I mean, I think in theory we're putting, um, the waste to energy project is a—. Oh yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, so that's what that's like directly overseas. Yeah, yeah.

I would like to do—. Maybe we say like, I think it would be both. Well, yeah, as a project, yes, WTE. And then, I mean, there is other sections. I guess the question is like how involved ourselves with municipal infrastructure and— Yeah, because I think it's interesting, so really the formal role is setting it up.

Yeah. So I just feel like streamlining and moving right to page, you know, digital is like the future of government. Vision Zero.

I think going back to your question earlier, Anna, on affordability, um, so I agree that I don't think this thing is going to have much of an impact on affordability, but what we will have to deal with is the impacts after, right?

And let's say prices up dramatically, which is what everyone's predicting, then where are people going to go? They're going to come to us for help, right? So I think we're going to have to define what our role is there. I mean, think about the calls and emails you get. What are the areas of emails you get that are like, just kind of—.

Any patterns of emails that come to you that are just like, yeah, I'm in a situation like this, or —assets in your toolbox is people mover, just like public transit. It's one of those where, yes, like, you can follow that in terms of what their strategy is, but also it's an opportunity to people move department to resource that to an extent. Right, right. We're not going to wrap it all up next year.

So, work with people, Uber, expand ridership, right? Yeah. Yeah, I think there's a couple of framings. My case here was like, number one, how can you guys increase rides? You're talking about how can the drivers like increase the, improve the ride quality at scale.

As it relates to the CIP process, how do you think about the administrative records and the reality of SOPs?

What else? Looks like something like transformative, or like, what's like a goal?

Or like dedicated bus lanes? Could we just say that?

Or explore dedicated bus lanes or provide a collector with buses right away. And the money for aid is so slim that, you know, you can buy something—. Because we do have 15,000 hours a year. That means like answering your emails. I wouldn't ever let someone—.

And then those are the folks that we're telling you— well, what did you ask Skyler to do? Well, there's the trade-off. He just did Google research. Um, do we also want to go out here?

Because they know nobody's dead.

One thing I would be interested in doing is an assembly review of the speech that was done during the school facilities speech last of the proposals to get about 5 more minutes. There are a couple in ether, um, as soon as next week, but like in general, right? You're kind of like, we're talking about revenue. Yeah, yeah, that's true, because like we have— but they did an amazing job with the infrastructure banking and the stuff. Is this an opportunity to do that?

Yeah. What the hell are we doing? Actually, maybe let's put— if you put two arrows with it [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] The other thing that I'll flag, which being my POV, is that this arm of the municipality is woefully undersupported for the communication. So like people, members public will all complain all day long. And like, the community's doing good work along all these areas, but like, nobody in the technical capacity would also be like, "And this is what we're writing off!" You know?

Yeah. About 2 more minutes.

It takes us not too long, and then we were in the middle of that, but we were like, "They don't want to." So that happened.

They have one PIO for all of this. Yes. Well, and it was interesting, the whole— the little bit of communication they've done on the plowing stuff recently, like, that like way took off on social media. People were really into it and liked their names. And so that's a good point.

It's like, look, when you do that, people talk about it, and then they know what's going on. I was asking like, 'You're plowing your roads,' and they said, 'Oh, it's okay, you know, it's on like a little hillside.' And then I was already working, I was getting out there.

It's a 1,000 pages long, but it's archaic. It's bigger than I have time for, and I tried to get it more, but the girl was like, no, I'm taking ours. 1,000 Pages long. Jared, please do. Yeah, open up a can of tamagotchi.

Well done.

You're gonna go visit the other two playing rooms, so we'll just keep rotating clockwise. So you're gonna go over to Housing Action and see what the first group came up with. And you can start—. Chris, is this your favorite room? Yeah, just a fair warning.

I don't like this room. The other group, they did a smooth transition. I tried. I always try. And this is the first room that they did.

They got the same instructions. Yeah, you just follow them differently.

Whoops. Wait, I don't— are they doing it differently? Yeah, yeah, it works. It's still the same exercise. I don't know what it does.

Another go-round, so we'll have the opportunity to make the same inputs for those parts. We're going to have a lightning round anyway where you'll get us to count lightning round. We want meaningful time to— to have—. That's basically what they were saying.

Actually, well, but that's the thing, like Um, okay. And they're part of the housing conversation, so you should have them up there.

Well, what do you want BOP to do? I would like you to speak to them and try to get them to participate in the conversation. To get them a part of it somehow? Just like more formally?

We will take photos of them. Great, I'm glad I wrote that on the other page. Let's see, really nice translations.

Um, and I was asking about that, that panel thing you're talking about having for the dashboard, like the police station, right? No, I mean like actually like modular construction panels. So like basically the like factory gets pre-installed. Yeah, exactly. And so the panels themselves Like the whole factory is basically, if they audit a certain percentage, but then anything that comes out is automatically inspected.

Well, and then you can date all the samples. It's similar to how HUD did it. Then you have these small amounts, but you get the HUD results and then you have HUD, but you have a huge gap between all the things you do. And what raises all the questions in this [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] What else do we want? And how can I understand?

Are we going mainstream? Are we going higher ed? Those two words.

Just create work. Okay. Which one? What is it? Can I actually write?

Because—. Is it— you can write whatever you want. You're not signing your name to it.

We passed that resolution about housing density being prioritized when it comes to parks and infrastructure. That's coming. Well, it's an annual review. Part of the situation.

Rather than try to take on such issues, create relief valves, small places in the code that can also be used. The planning code too, right? It should be used. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Anyhow, that's a way you can allow a project-specific waiver, more flexibility. So instead of these big changes and freak people out, cause massive scare in all this area, create some small tools for schools that are a little bit more— I would like to talk more about that.

Yeah, you are. So, I did mention that yesterday, Shantel Miller was going to come and talk about the bill.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] projects to apply in different ways that would not change the rules but would allow the projects to behave around them. Hang on. So why don't we create safety rules in code that are unbound to the rational implementation of our code? It's kind of this like lazy boundary almost. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Maybe we cheat like the other guys do and switch directions.

—For exemption, that pertain to any tool that will provide more flexibility to the departments to make decisions that don't require that we make sure we have qualified people in all of those. For me, right, that's the gist right there of the opt-out screening process. We talked about that before, with the decision-making, it's like tricky enough to get to the point that we have to stay all the way to the top. If you feel like you're exhausted, for instance, you can move on to actions. Start adding actions in this round.

I think it's here because I think if you want to close that, you know, have a partner, you want to hire more of these, there's a lot of conversations happening right now around what system you set into. You have a new person who's never heard HR. Say more about that. Housing units built, housing permits issued, maybe even a negative dashboard where like, you know, permits in limbo, permits 30 days or longer.

That's my understanding. That's probably a tie to the policy too. True, true. Delay because of this or pass or this much increase because of this. Well, and I think that gets you to solutions, right?

Because once you start to identify— like Bill asked, he represented again yesterday that 30% of the permit costs or of the building costs is permitting. You remember that table? Okay, where did you get that number? What are the factors involved? Like okay then please research local— national numbers not such an easy task no but that's true here it could be more it's probably less because of dollars per tester cost literally higher so when you're using a number that's tested to Chicago or Texas they have train system and so tell me what it is in Moscow tell me how much it is by percentage then we can zoom in on exactly on the problem instead of continuing this bizarre tango around Well, we know that it's high.

It's like, where is the real high one? Give us some numbers. And it's not like we can just change that. That's not in control of the airport. It's in our society.

You said I said you said I—. You said that I did it. Go find this guy. Go find this guy. But that's getting us in between the state and the federal.

Who's that state? It is West Virginia. Who are we? I'm not saying it's any one of us. I have no idea.

I'm just saying it's a political vote. You have every right to vote. I mean, I think my question is how much of this is like assembly-driven versus assembly-involved and supporting. That's a fair question to put up there, and maybe that's on the action side. I don't know how to continue to look over there, but this is in progress for Arlene.

And that's like super important. We work with the administration. The administration is doing their job and we're doing our job. So those are the points of worked on and this, I don't know, like, is this something that the Assembly drives or is this something that the mayor drives? Is this something the Assembly drives?

I don't know. I mean, how many dashboard does the Assembly drive? I don't know. What do you guys think? I mean, I think it's really useful information to develop more processes to send them to do some of these things, they're better equipped to do it, right?

They'll have the sign out, they'll have the answers. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to do anything mandated. Right.

Letting them know that we will support it and, you know, that we'd like to see it. What'd you do with the last one? And that if they don't want to do it, then you tell me you need to make sure. Maybe I want to do it. Right.

And just going forward with it in that way. Yeah. But I think where we can work with the administration is to set a place coming every now and then, more so when we started talking about it. So should we throw like a housing dashboard?

He was kind of— it's not just a rosy picture of all things. I wrote about this. I remember that. Yeah. Are you saying housing, like housing here?

No, for me, the OTs position. I mean, one thing is request regular— the divorce of DOT and housing policy has been a disaster over the years. So I will always speak to them in one voice. That's my advice. But it's any of those things.

Infrastructure that's needed. Investments have been made.

Uh, so I mean, is some of what we want to drive then just like the conversation around like what is actually needed to develop housing supply? I don't know, this is something I've kind of been struggling with, and it's related to OfficeGo, but it is like a bigger— it's a bigger question to me. Like, the mayor's goal of 10,000 homes in 10 years has been articulated related, but then that has not—. The roadmap, childcare. Well, it's not just the roadmap.

It's like there's no way— So yes, it would be interesting to do community education to socialize this idea of believing that this is so important for budgeting. We have new buildings, super expensive, like seniors.

But like, we saw— why do we— if I didn't know, they would go, why do we need this? But then again, maybe because of the work that you did before or something. I mean, why? I think it's because of the job that she announced for 10 years. Sure.

So what came behind that? Or, I mean, we have— right. And I think that's the question. Because I am now getting absolutely skewered on this issue because the idea of Title IX being 10 years and the necessity of that has not been socialized by age frustration. They haven't done public education around, like, you have constrained housing supply, why does zoning matter, blah blah blah, right?

Like, and so it kind of feels like there's this gap now. There's like a— there's like this bridge that needs to be built between like, okay, we need more housing, and like, then the conversation about, okay, well, our population is growing. And so I think what they really need to do also is figure out some way to Give you about 2 more minutes where you are, about 2 more minutes. Get any last thoughts.

Yeah, and so, but how's it going to happen? Like, what's on the side of the— these are the steps. Yeah, so in terms of holding—. We don't control that, that's the administration. So I think there is this in between the two points you guys have raised.

Yeah, area to explore, but it all comes down to like, what is it? Well, yeah, and to what degree is our name actually contributing to that conversation around the fact that Right, and I think that part is the reason why we keep continuing to do these small code changes to affect your comprehensive plan. So you're getting close to— all right, time to rotate, continue clockwise.

The how, that's pretty far out of our control. Or it's the breaking point where we find a fair warning before we get to the next one. They did the same thing. We got it. Welcome to energy, infrastructure, and transportation, which feels like a good next step of the conversation we've been having.

I love this. Okay. This is such bullshit. So their opening question that kind of brought them to this side is, what is the Assemblage role? What is the museum's role in the energy picture?

So the utility undergrounding came up as one. Yeah, I have a, um, a report for the 5-year implementation since they took over, and there's barely one or two in their whole list that they did fully. And they defaulted to the fact that the telecoms don't have to, and so we leave the poles. So we're going to exclude in the north, and we're going to have all these steel poles with wires everywhere, and we're going to pay a massive fee for it. It is the biggest scandal of the 2% tax.

I mean, it used to be a month. You guys just had it for the full 5-year plan. Okay, so say that again. We're gonna have a work session on it. Okay.

Yeah, just be patient. I'll have it all for you soon. Oh, so I'm not stepping on it. Thank you. Has there been an update on the seat?

Yes. And that's the most frustrating cross-border advice organization. Yes.

What does that mean? What are you thinking? Um, how's it handling? Oh, okay. Yeah.

Like, how do we collectively get with Matt too and be like, hey, what the— like, I think it's better if the average citizen— there's a $4 million hole in it. You know, it's budget. If we did something about that. Which is really the system itself. Yes.

The charge of elections. Yep. You know, and this is where you probably are going to have to do a personal call to somebody just because— I feel good about that. And honestly, I have to find out your last name. I think it fits here too.

Yeah, if they do a story on how we—. But the Native Americans, the people who reached out for it to allow, except like, culture and motor culture, most of them opted out. Oh, yeah, right. No, that's right, I get that. But we are not making a shift to—.

Yeah, but that's what the article presents, is that we're making a shift in our election system, and that was a false statements and issues. So you would want to put out your statement that is in direct response to 30 Questions? Yeah, I think the election stream needs to do that, right? And rebut the nonsense. And right now, that's how it happens, when it happens, where it happens.

No change in policy is happening. All we've seen are both Biden and Trump calling Americans—. Right? That's—. Yes, and that's— those are the interviews that are happening.

But it's good to hear that you're going to address communication, but not broadly, like breath. We have some of those numbers, not all of them, because you don't actually get like complete toxicology on like— I mean, you do in like if there's a pedestrian fatality, you do. So you don't always get like driver breathalyzer, like, so the data is not fantastic. But I think that Jaywalking is just like— that's an easy thing to blame it on, but correlation does not equal causation on those parts. And we— yeah, but you're right, like, this is the easy thing to pick on.

Yeah, well, it's easy to go, hey, this went away this many years ago, and these many years we've had this. Right, right. But we've also had increasing fentanyl use through those years. Totally. Yeah.

Can I put something controversial up here? Go for it. Since I haven't put anything controversial up.

And Subversa, can't leave them off. That's right, you don't. Okay, I don't have it. Uh, no, it's Shugyak, Birchwood, Yeah, just, just write Subversa and however you think it. Yeah, perfect, right?

Perfect. L-M-N-O-P. Is that our alphabet mafia? They don't even know what our alphabet is. Alphabet mafia, right? Oh my God.

Give you about 5 more minutes. So, um, I also want to to like— I would, I would really like to figure out how to, how to hold DOT accountable for pedestrian facilities on their roads. Well, so that's why I said—. And also, I mean, no, I know there's—. Yeah, maybe, maybe a review of all of our TORAs and see if we're actually getting paid.

Yeah, where we've taken responsibility, are we actually getting paid? And that's like a 30-year review, not a 5-year review. Yeah.

Review of Taurus.

Yeah, well, yeah, because their stated commitment, just to clear, um, The Glen, the hot parks, and the sewer highways, all before touching anything else. Which, I appreciate, like, that is a huge, like, that is a huge priority.

I got a place for us because so many people commute on it, but at the same time, we're a week after it started and it's washed out. I know for us, yeah, like I get it if we can't get to it in the first, you know, however many hours, but we have to, right? But I thought, so did you put, um, you know, how many municipal services, and then it was kind of like an accurate fact, like, I don't know how much space Well, I would just, I would just love for, I would love for the Blazers just clear like the pedestrian facilities on state roads because like it is so interesting. Like, so my neighborhood fronts Tudor, right? So within like 36 hours or less, all of my, like the neighborhood, all the sidewalks on McInnis, pristine.

They were like passable. You could roll like a wheelchair or a walker in there if you needed to. They drove out to Tudor— nothing. And in fact, they had plowed Tudor and shoved all their snow onto the sidewalks, and then there were people picking their way. And then the muni crews would have to only do that snow when the PeopleMover crews go out and clear the 2 more minutes.

Right, I don't know if you use any of the recreational trails in your neighborhood after a, um, a snowstorm, but Parks and Rec is out there. Bam! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Uh, what else do we have? Maybe, or like ask people who have better— What do you think, Court? Related? Um, I mean, I mean, controlling and blowing in the freaking permit —control in terminal. I don't know.

I mean, at this point, I don't know what our role is other than like the financial oversight. Sure. What is our— what is our role? I mean, we are oversight, we are funding. So oversight, funding, and oversight is really construction management.

It's the tariff. I don't think that's— That's very important. Otherwise you end up spending $25 million on a troubling, troubling safety bill. I mean, troubling in a lot of ways. That sounds oddly specific, doesn't it?

We want to make sure— Well, we have a work session on that too.

Uh, somebody else just said something that needs to go later. You gotta put funding in finance too. Plan on finance. Port tariffs. I had some wild-eyed crazy person say, you don't need a sales tax, you just need to jack up the port tariff.

Pay for everything with a use fee. Right. It's so nice to live in a world where you don't have to make the hard decisions, but you have the easy answers. Yeah.

Oh, that's an interesting thing. It's a nightmare, actually. It would cause more across the state. It's a nightmare. It would get like out-of-pocket suggestions.

It would get— Fire Island Anchorage, you guys get those emails. Oh, about sending in— Oh, the North Wing Mall. Oh my God, how many times have we heard the North Wing Mall? Like, nobody's ever come up with that idea before. Yeah, well, but the Fire Island one, you could just turn it into a reality TV show.

Yeah, that email was wild. It was very wild. It was out of curiosity, not because I support liberal politics, out of curiosity. Yeah, no, that's crazy. I tried running it through ChatGPT and Chatty was like, this is incredibly funny.

My bad, my bad. He's a goof, that's all I'm asking. You've gone too far. That is a little weird. So if I can get everyone's attention real quick and let you know what we're going to do now.

So you're going to go back around and go back to every one of them again, but we're going to do quicker time frames at them so you get a chance to see what other people have added, edits, additions. And this is sort of a final chance to visit each one of them. So we'll do about 5 minutes at each station, but if you need longer, you can stay. We crossed off everything the previous group did. We're going to go back and do the same.

Red lines. Red lines. That's good for us.

Okay, okay, all right. I love it. You were like, I want it. No, I probably won't keep it, but I do like, um, I started bringing these things to everything because I did a coworking with Michael Craigridge, and we, you know, I don't know, it was a 3-day thing, and she had part, and I had part, and she brought thinking puns, and I spent hours like planning this video, and then when we did that video, like, about it, everybody was like, "As a linguist, you're the best part." Yeah, nobody had comments about anything but like that, so I was like, "This is awesome." When you're back to this, I was noticing that you focus really a lot on the public safety part, but there are things in economic development—.

And since the South Bankers people aren't here, most of the high-profile stuff will be done on the North Bank. Well, at least there was a protest. Yeah, exactly. But I'm just putting it out there in case any of you were concerned about that. We might have put it up.

It's a big deal on East Bank Bridge too. I know it's a big deal to all of you, but I know that they're the ones that would have— right? They would have thought of it.

Registering, so like businesses that are high-risk individuals that have to be compliant with the law. So I'm actually a property consultant, so I work with some like, med cannabis businesses, and I'm like, I'm not talking about any social media, I'm a tech specialist, and so I need both this department and the legal department to help me understand the situation and be the best, like, I mean, I think, uh, supporting— we're not gonna— something about, uh, policy, you know, to help people change.

And I think that's coming. Like, I know the administration is working on this, and so I think, you know, that's something that they're trying to get support on.

Um, that's part of it. Um, due to this hot topic, that's where we ended up. Yes, yes.

What is this new definition of subversive? I couldn't remember that.

—Put a whole bunch of letters up there. See how people treat them? Yeah. It's 3 Rs. Is it 3 Rs?

Holy guacamole. An interesting place in this conversation with SOBRE is that, like, the operation, the maintenance operation of the city's roads and sidewalks, and who asks to be responsible for those things. And who ought to pay for them. You know, some cities it really is just residents. Not everywhere, but like— Yeah, you know, not doable when you're talking about Tudor.

Right, right. I mean like neighborhood. Yeah, but then a lot of those places have sidewalks. Right, right, right, right. Diddly squat.

I mean, I know the Anchorage Jail, state jail, but it's on Anchorage property. Eagle River, that's the town. So it's River Rural Service.

They had to get an ID. They have to call them out, or does the state? Hello. All looks good. Yeah, how was it?

It was that they were— so is Anchorage a contract? It is.

First, because they are—. On this side? Yes, they're on that side. No, they haven't— they're there. So we started rotating, that's where we finished.

Oh yeah, first round. So we'll just have to wait. Okay, make some tea. I tried the museum, but they were like— they're compassionate. Yeah, yeah.

Finally our new members, so very cool.

Jay, this is new hair for you, right? Don't you have more hair? I did a while ago. It's been a journey. It's been an evolution.

I did have a man bun. Yeah. And then—. But you've been short for a while. Feels like—.

I think the message came across that this is an option, right? That it is not the primary way or like the solid way. Yeah. I think it's a good look. Okay.

I think I'm gonna keep it short for a while. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot less work. That's for sure. I've had the— I went long once, but the transition, you know?

You go through the awkward phase. Yeah, I couldn't do it. I could never— I've never wanted to do it again. I think that that's, as I've been sitting here thinking about our dream work, kind of the—. I feel like it's taking over my personality.

I'm not able to do it. Did you ever watch Kids in the Hall? Did the one about the beard? Have you seen that one? Tell me the bit, because I'm trying to remember.

Basically, he starts growing a beard, and then he starts talking to the beard. And then there's one part where his wife is like, I think we should cut the beard. And he's like, the beard stays. You go. And he loves his beard.

Yeah, it was like that energy. Yeah, it's great. It's a good—. I don't know where that goes, but I think that's important. I remember a podcast.

I think you also have to consider past investors, because if you're looking for current— I'm trying to think. There's a lot of good ones from the show. Oh, the chicken thing.

Yeah, there's a lot. They were—. There was a nice heyday of sketch comedy around that time, where people did collars, uh, Kids in the Halls, that were sort of like little stuffy versions of it.

The hope is that we maybe chew on it overnight and then circle back tomorrow with comments. Sweet. More to come. Yeah. Have a good one.

Good night. Good night.

How would you like existing fees decrease? What is the trend going like? Does that make sense? No, last year we were voting by secret ballot. And we voted by email for a long time.

They talked about—. We had a spectrum that was basically the same level. And we weren't coming in saying it had to be a certain amount.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] And I think a really good piece of information, but mostly the first thing that made me see it was that it was a military, because everybody else was part of the military. That's what Charles Lear was talking about, what they call it, it's the military corps. Or Anchorage Corps. Yeah, Anchorage Corps was really popular. So, let me see, branch.

Yeah, that's what the founders have said.

Appointing a new living chair was somebody who had bad eyesight, and then we get rolled up into straws. I will never be the chair. I thought they would always be the chair holding the straws. Unless it's the chair. I'll be comfortably walking around, we have like 10 applicants, draw a straw, draw a straw.

Jeremy, I'm sorry, you guys have that statement already? No, we were working on it. Yeah.

Public safety dashboard. It can be all those things, and you can go and find it today when you are on the question. And so we can demonstrate this is a fact-based response with data instead of just how I feel. We don't want vibes-based legislation. Weird.

No, we want legislation based on our values.

Yeah, they're kind of old school. You're done with that one? Okay, then see if they added anything to this one. I don't know that I agree that Christo is commonly involved. I hear you.

But I'm okay with that. Oh, I would love to. You hear that? Is there coffee there? No, I think it's just hot tea.

Oh, I'm gonna rebel. I think there's no coffee in this building. We could send someone on a coffee run, but I don't think so. We could DoorDash coffee. That's a bit extreme.

Don't, don't send that bill to the branch, please. Jamie, where'd Jamie go? Oh, here. She had an idea. A letter to the editor, or maybe even an opinion to the New York Times.

Oh yeah, I want to do that one. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Don't mess with our elections. Like, it's fucked up. Like, the one place I am most like Most protective of, it's our elections.

Second, our branch.

Third, all y'all. Third. Over the years, I have taken so many phone calls. Even in poll-based elections, a guy calls me on Election Day. I got called to the Slope last minute because my, my alternate had to come home on a medical emergency.

I was intending to vote tomorrow, but I can't. Or I was planning to vote, but I can't. I apologize. The deadline has passed. That is not a fun conversation to have with people.

And like, that is what I was trying to, you know—. Well, okay. Deadline has passed is black and white. Red line. Simple to me.

That one's easy. I'm sorry, you missed it. I had a friend drop his ballot off at the election center at 8:03 and he was told sorry, and he was upset. I'm like, dude, 3 minutes is 3 minutes.

Mom answer is that if we let everybody do that—. Yeah, sadly that person recently passed away.

Yum. Oh buddy. Yep. So I gave everyone 4 stickers, so this might be a tough assignment, but, um, the idea—. We're not talking to a group of like chronic over-functioners.

No, you want to pick your 4, and then when you're ready put it on your 4. And you could pick one that you put all 4 stickers on if you want. What I don't— what I really want to ask you to not do is to not monitor where stickers are going and then decide, well, I don't see a sticker going on that one, so I'm gonna go there. What 4 emerge as your priorities are the ones— and this is not an actual vote in any way. The intention behind this is to see where there's convergence where we want the same priority to see how spread out your priorities are.

And then also when we go into the next discussion, if there's a priority that lots of people have really put their sticker on, you can have that discussion of, if 6 of us here really want this to happen, then we could trust 2 of us really maybe to do a majority of the work. And I don't have to worry about it as much. I can worry about something else because I know that we're all passionate about this. That sort of thing. So the idea is just to give you a picture of where everyone's passion and priorities lie.

John, is it 4 for the whole room? 4 Per person. For the whole room. For the whole room. And it's not intended to be 1 per— Yeah, it's not intended to just pick 1 in each section You could put all 4 stickers on one specific thing if that's what you care about.

So are we putting it on only things that are assembly-driven things or any of the things? Any of the things that are in the action side of things. Unless you feel like there's something in the brainstorm that has no action and I really care about it and I need to call it out because we need an action to happen, then I can see you putting it in the brainstorm. But ideally, most of it will happen in the actions. Section.

Do we all have the same stickers? I mean, kind of. You all have different smiley faces, but I didn't note who has what. There's no angry faces. This isn't what we hate.

Yeah, it's all smiley. Everything's happy. They're all positive emojis.

So if you want to go and individually refresh again, Look at them, and then when you know your 4, you can start to put your stickers.

Yeah, so the voters would have to vote it in. Yeah, yeah, it's like all the human beings.

No, and it's been so long, the total vibe has completely changed. Right. Cameras. And to clarify, this isn't necessarily something that you're saying, I am going to work on this.

Well, it's helpful if it's something that you're—. If you put a dot by it, you don't work on it. I'm thinking about myself personally. Yeah, yeah. I only have so much time in my day.

Right, totally. There may be something huge that I think is a priority that I'm not going to have time to do. Then I would still put that— yeah, then still sticker it. What if there's something that I'm going to do even if I don't sticker it? That's okay.

You know that and that'll happen.

This is really just about giving you all a visual— the press release should just come— representation of where, when forced to choose, your priorities fall. So how dare you make us—. I don't involve myself in the elections process. That kind of misinformation deserves a Legal Women Voters level response. No, they're on agenda stuff today.

Yeah, they probably haven't even heard you. We have a text with Matt, so I know— And I just thought that this was— we just came up with our— what we said. We were talking about the War on Sterile, we were talking about how there was— there had gone through testing with the DOD, the CIA, FBI, the states, and it's here and it's been used for over a decade, and more than half the states are using it. And— oops, sorry. And now it sounds— so we keep making it sound like we're Mobile voting for everybody.

That's crazy, like we're shifting our whole system. Oh my God, deeply offensive coverage.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I tell you, I'm still working for the Emergency Operations Center.

I had a—. I had a box the last time. Oh cool.

What is it? I talked— we were supposed to hang out with all the COVID Oh, she had a lot. Oh, she's still processing. Yeah, it's traumatic. And she's like, yeah, I don't know if we talked earlier about how she told me about work and how she was working.

Oh, she brought up Is—. Oh yeah.

Okay, cuz they didn't even create an email for it until I met it. Luckily enough for everybody, I was like, man, I got that whooping from 25 people email me the first day, so I created a forward.

City center of Naples. Oh, I guess we missed that. That's right. I never went to any of those houses. City center.

You've been to the city? Oh, you know, I've been to town.

The most popular one they have is if you want to do both, is you set up that English class and ask me some Japanese words. Oh, they already have it? Yeah, they're getting hot. Oh, okay. Allie, thank you.

Yeah, for sure. I— 'cause there's a California style. That one I found. Oh, yay. Yeah, coming your way.

Is it okay if it's a Word doc? It's a Word document. Yeah, is that okay? Oh, or did you want a PDF? A PDF?

Okay, that's fine. I got it.

This is pretty black and white.

God, the step stick. Seems like if you're going to do that, you need a really good—. Yeah, unawareness.

So in hindsight, those stickers don't really stand out super well so you can see them from the— from your seat. But look at where folks' stickers went just to get a sense of where the group is at.

Do you want us to read them out loud? Oh, if you want to, yeah, that's great. All right, so stickers: continue to steward elections, continue to steward budget process, continue to steward audits, revise ANC 240— that's community councils— review revised HR code section, uh, and 2 stickers on public education town hall meetings. I should say there were 2 stickers on AMP 240 as well. 2 Stickers on OpenCIP nomination process to other more stakeholder groups.

1 Sticker create equity filter for public investment. And 2 stickers for continue to champion integrated systems data collection dashboards and allocate the money for it.

Over here at Public Health and Safety, we've got, uh, child care support, one sticker, uh, 4 employees, union-owned child care center, pre-arrest diversion to behavioral health services, other tools to help people choose treatment, Public Safety Commission task force recommendations, and business permitting high-risk registration for trafficking. What does that one mean?

What? Business high-risk risk? Oh, I wrote that backwards. What does it mean? That was, um, well, I was actually—.

I should talk about that because it was— yeah, that's for like businesses that are at higher risk of being involved in human trafficking, like non-medically licensed massage parlors, um, like bikini coffee places, strip clubs, stuff like that, that have a higher likelihood of having trafficked girls. Yep, so kind of like that group that's required to have those labor— the, that one state required document in all those languages, like those kind of businesses. Yeah, okay, the wording was confusing. Yeah. Okay, back here we have one sticker on pre-approved ADE design.

I'm trying to finish that project. Uh, and then this one is revenue for housing and infrastructure.

Uh, 2 stickers on communicate progress towards housing and addressing homelessness. Tizdo got 1 sticker, and then 1 sticker, uh, which looks like it's just on the totem site, but it was in this bracket of key public sites for development of housing. Over here in the brainstorm, we have 1 sticker under what is our actual investment strategy for aligning Muni and AMAD's transpo projects.

And then over here, energy infrastructure, transportation, waste to energy, and other renewable and energy projects has 3 stickers, which I think is the only one that's got more than 2. Yeah. Assembly review of recent speed studies, automated enforcement, and revenues. Fix what we have.

Oh, the stormwater utility didn't get moved over. That was a big oversight. Oh no, it's under Assembly— it's under—. Oh, I think it's kind of all wrapped into waste energy. It's the energy and it's the renewables.

And so I would say that's really tied together. The stormwater utility is because managing the water is the biggest issue in the muni related to kind of the waste energy of energy projects in general. Water is the big burden.

So we'll get— we've got photographs of these. We'll transpose it into a document, get it back. Want to transition this discussion unless folks have any other questions they want to discuss or anything they want to bring up in open discussion about any of this. You want to transition to the capacity and workload discussion? Can we know who stuck their sticker where?

Sure. Yeah, I'm just—. Why don't we just go around real quick and you can share where you put your sticker? I think it would actually be helpful for me to have that for the long term because on that worksheet that I end up creating, it does have your name by it. So maybe just by the end of today you could go You'll write your name on the ones you put stickers on?

I don't think these are going to translate into the actions. There's not enough of them. The 4 stickers were all more complex than 4. No, I mean, I think everything in the actions would go onto that. Right.

And so, yeah, I guess my point is that where I put my sticker is not so demonstrative of what I'm willing to focus on. Even though I may be gone, everyone is more complicated than 4. Subprojects. And so just be mindful that even if you sign your name, doesn't mean that that's what you're committed to or not. That's the next step, right?

We get the table, then we have that conversation over something that's kind of in a more workable form. Yeah, okay. And then you start signing up. But I think— and then I would put the ones with dots higher up on the list. You could say had 3 votes, and people can sign their name.

I don't have any beef with that. I could— I'm happy to—. Stickers are not intended to control or decide. It's just meant to give you a sense of where everyone's at. So it wasn't meant to really— okay.

Yeah, and I get all that. I just want to make sure we're not like stripping out other things because—. Yeah, don't overvalue where the stickers are. The hard part is going to be translating these into areas of focus, I think. Like, I put my sticker just as a sort of remark of what I'm interested in learning more about.

Not even necessarily what I want, a project that I want to see all the way to fruition myself, like in charge of it. Because I think there's some of these that we could learn more about, like, you know what, this is not right, or for a number of factors, maybe. Vote by mail. Yeah, not vote by mail, ranked choice voting. Ranked choice voting is the example of one that got on there.

Yeah, that got pulled off because it was like, oh, wait a minute. So that's your point, like, yeah, yeah. Oh, so I'll put this kind of into a draft plan like we have, but then the next rules committee in December, then you start putting your names by it and that sort of thing.

I think you can also—. So one of the drawbacks of that approach, I think, is because I guess I just want it to be understood that Just because you put your initials by something doesn't necessarily mean that you can't change your mind. Because you could be on a project, and for instance, so I was on one with Kevin and Randy at one point to do third-party structural reviews, and we chased that down a little bit and got more information, and I realized, you know, I actually don't think this is the right time or the right way to do this. And so I jumped off that project and they kept it going.

Yeah. So I think it's important for members to know you can work on something and ultimately decide, you know, I don't want to see this all the way through either because I don't think it's going to be well implemented or because I'm actually hearing a lot of pushback from my constituents on this. They don't like it. I thought it would be helpful, but I'm not getting any enough positive feedback for this. Um, say it again.

[Speaker:ED] I took sense of that. [Speaker:MICHAEL] Also, it's interesting, one thing we didn't do, and it might be better to do later, or could be at the Rules Committee, if we're looking at reviewing our strategic plan for the next year, the top 4 areas that we've selected are also on the table for revision, right? And so there's a whole conversation that should happen around that. In particular, in April, I think, or May, when there is a new body and you have new members coming in, that they get an opportunity to at least see what these are. But housing action, energy infrastructure, public health and safety, and good government, I think generally speaking we all agree.

But there may be members who want to say, but I think we should go this way or that way. And they should be heard as we go towards kind of concluding this initial revision It's an annual update, but—. Yeah, yeah. And one thing is nothing got put on that other section, so maybe as you leave, and we'll tell the members who weren't here, because we did kind of box you into these things because that's what it seemed like people want to work on, but think about anything that might be in the other, and that might change this before—. Yeah, it's interesting that there was an intentional decision to not have that conversation because there's only 4 hours, right?

And the thought being—. Did you hear that, folks? Only 4 hours. Well, and I guess that that's a question of, do these buckets work and do they contain what we want to accomplish? If they do, then good.

We can—. But if they don't, then I get— but you have limited time. Do you want to spend it deciding what categories to put the work you want to do in, or do you want to spend it doing the work. I know it's tricky, and I don't think anyone beefed on the top 4, but we're not all here and it's still an open conversation. I also think a very good exercise would be for each of us to take this home, and on the things that are on here, if you think they're done, mark them with a line, or I don't know, if you have feedback, do that and then hand that off to Claire as well, because I can look at this and there's a lot of things that are just Done.

Done. You guys accomplished everything. Yeah, we're just done. And so I, I do have that different Word document that I move all this stuff into, so I will take that and start the 25 accomplishments and share that. And then the 26 kind of work tasks will be, I think, really well served by having a sense of what we cleared off.

Yeah. And what, you know, again, some people didn't love that we had all of these things on here, but I think it's Very effective. No one can say we're not doing anything. People can say they don't like what we're doing, but I can't say we're not doing stuff. Here's the proof.

So it's a good transition to talking about capacity and workload and how you are going to approach doing stuff through the next year. Um, Chris, I think this is where you were queued up to share a little bit about why you want to discuss it. And my notes— so, okay, um, a few things. There are our kind of core functions that we have to do. We legislate, we run meetings, we have our committees, and then we have certain committees that have required functions.

Then we have things that are a little softer and, um, that are more like individual-driven passion areas, if you will, or focal areas. Um, and I have like 4 things that are on my list. Probably there's a 5th one now that I see it for this next year, and that's that kind of work that's being done on the Public Safety Advisory Commission. So it's the Audit Committee, The Eklutna River Project, the annual work plan, elections, and the Public Safety Advisory Committee are kind of areas that we are having to find assembly members to be part of and lead on. Again, I will come back to the idea that as lovely as it would be to have a full administration staff to discharge our duties to go do this thing, for the most part, we are the doers.

And our staff support us in the doing. And so we have to be careful of how we apply the workload onto our staff and onto ourselves, because we're all limited in our capacity. Because we don't have an unlimited budget, we have the smallest branch of government. And so I think that this conversation is in some ways intended to be a broad conversation about our workload and capacity for doing stuff, and I don't have meaningful kind of map of the things I want us to talk about. So I've talked enough.

What is our capacity and what is kind of our function? Where do people want to put themselves to do the work? That's the theme of this talk, more open and free-ranging. Does anybody have extra capacity? So I have been thinking about this and I think We have a lot of meetings.

We have a lot of committee meetings. We have a lot of work sessions. And I realize that, you know, the business of the municipality never stops. There's always something important, right? But I think we also need to think about, like, what type of person we would want to be able to do this job.

And sort of what, what should be the baseline expectation capacity for someone to do this job? Do we want working professionals who have other jobs to be able to contribute a voice to the Anchorage Assembly and be part of the decision-making process? Do we want, you know, a single mom who has kids' obligations that she has to go to to be able to serve on Anchorage Assembly? Or do we just want folks who either are retired or this is like their only gig? You know, is the expectation that this has to be, be your full-time job and anything else that's accessory to that?

Um, or that you have a partner who can be the breadwinner for your family.

You know, and I guess for me, like, one luxury that I have is that I am my own boss. I have autonomy over my schedule, but I still need to make sure that my business is producing an income so I can pay myself and my employees and take care of my patients. And I think the Assembly is well served by having a diverse makeup of members who bring different perspectives. Perspectives to the table. Some maybe who are working age, some, some maybe who are retired and have a lot of life experience to talk with conversations.

Men, women, I mean, I think the more that the assembly is sort of a snapshot of our community, the better. But I don't think it's reasonable necessarily to have the expectation that this has to be be full-time, every member to be at every committee meeting, or— I know that none of us are. I mean, we all have to pick and choose what meetings we want to attend. But I actually think that we need to find ways to, rather than expand the meetings and the workload that we have, to actually refine our scope, or at least what is expected in terms of how many meetings we attend, given what we Yeah, I can first of all offer that the makeup of this assembly relative to the makeup when Felix and I started is dramatically more representative of the community. It's more women, I think.

But it's younger. There are parents. It's not a bunch of retirees. And so I think that's the committed effort that's been ongoing and hopefully continues. And the mission we've had is to reduce the number of meetings, but that always runs into conflict with I want to be briefed on this thing, and I'm not going to support it until I am.

And so therein lies the tension. I think we've reduced our committee meetings pretty dramatically, and so I take that as good feedback, and it's complicated. And we do have a couple of members now who their priority is their work, because their work happens on the days when we do our work sessions, and that's hard for them, I'm sure. Right, it doesn't feel fair, but gotta be brief. So, yarrow.

Yeah, I mean, I guess I just want to kind of add on. Um, for me, you know, I have two kids, and really the only reason why I can attend the meetings, a lot of the meetings including this one, is because my husband works from home. So it is difficult, uh, for, you know, people with families to be able to attend everything, but I guess it's difficult for people that have families to work periods. So I give up on the hope of attending everything a long time ago. Not everything, but, you know, a lot of the things.

Yeah, I was just going to say, in that, in that way, what you were saying, if there's a way where we could, you know, we have a lot of work sessions that cover subject matter that fits within committees if we could move more of those work sessions to be topics in the committee and make it more like a, you know, a little bit more defined, like this is what this committee is going to be working on, you know, this month. And it's going to slow the process down, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing all the time because, you know, otherwise we're just going to be burning ourselves out trying to keep up with everything all the time. And I know that, you know, in In my capacity as a, you know, a young dad and working professional, it is exhausting trying to keep up with all the different, you know, stuff. And not even all the stuff, just the stuff that matters to me the most personally. Whereas if it was like, hey, I know I've got 4 committee meetings and they're going to be doozies, you know, every single month, like, that's fine, I can work with that.

It's the, you know, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 work sessions throughout the month that's really wears me out. So, Carol? So, um, One thing that I would really love to see, you know how when ordinances are introduced the default is for it to be on the schedule in 2 weeks? Can we change that? Like, can we change that so that the default is for it to be on the schedule in 4 weeks so that we have more time?

You can, but I don't think it's advisable because the body can always change it. I mean, the law is 7 days. But the reality is 7 days is counted weird, so it's really 8 days. And we don't have every—. They can always change it.

But I think oftentimes it doesn't get changed. And we also don't know if it's going to be changed. So I think— yeah, I don't know. It just feels like it kind of moves really quickly. And a lot of times it's not necessary.

Like, I think sometimes it's necessary. And I think if you want to change it, put it 2 weeks from now. That's fine. You can do that. But like the default—.

I think that I wouldn't recommend that change in any member is welcome to come forward with a code change that would establish that. But I think wisdom would say you have the least amount of possible time on any item, and then you extend it so that the business just gets done. But it's definitely worthy of consideration. Anna, and then Erin. Yeah, I think, um, and I appreciate— I think this is a good discussion to have, um, uh, and I, I would also agree that I think we should reduce the the number of meetings because I think it's also, I guess I'll put a few things on the table.

One is when we have those meetings, it affects our staff as well. And so there's prep, there's printing, there's all those things. We know this. And I think also I've been in multiple meetings where I was maybe one of the only members and there was folks in the public or others presenting and they, I think, can take it as, oh, the other folks don't care. And I don't think that's a fair assumption to make because there's a lot of reason, I've said this, there's a lot of reasons why people aren't there and they watch it afterwards.

But I think it is something to think about is how we interact with the public and how our process can be more or less discernible and transparent, right? And then the workload thing is real. I think the thing that I struggle with too, and I don't— there's not one answer to this, but I think it's worth putting on the table, is what is our duty? What are the duties that come with this job? Because I think there are some things where— and maybe it's not that it's written down or it's codified, but there's a public expectation, or there's, you know, like with the budget That is one of the biggest things we do.

That is not optional, right? And there's reasons why you can't be there. But— or stewarding elections, right? There is no executive branch role for elections. That is the clerk's office for the most part, but in terms of policy and code, it's us.

And so there's things that we— that no one else does that we have to do, that we have to make time for. And I think that's a challenge too, because then it's easy to say, well, what am I interested in? And there's all of— you have all this agency And at the same time, the body as a whole, the institution as a whole, has a bunch of functions that we all have to fill, like the Audit Committee, like the Budget Committee, right? There's things that have to get done, and there's no mechanism for us to just assign those things other than like the chair assigning committee chairs, right? But that's generally meant to be where do you want to put your energy.

And so I just want to put that on the table as we think about workload. How do we make sure that we are also doing our duty, and then what is a reasonable expectation of this community of what our duties are and how much time we put into this job. Because I think the public expectation is like through the roof, right, that we answer emails right away, that we're at everything, that we are picking up every single thing that people want us to, and then we are basically a customer service department, right? So I don't know how to solve that, but I think all of those things keep swirling around, and there's not one way to solve them, but it is hard.

Balance the, like, the obligations we have, the stuff that we want to do, and then these external pressures or expectations on us because of the roles we have. So, and I, I could say that— I say that because I just feel a lot of that pressure all the time, and I can't solve it, but it's up to the 12 of us to at least figure out a way that's workable while we're all here. Yeah, I, yeah, I think the The idea of incorporating, um, ordinance or resolution content into committee meetings where it's appropriate, um, or topically relevant, like, that feels, that feels helpful. Um, I, I would, I would rather have longer committee meetings if it meant that we didn't have as many. Meetings total.

I, I'm in the really fortunate— like, I'm in a very privileged position in that I don't, I don't have to have other employment outside of the Assembly because of my spouse's employment. But I mean, I, I absolutely recognize that that is not everyone's reality on the Assembly.

Which actually begs the question, you know, who are we excluding from assembly service because this is not— this is expected, there's a community expectation that this is a full-time job and we're not paid full-time pay.

I think in chatting with people who have considered assembly service, many of them are people who would be phenomenal public servants but they literally can't afford afford to run for office for a variety of reasons, because they don't have a spouse who can supplement income, or they, they aren't in a position to take a massive pay cut. And I, and I think that is a question that we ought to consider alongside, you know, the time capacity question is, you know, um, who, who can't be at the table because this is not— this is a full-time job, which is not full-time. Okay. Um, and I don't know that that's something that we need to resolve here, but I, I think that's something that's worth noting when we're talking about capacity.

So I think I said it to you recently that we can't solve equity But we can work toward it, right? The problems are bigger than any one term, any one body, anyone. And the body has been doing this work for as long as I've been on it. And welcome to the continuum of caring for our community and being representative, right? Because you own this now, and figuring out how to do it is the hard part.

We've made big change, and we hope that work continues. I mean, Felix was a different body then, and it is very much focused on making this work. We have more parents on the body now than we ever have. And so I would offer there is a tension, though, between less meetings and what's been implied is less work sessions, because if you think the committee structure can take care of all of that, that's a framework of thinking. And the committees generally do get staff reporting to them, and one particular committee is really well trained on staff team is really well trained on using the committee, and that's the infrastructure, IEEOC.

They bring forward every legislative proposal that's coming to that committee, sometimes multiple times, and tell you in a month this is coming. And so there is some kind of work with the administration, but the real challenge isn't that. The real challenge is that our committees have limited memberships. Not everyone attends. We have people that barely read their packet.

They get to their packet and they say, did we have a work session? Right, or one member asks for a work session, and it's your right to ask for that, you know. Do we want a cheat sheet so 3 members have to ask for a work session in order to get one, right? Or some process by which there is a narrowing of your right to seek information? I don't think that's going to work.

And so it's like there's a tension, there is a tension. Yeah, so Certainly, I think any assembly member can ask for a work session. Um, I mean, I think about like the motion to postpone, right? People move to postpone something because they want a work session on it. Well, that's great, but if there are 7 other people on the body who feel like they are ready, right, to vote on it—.

Sometimes I feel like They're a little bit too nice and accommodating sometimes, if I'm being totally honest. That's a fair assessment, and it's been a core value to try. But I'm not even talking about once we've gotten to the table and we have an open meeting. What I'm talking about is in advance of when a member asks, we do our best to use one of those very tight slots on a Friday for those. And what we've implemented Some folks might take it for granted, but we have at least one monthly no meeting Friday, right?

And so we've been making work towards that, and if ever I can find the chance to make it two in a month, I do, believe me. And so, but those are just kind of traditions that are intended to meet that mark. And so your challenge is to balance the interests of the body, get the information you need before taking the vote. I think My success has come in with my relationship with the administration, the members, the staff. If I need information about an ordinance, I call them and they answer, right?

And I get what I need. So I don't need so many work sessions, but when somebody says I need a work session, we accommodate. And I think too, there's, there's, um, there's also the need for a sponsor of a piece of legislation to ask for a work session as the sponsor because they know that whatever it is they're reading for is extremely technical and trying to make sausage on the dais or trying to shoehorn that into a committee is probably not going to go well, right? So there is the flip, there's the inverse of that as well as like a sponsor saying, "I would like to host a work session." Any member, right? No, the worst case is when sponsor doesn't want to do a work session.

They don't care. They've got— it's all there and you didn't do your homework. Why should they have to come and do a dog and pony show for you who didn't do your homework? Or we did talk about it at the committee. There's a lot of kind of feelings, if you will, that can be generated around that conversation.

But I think it is the sponsor's choice. You know, they could be asked for a work session. A member could ask for a work session if the administration is implementing it and get it with or without the sponsor. Or you could host a work session that no one shows up to. How embarrassing.

Ha ha. Right? And so there's no one here to tell you how this should be done but you.

But if the— like, we're changing our— the way we approach it, though, that it is going— more of this is going to funnel through a committee, and we don't need to have as many, right? It's easy to go, well, did you attend your committee meeting this month? Okay, then, right, this was heard. Well, but if they're not on that committee, right? Well, I mean, anybody can go to any committee meeting, you know, and like— and that's the thing for me, I think that's hard to keep track is I go through it, okay, this is my schedule for the month, this is my schedule by the week, and then if I'm not checking back on a regular basis, I miss work sessions, I can add it or, you know, something like that.

Or if I know, okay, these are the committee meetings and I know that any legislation that's going to come up that I have to be aware of is going to fall into one of these committees, I just know I need to make it to the committee meetings, you know. I love ideal worlds. Listen, in ideal worlds, ideal is till it's ideal. I could see there being seen at least some bottlenecks, you know, just based on like the timing of a committee meeting relative to an assembly meeting and how that might drag out the process, you know, based on introduction and committee— once a month public hearing. I mean, yeah, that does— twice a month, exactly.

That does limit it. That does limit the opportunity. Well, that— but that just presumes that the item isn't seen before it's introduced Right, I mean, there's a whole lot of legislation that is pre-vetted before it is introduced. Everything that comes at IEOC, you see, this is what we're bringing forward a month in advance of it ever hitting the table. And so that's a kind of an operational approach.

There are some things you just want to introduce exactly 2 weeks before you want to heard for reasons, right? And maybe there's less of an expectation that you can be accommodated for a work session when those things happen. Like maybe there's like a— if we have to have X number of days, weeks before a work session can be expected. But I think it's pretty case dependent. It's a challenge for you guys to figure out how to streamline that because we've been doing this work to make it this way.

This is as far as we've been able to get it.

I think what we're talking about here is what are we all collectively wanting to commit to? So I don't think we're talking about changing code, although there is an opportunity to do that, because that can be very rigid. There's policy. We could write something down and say, this is how it's going to be. I don't think that's— I mean, I think it's hard to draft.

It would be hard to write something like that that covers so many different cases. So I think it comes down again to culture. How do we want to operate as a group? And I think it doesn't mean we have to come up with a rule in every circumstance. Or it could be us individually.

Darryl, you and I, you know, we moved out our food code. Well, it wasn't just ours, right? But we moved it out to the public hearing to a future meeting because we said we'll give this more time, and there was a meeting agenda that was very stacked. And so if we want to do that, that is something that you can do when you submit and say my general practice is going to be I'm going to give 4 weeks on things unless it's urgent, right? And so it doesn't mean that everybody else is going to commit to do that as well, but I guess because that's, that's really the issue with the body, or not the issue, but just a feature of us is that it all requires collective agreement, or at least a majority agreement to do these things.

And then it can be undone 5 years from now anyway, so it's not a permanent thing. Any given Tuesday. Yeah. But even then, if we set a culture that we, you know, like there's a culture that existed before we were all here and it's changed. And so it's just that we all have to actively participate in what that looks like.

Because there's no other set of people who's making the rules. Rules, or else—. Well, what are the duties on the assembly member as currently described by code? To vote at regular meetings of the body, or individual members? Uh, individual members.

I think it's to attend the meetings, the regular meetings. Yeah, and special meetings. But yeah, and the duty of the vote really are the budget, the elections, the audit. A handful of things. Yeah, a handful of things.

But not to attend committee meetings or work sessions. Nope. Yeah, nope, nope. None of that is required. None of that is— sure decreases your effectiveness.

Yes, you're showing up, you know, just freewheeling it, you know, freehand this vote. It's not advisable. Yeah, I'm very grateful for being able to watch meetings back and get caught up that way. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, same.

I do like the idea of longer committee meetings if it means less meetings. Yeah. Just because I think one of the, one of the problems with committee, the committee structure is that there are often briefings, right? And you get multiple departments briefing on multiple things, and there's not a whole lot of time there to do a really thorough conversation about a piece of legislation. Yes.

Which is why I think we've just gotten this habit of adding on work sessions. Um, but yeah, I don't know if, uh, you know, with, um, that's something we talk about with Transportation Committee. We have 2 hours and currently it's a quarterly meeting. Um, even that 2 hours, man, we gotta move it quick. Like one time we had a bunch of people in the room to present on Vision Zero.

They could have taken up the whole meeting if Maybe some of that was— what is dazzle them? Right? Yeah, dazzle them with detail or baffle them with bullshit, right? Yeah. But it was an important conversation that we kind of had to move on to another topic.

So I would push back a little bit that there's been a proliferation of work sessions. I don't think— I mean, Jamie has a tracker and can show the arc. But yes, it went up several years ago. Felix, but it has stayed fairly static for the last 5 years, like pretty static. It's gone up a bit in terms of legislation that's introduced, meetings that are held, and so I would just push back against that.

I just think—. I don't think I'm saying that there's more. I think I'm saying that now that I'm in my second term, like, yeah, I know the rhythm of this. Yeah, you just used the word proliferation, and so I just— they aren't like growing, blooming into more. It's just you're recognizing—.

I guess that we've got to the point practice of—. Use the term proliferation, it's fine. I would like there to be less proliferation. Yes, fair. A deproliferation.

A culling, a trimming of the flowers. Yes. Nuclear nonproliferation. Deadheading. I think that's fine.

One member reached out to me and asked if we could move all committee meetings to Friday, one day a week. And so I don't know how you have work sessions. I mean, that could be a 10-hour day if we did that. But, um, that was one kind of creative proposal. So you'd have like one, two committees on the first Friday and then the next one the second.

Yeah, maybe they're doing an hour work session, except of course those weeks when we have too many work sessions and the committees would get booted, or, or we would add another day, right? But, you know, Thursdays are our default second day, and so there probably are ways to think through creatively organization so that you could you could stack the meetings that happen in a rhythm that gets you ready for your agendas better. I don't know that it's about kind of pushing off the content to this or that committee, because committees are not representative of the whole, and the same people have the same questions, are going to come with the questions. It's a complicated system, you people. But, uh, I think it also gets back to, again, the balancing of what do we want to do and what do we have to do, right?

Like, because I think there's also, um, I know in the past there's also been a kind of how can we get done as quickly as possible, right? Especially in our meetings. And I'm not arguing that we should take to 11 in all of our meetings, right? No, the whole ceiling versus floor thing. Um, but I do also think that, um, sometimes these things take what they take, right?

Like testimony takes what it takes. We can't control that. There's—. And there's— and—. Or the legislative—.

The state legislative process, totally— well, in a lot of ways different But also people say, oh, why aren't they sticking to their schedule? And it's because you're dealing with 60 people, right? I mean, so some of that's a whole different dynamic. But I think it's hard to predict or to make predictable how these things go because we're doing it in real time in public, right? And if we're all doing our jobs, we are not just phoning it in.

We're not saying, OK, I'm going to vote because I want to get out of here at 7:00 PM or whatever, right? And I think there's a tension there too. So I don't know how to square that either because it is true. Sometimes people are like, I need the time or I need to understand this in order to vote. And that's their right to ask for that.

For that. And also, we do have limited time. We have to end by midnight, hard stop. Thank God. Yeah, but so I think that's another thing to consider.

It's in the— what do we have to do? How do we want to operate? Um, I think we should put a plaque in this, in the chamber, to the movers of that charter amendment. You know, a little, a little corner that's dedicated to these people have saved us from painful public process by the hundreds and thousands of hours I mean, I think I do—. I do find that in just in the context of meeting on Tuesdays, I sometimes feel the pressure to like withhold questions for the administration for the sake of expedience.

You know, like there are things that I sometimes— like sometimes they do want to know more or understand more about an item that's before us, and for whatever reason I didn't have time to go like run around to all the departments and do do all of my homework in advance of getting to Tuesday night. But there—. It does feel like there's a little bit of that implied pressure that, like, especially when they send you a list that says this is a must-pass item and we just got it, right? And so I feel, I, I feel some tension there. Like, yes, I want to do my homework in advance.

Yes, I would also— I would like to have efficient Tuesday night meetings. And also, I feel like it's our— my role to do my due diligence, even if that means asking additional questions in the context of a Tuesday meeting. But I do, I do find like, I do find myself feeling some internal resistance to doing that sometimes because it feels like I'm slowing down the progress. So I want to make a little note here that I got to be careful not to be insulting to anybody. But there are performers, there are overperformers, and there are underperformers.

In every group, this body, it's, you know, everyone choose your own adventure. The overperformers are present, right? And so I would say there's something in what you said to be careful about not hammering yourself for not being able to perform to the standard you hold in your mind, because that standard is probably unrealistically high for the amount of time, peace of mind, whatever that is that carries you through to the next meeting after all of the abuse, right? So there's some kind of check on yourself that you can apply, I would advise, to just Be gentle with yourself for not being able to do it all, because that's reality. And you're not in the class of people who phones it in, you know.

You're in that other class. It's tricky, right? Balancing it all.

Can I add one thing to the kind of why you take time in meetings or why that's valuable? I think there's also the strategy for using the platform, right? So like there might be something where I full well know the answer to the question, and that's not why I'm asking it, right? And so that's another way to utilize our role, not to waste time, right, but to say like, I want this public conversation, I want this answer on the record, or I want to call attention to something. And so I think that's also a bit— it doesn't mean that if you do that a lot, right, then it becomes— it can be a time suck, but I think That's just to add to that, in addition to educating yourself, there is the public role of like, I am bringing— I am putting everybody's attention on this right now because I think it's important for whatever reason.

So that's another valid use of that time. And also discerning what questions are better asked of the departments off the record, even at the meeting, to get the answer you need. Practice-wise, like my practice has proven pretty successful, I always Let the administration, whoever it is, know my question if I know it before I ask them. No surprise question from the dice unless I really want to be that guy. Sometimes you do.

But right, give them a chance to prepare because they all hate being in front of that microphone. They all hate it. But that's kind of away from the field of—. There is sometimes, though, something just pops up. Yeah, and you gotta ask it.

And that is— you're right, 2 times for every motion. Yeah, 2 times. And sometimes a third if you're on the edge. If you're pretty good at it, sometimes 3 times, but rare. Rare.

So, um, Yeah, that— it's tricky. You know, this conversation, I will offer, is the same conversation we had a few years ago about time and meetings, and it's the persistent challenge of being on the assembly because you're working at the grocery store, you know, you're working at the gas station, you're working when you drop your kids off at school, you are always working.

You're working when you're dancing at the concert at the Beartooth. I put in some work.

Working at the baggage claim, LAX. LAX, or on the street, Venice Beach. Yeah, Venice Beach. So you just, you can't escape this job, and that's the beauty and the nightmare. 166 Days, 4 hours, and So Felix, anything to add?

Not so much to this conversation. I think if we're going to do homilies as was suggested, probably there'll be a future opportunity for that. Several, several. Question on homilies? Yeah, several.

We'll have a special meeting for that. No, yeah, that's— so this is not the point of any conclusive statements, but words of wisdom were asked for, like, and this is a good time, how to balance the load, like what you have learned, work-life balance, life-work balance, because that's what this is all about. I mean, I don't think I'm going to say anything that's revolutionary to folks here, but I always tell people who ask me, should I run for the assembly or not, You're gonna get out of it what you put into it, right? There are some people who put in a lot. They put in all of themselves and they get a lot out of it.

And that's—. And the community should get a lot out of it, and that's great. Then there are other people who put in a bare minimum. And that's also— that's what you can do and you're fine with that, then that's— and your voters are fine with that, then that's what you do. Um, you know, I guess I will— and each body is going to be a little bit different in terms of what it wants to prioritize.

Like, I know not too long ago, a former body prioritized like being very public, going to a lot of public events, and being very seen. And then there are other bodies who have been very policy wonky, and they're like head down, do that work. And that's fine too, because— and, you know, you'll get criticized. Like, I hear it honestly every now and then, "Why don't I see more ASAN members at different events?" Well, we're each doing our own thing. It's a lot of events.

Yeah. Sorry, everyone.

I would add to that, there's one other variable you can't control, and that's what the world throws at you. Like, there are duties, there's our jobs, there's the workaday process, and we do all that pretty well. Too many meetings, concede. And then on a random Tuesday, everything changes. You know, the— how long was just a very small blip, but a big earthquake could come or another pandemic and everything changes.

And you are uniquely positioned to have a role in all that. And the more you work together as a team, we work together as a team, the readier we are to be nimble in our response to the challenges that come. I remember when the homeless problem blew up. It was 2015, was the summer of spice. It was so horrifying.

It was before I was elected, before Felix and I were on the body. It was a disaster, and things haven't gotten as bad as it was there, except of course in the camp that was kind of out at Tudor or Muldoon. That was pretty bad. But in 2019, the governor cut all the funds for a shelter, and all of a sudden we had a vast camp on the park strip, and it blew up, and it's never calmed down since. And through successive challenges.

Nobody knows and can't tell you what's coming tomorrow, but the more you are trained at this work and ready, the better this city is going to be with you at its helm.

That's like the other variable. You can control how much you invest in it, check your expectations of what you'll get out of it based on that. You can control your relationships, but you can't control What's coming?

Be ready. That's probably it. Well, in the interest of time, I'm going to transition us to close. But it sounds like there's a delicate challenge that you face in meeting your own expectations for yourself, the expectations that are put upon you by the community, achieving what you want to achieve, and that You all feel like the workload makes it difficult for any citizen to participate in the process. And so how you can improve efficiency and effectiveness and without neglecting expectations is the challenge.

We don't have a magic answer, but I did hear two categories that have— one is the way that you approach meetings, and I would add into that work sessions, but two is the way that you collaborate and share and request information. So in the interest of closing, I just want to give folks a chance to say any last thoughts as we go around, and then we will clean up and wrap up. And I'm going to start with My little fidget thing blew up. I've never had that happen. And it's kind of gross.

The other thing I will say, and I thought about saying this as I opened, but as a community member who has been to meetings and testified in meetings and listened to meetings on the radio, I appreciate each and every one of you so much because I could never personally do it, and I, I understand what a sacrifice it is and how much you put yourself out there. So from me to you personally, thank you all. Such a cool thing. I'm so glad you were there. So, closing thoughts?

Thank you so much for making the time for this. I think I just want I really believe in gathering and collaborating, and so hopefully this was worthwhile for all of you. Appreciate you for being here, and likewise, thank you for your service. As a community member, it's nice to be represented in such a way.

Thanks everybody. It's nice to get together and, you know, collaborate. And, you know, we—. It's nice to see that we, we see a lot of the same problems. We might have different ways on how we solve some of them, but we're We're all working towards common goals here, and it's really good.

Appreciate it. Looking forward to what the future holds, and, uh, honor to work with you guys.

New York Times. Thanks for your support. Again, I apologize for taking for a ride. Um, excited to find a champion for elections and also Collections. Jennifer.

What was it? What was he working on? Massage parlor? Yeah, yeah, you already— you guys looked that out already? No, I've been working with it.

It's been on the list. No, I knew you had it. Yeah, I had been working on it in 2015, and so I resurrected it and It still needs resurrected, but we're there. That's it. Thank you.

Uh, it was really fun to hear you all talk, and like, I feel like you all bonded today too, and that was really nice to see. And I just want to add, um, the Assembly has been a very nice environment to work in, the legislative branch. And, um, I didn't share at the beginning, and some of you know, I was a deputy clerk for 4 years before I came over to Legislative Services. So I lived through COVID with a couple of you on the body and all of that time. Anyway, I've seen the branch evolve over the last 6 years, and it's been really cool to see that happen.

And, um, thank you for everyone who served in leadership and the environment you all create. Um, I want to know what's going to happen on that chart over there. Is that another us? That's another day conversation. Yeah, I don't think we're getting to it today.

Unless you all sign up on your—. Yeah, so I was going to make this a part of closing on the way out. If you're willing to champion.

Or support champion, one of the things that's put up there, please put your name next to it. But I was gonna have that as a—. And there's nuance to each of them. Yeah, there's nuance to each of them.

And you're already on some of them. Yeah, I know. I think, yeah, I'm just really grateful to work with such thoughtful people.

This is without a doubt the coolest job I've ever had. I'm really, really fortunate to get to do this work at this time with these people at this moment in our city's history. It feels like the right thing, the right thing to be doing. And I, I don't think a lot of people get to have that experience in their work life. I feel like they're in this week's spot.

But I'm going to enjoy every bit of it. Just really grateful, really grateful to work with such talented folks. Yeah, um, I always enjoy these retreats. Um, they always have a little bit of a different flavor, each of them. And, um, this is going to be the last one of the body Um, we could add another meeting.

That's not Chris. But, you know, I think it's been really great to see how much that this branch has evolved over the years, as Jennifer was saying. And, um, you know, hard for me to imagine when I first got on on 2017 that sort of this is the place that we would be, but that's because there was a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to get us here. A lot of, um, yeah, a lot of work to get us to this place, and I hope that this work will continue, that a strong foundation has been laid and the work's got a look different because that is just how this body looks. It's going to look different from 10 years from now and 20 years from now and so on.

But I hope that 10 years from now, 20 years from now, some remnant of this work, even if it's a small little gem of it, stays.

I guess on the heels of that conversation about workload, I would just like to thank the staff for the workload that they take off of us, the communication and the organizing and the research and just everything else. It would be so much harder without you.

Thank you. Yeah, agreed. Thank you, staff, for all of your support. Um, I think two things I want to comment on. One is, as you It's pretty awesome to take a look back and see all the things that we said that we were going to do that we did.

And just, that gives me hope for working with the newer members too about what we're going to accomplish in the future. We're here to solve problems for the municipality and continue to make Anchorage a great place for people to live. But I guess the other thing I want to comment on is, and we were talking about this a little bit earlier, The housing action, there was a comment up there that said, what is our lane? And I think we've had some conversation as the body sort of helped with Skilter here and there about, you know, well, that exactly, that, you know, what is the role of the administration in bringing forward policy? What is the role of the assembly in bringing forward policy?

Forward policy. I think different assembly members have different perspectives on that, and they also have, you know, we all have our own style that we like to engage in this work. But I will always be one that wants to be assertive about the fact that we are the authors of the code, we are policymakers, we are not just pencil pushers for the administration, um, or, you know, necessarily their priorities for it. So that's why I feel like this is such a good exercise to have some consensus about what our priorities are. I think, you know, the highest rate of success, both in terms of getting something passed but also having it be well implemented, is when we do engage with the administration, whoever it is at the time, and have good faith conversations and get accurate information that can inform our policy.

But I— yeah, I think I always— I want us to be a strong legislative branch, and I want us to have the support that we need because ultimately I think that's going to be best for the community as we continue to, to do this work. So yeah, excited to see what you all bring forward.

Yeah, well, thanks everybody for participating in this. I agree with pretty much everything that's been said so far, but I'll add As someone who's both an eldest child and terminally an office worker, I've reflected a lot on this as a job and the fact that, you know, we have no boss, that we are just accountable to ourselves and also accountable to technically 48,000 people or whatever the number is for district. And it's a crazy thing to be like the entire public is your boss and also no one is. And so, um, and so, and then, and then further complicated by, you know, our 11 of our co-workers are chosen by random other people, right? So it makes it so— so I think of like HR, they're all in that, the organizational space.

It's a really interesting way. And then approaching, you know, exercises like this, like how it's—. We talked a lot about how it can be different. But, um, but yeah, I'm excited. I think there's a lot of, um, we've been doing a lot of good work, there's a lot of good work ahead, and I'm excited to see how not just how we all individually as, as those different individuals approach the work, but again, as we continue to move together as a body and not agreeing on everything, but just, you know, what does that look like and what is our responsibility to the institution?

Again, but again, I'm terminally an eldest child, so I think a lot about responsibility. So thanks, everybody. Yeah, a few thoughts left. Um, you know, responsible to 48,500 people, that's our city duty, but our borough duty is responsible to 290,000 Right? And so it's an interesting squaring of the circle because you have both duties.

They're just united into one task. And we do the work of the county and the city. And that's where we look at our neighbors' interests close to us, but also our neighbors far away from us, trying to balance those interests.

Jared, I will say I appreciate jousting with you on the dais. Because that is a lost art in some ways. You know, you should be able to disagree and creatively and have fun with it. And in the end, it goes where it goes. And there, that's like where you don't carry baggage with you tomorrow.

And that is a hard thing to do, and it's not always possible. Sometimes it takes a day or two, but I really appreciate it because it's good. It's like the thing that we're supposed to be doing, and sometimes it's good to do it on the dais. And Dano, I agree with your point about we should be strong and we have developed to a point of strength probably that's never been seen in the municipality to where we are now. Still, we have to ask ourselves what is our lane.

It's like, what is our lane? What are our priorities? What's their lane and where do they align? Because we will work better together when we're all doing our thing. So I agree, strong is best.

And it's fragile, right? This thing that we have built is fragile. One election and one budget can undo it, right? The charter requires only the ombudsman and the clerk. Everything else is in excess of that, right?

Those are our charter-granted offices. That's it. And so we have a very fragile but very resilient system that we have developed. And so that's your challenge, is like to keep it and to not exceed its bounds. You exceed its bounds, that's when you fall off the cliff, it's when your soufflé falls.

Um, so that's your challenge, is like balance the line, grow to the point where you're strongest, not beyond that, right? In your lane. Anyhow, so yes, turn a little bit into that. Thing that you suggested. That— those are my comments.

I'm grateful to you all for working through these struggles. I don't promise you fewer meetings. I'll do my best to keep it as efficient as possible. I will do my best to keep it as few as possible. I will always try to get a second no meeting Friday in a month if it's possible.

The clerk and I work really hard to make that time available, but I don't promise you because we have it this long. Yeah. If you demand a meeting and it's in your rights to have that meeting, I'm going to authorize it, and you should expect the chair to do that for you. It's your right. And so that's the tension.

But you can give some social pressure to those who don't show up, who asked for a briefing and there was a briefing, right? There's no reason to slow down the wheels for people who just didn't show up. I wonder if it could be helpful to have Legislative Services send out— if we had like a list of every piece of legislation that was discussed.

Committee meeting, like the prior couple weeks or something. So sometimes I think if people are not part of that committee—. Oh, they will not go back and watch them, right? I don't know, maybe it's easier to do the other way, like send out a list of what's coming, not of what's happened. As long as those committees get their agendas.

I mean, that's kind of the agenda though, right? Like if you're going to discuss a committee meeting or a piece of legislation, that's going to be on the agenda for that committee meeting. Yes, I am here to protect the staff's time though.

Like, we have to be careful what we're asking the clerk to do and legislative services to do. And so it's not a bad idea, and maybe there's some way with OnBase, so maybe some tool that could generate a—. So they can use all the agendas. So, yeah, don't take it back, put it on the table, but take it out of here and let's converse about it.

Watching an item and it comes up, I do try to flag that. But I think, I think otherwise you should probably all be reading each agenda as it comes out. Yeah, I do. Honestly, if you're just looking for legislation, like with the essence of Office 365, which I, I'm accepting that I'm technologically problematic at this point in my life, um, but all staffers could write— they know what ordinances they're putting on their agendas. They could put it into a document that we all have access to.

Jamie is saying it might be possible, so you don't have to rescind it. We're not going to solve it right now. I'm hoping that it's not super complicated. I'll keep thinking. So in the interest of time and closing, this is obviously a beginning.

There's a number of people who aren't here, so the idea is to evolve this into a finalized work plan, get all of your feedback, Don't know exactly how that's going to happen, but it's going to happen. Figure it out. These items here on the way out, if you would put your name next to it just to call out your interest in either championing or being part of the team that pushes it forward. And thank you otherwise. We thank you.

Good. All right. So do we have to clean up? I gotta go clean up. Not too much.

Thank you.