Anchorage Assembly: Governance Committee-of-the-Whole Meeting

Okay, everyone, let's call this committee meeting to order. This is the Assembly Governance Committee meeting. We are noticed— today is Thursday, November 12th. We're noticed in this room from 1 to 3 PM. And then we'll go through member introductions and then we'll get into our business.

George Martinez. Janice Park.

Donald Handeland. Erin Baldwin Day. Anna Brawley. Sydney Scout. That's folks in the room.

On the phone, I see Member Goecker. I should say we're doing first name, so Jared Goecker.

Here.

And Yarrow Silvers.

Here, thank you.

And anyone else I missed?

Okay, I don't see any right now. Also, we're joined in the room as usual by our legislative services staff, Assembly Council, Clerk's Office, other members who will be presenting shortly. And then I'll also note in the back, we'll come to this at the end of the meeting, but I just want to say thanks to everybody from the Mountain City Christian Academy for being here today. We have a couple of teachers and some students, so They will be listening in on our meeting today, and then at the end of the meeting, once we get through our other business, we'll be doing some brief kind of informal introductions, and I think they have some ideas and things to share with us. So just to let folks know, and then if folks are able to stick around a little past 3, we might continue that conversation, but of course we know everybody's busy, so please just attend as you're able.

So next we will start with our reports. So I'll see if there's someone from the Mayor's Office to give a report.

Not right now.

I know it's a busy day, so we'll—. Eva?

Okay, I heard on the way. So I will instead switch over to chair report, and then we'll get back into it. And then I'll note some of what I wanted to discuss is—. Sorry, one second.

Okay, yeah, it's further down. So I'll just give some brief informational updates for folks. Um, first is, uh, we've been actively looking at working on our schedule and workload, hoping to, uh, kind of work some things out between now and next month to have a smoother start to 2027, as well as seeing that the body's closing major things out in 2026 as best as possible. Um, so I'll just note, in the meantime, January is the time that we can finalize anything for the ballot, and the meeting on just January 26th is the last opportunity that's in code. And so for anything that's already out there or coming forward, that just to keep folks and keep that in mind.

That includes bonds and anything else that would go to voters for this April. I'll mention, I know there's some other offices who will give their own updates. Another thing I will note is the Public Safety Ad Hoc Policy Committee. So I know we don't have our committee chair, Mr. Perez-Verdia, here. Actually just came from an event in his other capacity.

So I know he probably won't be here right now, but just to note, per the resolution that we passed, I don't have the number handy, that committee was created. So I've been reaching out to members. The resolution essentially says that the chair would be Ms. Perez-Verdia and then at least 3 other members. So at this point right now, I have commitments from Jared, George, Sydney, Janice, and Yarrow, who are also interested in being essentially named to that committee. So if you're not on that list and you would like to be, or if you are on that list and you have changed your mind, just let me know.

This is a chair appointment, so it's not very formal, but that we have set membership for the committee. And of course, all of the member—. Or all of the meetings will be public. And so, as with any of our committees, any member is welcome to attend as well as the public. So if you're interested in a topic or you want to dip in and out but you don't want to be considered a regular member, that's an option.

So I will take care of that with staff formally soon and then just let folks know that those appointments have been made. And then any scheduling— this is for the public and members—. Any scheduling or questions about kind of the, you know, meeting agendas, things like that would go to the chair. So that's— Kameron will be picking that up going forward. I'll also mention we did form a selection committee in terms of hiring for the ombudsman for the upcoming term.

So I will be appointing 5 members to that. I will be working to review applicants and hold interviews. So Jasmine Akers is the staff point of contact for that. That committee is also subject to the Open Meetings Act, and so she's the best point of contact if you have questions. And of course, it's dealing with— dealing with candidate interviews and discussions about comparison of candidates.

And so we anticipate that a lot of the work will be done in executive session with the purpose of moving forward a recommendation for the assembly in due time. So again, if you have questions on that, talk to Jasmine. I'll just note we were joined by Cameron in the room at 107. And then we're still on chair report. I have one more kind of thing to talk about that is speculative, but wanted to put it on the record as it does relate to timing.

And that is, at this point, I do anticipate that we will need to schedule one additional special meeting this year. This is not uncommon that we do this. It would be in December, soon after the 15th, probably either the evening of Thursday the 17th or during the day Friday the 18th, working with staff to get that on our calendars. It would have two potential purposes. One is often there are year-end contract approvals, things that don't make it on our last regular agenda that may need to be done by the end of the year.

So that would be one flavor of the meeting. If folks remember this summer, we had a similar meeting for approval of the Sullivan Arena contract because of the timing of our regular meetings. So that, that kind of thing could happen. The other thing is much more speculative, but I want folks to understand the process, and that is, of course, Currently, one of our members is a candidate for statewide office, and so we do not know the results of that election. However, in the job that I'm in, I have to plan for contingencies, and so what I'm sharing is not a done deal, but it is what would happen if, if those candidates are successful and then this member steps down from the body.

And I'm speaking about Zac Johnson, of course. So if that happens, 2 of the 12 members have seen this happen before. So most of us were not here when there were essentially shorter terms that went on the ballot and then interim members that were appointed, but that is a process that's very well-defined in code. And so if you're interested in that, you can take a look. I don't have the code reference handy, but it's essentially the vacancy in a seat.

And so the thing that I'm bringing to the body just for your awareness is that if there is a vacancy that is longer than 30 days and less than 6 months, would go in at some point. It needs to go on the ballot to fill the remainder of that seat. In this particular situation, if there is a vacancy for that period of time, we don't have to, but we can appoint an interim member. And so there's a 30-day window to do that. So when the vacancy is created, when a person steps down, we have 30 days to decide— not just decide, but to actually conduct that appointment process.

So I'm bringing to the body, I would recommend that we do appoint somebody if this happens. It would be a period of at least 4 months that otherwise one district would have only one member representation. And so I think it is fair to that district that we consider filling that seat. And this, there is plenty of precedent. Anybody who's run in a legislative or statewide race cycle, there's, this has happened before.

And so, so unless there's any objections, please follow up with the clerk if you do have strong objections to that path. But we would be, again, if this happens, setting in motion the process to appoint an interim member and to place a seat on the ballot for for District 6, South Anchorage. So again, that process is very clear in code. None of that starts happening until there is a vacancy. And so there's no application process.

Like if someone's interested in that, there's no way to do that right now. That may happen in short order and it would require us taking action probably by the end of this year. And so that's the other purpose, as I said, speculative at this point, but That kind of folks who have applied and then actually voting, the process again is all laid out in code. But that is something that we are starting to contingency plan for. And again, probably will require a special meeting given everything else.

So we will follow up as soon as possible on that. But just to put that on folks' radar so that we can close out. That also, if that comes to pass, there are other essentially roles that this current member is playing that would need to be filled. So I've started writing those down. Again, it's speculative.

So this is a topic sometime between now and our next meeting of this committee in December. And then lastly, I'll say I do need to reschedule committee for December. So it cannot be at 1:00 PM on Thursday, December 10th, when it's scheduled currently. We are working to get that rescheduled as soon as possible. It would just be earlier in that same week.

But we do have business to take care of. So I know So that was a lot of up—.

Any questions on any of that that I shared? George.

Thank you, Chair. I would just put a vote in for December 18th, the Friday, for if there was a special meeting consistent with the way we've kind of held the Fridays in the past.

Thanks. Any other questions, comments?

Erin, and then Donald. Yeah, thank you. Just curious about how you envision sort of the redistribution of work going forward if/when Zac rotates off. Is—. Are you looking for folks to volunteer?

Would you prefer to voluntell people? What is your preferred mechanism for that redistribution happening? Formally, things like chairs of committees, etc., are chair decisions, but certainly I do not just want to tell people what to do. And so I think, I think that's something we'll have to work through until this is real or not. But I think that is something that we can discuss.

So I guess if you're, if there is, if you look at who's, who's on what and you're interested in something that isn't somebody who might be leaving, then I guess just let the clerk staff know, or talk to me personally, because if it is an administrative decision, the OMA rules don't apply in the same way. So, so yeah, happy to have those conversations, and we'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it. Donald, for the special meeting, were you envisioning something in the evening? I know that was kind of a point of contention during the making sure that we're available to the public there. And so I'm not sure if, on the timing-wise, if that's been discussed.

Yeah, that's a good question. I think typically when we've had special meetings, especially on Fridays, we do actually usually hold them during the day. I think it also depends on the nature of the items. So for example, if we moved a bunch of substantive public hearing items to that meeting, then we would want to think about that. This entire process of choosing an interim member is not a public hearing item.

So certainly the public can watch. Similarly, if we need to approve contracts or things like that, those are usually consent agenda items, and so they're also not public hearing items. And so I think we certainly do our business in public, and I know we try to as much as possible do that outside of work hours, but we also have the consideration of things happening in the evening that requires our own staff to work overtime beyond our regular meetings. And so I think, again, given the nature of the items that I anticipate we would need this for, I think it's more likely to happen Friday during the day. And I guess the other thing I'll say is this would be in Assembly Chambers regardless of when it is so that we have access to the voting system and that there's also the dance of when the applications can close after being received by the clerk and the turnaround time.

So there's also public notice requirements that we're trying to manage. So the timeline is tight either way, if that's helpful. Any other questions? Comments?

Okay, well, thank you. Um, so—. Oh, sorry, Sydney, go ahead. I was just going to say, on the topic of special meeting, I would also be open to looking at the evening of Wednesday the 16th if we need to do that. Okay, thanks.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, and I guess in general, members, please send your availability that week of the—. Obviously we have a regular meeting on the 15th If you have constraints, then we can try to work with those as best as possible. And we also have a duty to vote, and so we do need to show up for meetings. So, okay, so that was a longer than usual chair report, and I know we have Suzanne Fleek-Green here to give a mayor's report, so we will turn back to that.

And then again, the schedule is going to be an ongoing conversation.

Hello, everyone.

Okay, couple of things that you know about, but just a reminder, the ledge program is getting wrapped up and we really appreciate all the collaboration with Legislative Services on that to get it done and meet the deadline. And I did hear Chair Brawley this morning remind everyone that as we go through the legislative session, there are additional opportunities to amend as you did last year with an assembly resolution on the gas line. So we will see what the next session brings with a new set of actors and what needs to do— what needs to be done more ad hoc on that. With so many youth in the audience here, thank you for coming. Want to announce that we have over 12 applications for our youth climate grants, so we will be selecting those soon.

It's a great opportunity to engage young people in helping to address climate issues here in the municipality, so stay tuned on that. Also stay tuned on more Downtown Be Dazzling. We are trying to do what we can in partnership with both Anchorage Downtown Partnership, private businesses, ACDA, and others. You might see that there's more snowflakes than there were last year, with no actual snow on the ground. We need to do more things to liven up our downtown, especially with all the holiday season activities coming up.

Thank you for those that attended the Energy Committee meeting. I think for the mayor, this is a really important good government action, as well as a way to try and future-proof the municipality against rising gas and power costs. So that team has really done a lot of work to try and understand our energy bills, what's driving them, and how we prioritize improvements. So that's some good discussion there. Thank you, Member Baldwin Day, for that.

We're excited to move forward on it. And then also just want to let folks know that we are still in conversations with the Anchorage School District about snowplowing. And so far this winter, sanding and everything that we can do to help schools stay open. Um, the delayed start is flashback to what several of us used to be more used to than full school closures, and I know they are trying to assess how that affects parents, um, versus full school closure, but we are now in constant late-night and early-morning communication with their transportation folks to make sure that we are deploying our equipment to the places that need it the most so that schools can, can stay open. And again, this is a good reminder to everyone that taxpayers have invested a lot in both more operators but also more equipment, including more sanding trucks.

Also, just flag for you and a request that when it goes live, that Public Works is about to put up a new video on their socials about what a plowout means, to remind everyone how it works, how you can track all the equipment, when they might be coming to a neighborhood near you, but also how we prioritize which roads get plowed and also which roads are muni roads and which roads are state roads. So it'd be very helpful when you see that if you can also share it on your socials. And then two other things just process-wise.

We did see the news coverage that you have a backup of public hearings coming up, and two ways that we can help you with that is if you ask your questions in advance of an assembly meeting as much as possible. So that we can address your questions directly and not take up meeting time, but also, frankly, you will get a more fulsome answer if you send those questions in advance. And those questions go to our Municipal Manager, Will Falsey. And then also, for those of you working on AOs, when you feel comfortable, we really do encourage you to reach out to our executive managers so that we can give you staff support as you're developing them. Sometimes they, they really get technical, and we want— we think that that would make it easier to get to a finished product that then gets through the body with maybe less time on the dais and more conversation to work through those technical issues.

So those are our two asks. That's it. Okay, questions, comments from members?

Okay, great. Thanks, Mr. Martinez. Thanks for being here. And then one piece I missed in the queue. So rolling back briefly to the Chair report, George, question.

Thank you, Chair. Just a note, more of a comment. I wanted to first express my support and appreciation for the Chair's leadership You've offered to others the opportunity to learn behind the curtains, and as a way to see the totality of the work, including scheduling, including the way the unseen mechanisms that need to be in place are put together essentially so that the public forums can be held. We just had a conversation about special the special meetings, uh, just a brief conversation. And, um, I wanted to express my disappointment that at the last assembly meeting that conversation turned into a swipe at your leadership, and, um, on the record, I think that was not called for.

Uh, and, and that member is not here, so I'm going to have the respect of not using their name today. But on the record, it's a difficult job that you've made available with the grace that you find to make it available to others that may not have the best intent of seeing behind the curtains with you. I encourage you to continue on that track. I have a different disposition than that vantage point, and so I just wanted to put on the record that you're doing a good job. I understand the work that you're, that you're lifting for all of us, including bringing new members along into spaces that they are unfamiliar with just fundamentally because of the newness to their service.

So thank you for continuing to bring that disposition of your character. And I will also hold the space for during member comments on the next assembly meeting, because I just believe that that needs to be said, that taking swipes like that on the record in that particular forum are uncalled for. And you have my support, Chair. I just wanted to make sure that I was really clear today. This is governance is when we should say that.

Thank you. Anna rather than Sharon. Yes. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah. And I'll just briefly note too, that invitation is open. So we do have one person participating as a third member for being on the 17th. And then we have another person for the first. And so anytime after the first, any regular meeting, it's essentially three additional meetings on your calendar and a look at kind of how our agendas get built and how they get prioritized and really how much is not done behind the scenes.

So, so thank you.

Okay, so I think we are through those reports. So next I will turn to— I'll go through our other department reports. So starting with the clerk, Jamie.

Thank you. So we— I'll give you another petition update. We have had 9 petitions submitted this year. So we have one that's due Monday for the Office of Inspector General that has been out for 90 days, almost 90 days for circulation for signatures. 3 Others are circulating.

One is recall of the mayor, another one is discontinuing fluoridation, and the third is school board elections by district. And then the newest application we've received is advisory vote regarding an elected attorney that was submitted on Tuesday and is currently in legal review. And so it's been a lot this year. Um, we along with Legislative Services created a menu of services that is provided in your documents at your place to hopefully help make it a little bit easier for identifying who can help you do the various different things. I think that was a conversation we had in May or June.

And so I think Clare's going to go over hers as well.

And then we're also interviewing and hiring— we're in the interview and hiring phases of our 3-year vacant positions in the clerk's office. And then the last thing I wanted to follow up on, Chair Brawley's report on a potential vacancy. The vacancy provisions are actually in charter and not the code. And so it's, and it's, it's a puzzle every time. I, this, I was, I navigated the process back in 2023 and So the evening of the 16th will not work.

We're required to have the documents out 24 hours before the meeting, and the week of the 5th through the 10th, I think, we're navigating Alaska Association of Municipal Clerks and also AML. And so, um, we can't— so anyway, the application process needs to be a certain number of days, and it is projected to end on the 16th, and so we would not be able to use a meet— do a meeting on the 16th, um, for that little puzzle piece there.

And I think that's it.

Okay, questions for Jamie?

Okay, I don't see any right now. Thank you. Um, next, uh, council, so I'll turn—. We have Dean and Matthew for an update.

Uh, thank you, Madam Chair. I don't really have an update, but I would just like to comment to follow up on, um, the mayor's report given by Chief of Staff Susanne Fleek-Green. Um, and the comment is to also keep your, I guess, assembly services attorney, if they're working on this solution for you, engaged when you go to the administration or departments for technical assistance, responding, discussion, installation they're working on. Even if that's just to keep us looped in by CCing us on email, it's much better for for us to be aware of what's happening in our events, learn a bit later on when we're assisting and drafting. And I mean, most members do that, but it's just sort of a reminder for everybody.

And we can also sort of function as a liaison between the departments and so forth. Otherwise, I do appreciate your comments and the Chair's recognition of our backlog and to try and catch up on things as we're also trying to keep pace with you all. So, and not slow you down, Mr. Chair. So, Mr. Herbst, did you have anything to add?

Thank you.

Okay, thank you. And I'll note, I'll reiterate something I remember from last month, which is if Brandy is not included on the email, if she doesn't know about it, they don't know about it. So just as a reminder, put her on there and do not worry about adding too many emails because it's better than trying to backtrack. And also just note on the subject of counsel, this was discussed in our budget work sessions.

We do have a currently unfilled third attorney position. Position. We utilized the funding for that to do some other things in this year's budget, but the intent is, even though it's not in the budget as published, we've been working with the— with OMB to make sure that that's going to be corrected in the S version. And the intent would be to potentially recruit and hire for that position sometime in 2027. Again, not in addition to the attorneys we have.

I think it's been a need for a while and even more so. And so we want to make sure that we have a functioning Assembly Counsel office. So So with that, questions? Uh, George.

Yeah, just an observation, especially as it relates to the bandwidth, the workload of legal and the branch itself. It occurs to me that we've had discussion this year of discretionary spending, but Assemblymembers don't actually have discretionary spending. We have the ability to, with our discretion, recommend how we want to spend some resources, but we still have to go through an approval process. Assembly members don't have discretion— direct spending authority, except when it comes to staff. Our ability to introduce or have staff work on legislative items is our discretionary spending.

And if, if we don't measure that well and don't track that well, we can have disproportionate impacts on timing that we may not otherwise be aware of. And so it seems to me that the responsiveness of staff in terms of meeting members' needs is where we have full discretionary spending, and a little more insight to that process is probably going to be helpful to understand the year, uh, that it entails to keep all of that together across a budgetary cycle in the first place. So I just wanted to highlight that that particular note because we don't have direct spending except when we ask staff to do work that they may otherwise get backlogged with.

Yeah, thanks for that comment. And I know— I'll note too, I know in a prior meeting, um, Council shared some proposed— uh, well, not even proposed, just it's in their discretion to change some of the timelines. And so we are going to come back to that and just make sure that we can fully roll that out so that folks do have enough time. So thank you for flagging that as well.

Other questions, comments for Council?

Erin? Yeah, just a comment along similar lines, understanding that our attorneys and staff do a lot of work on our behalf. Just want to encourage members that if you potentially have a long-haul legislative process or arc of resolutions or ordinances that you want to bring forward, Council is really wonderful about sitting down and mapping that out with you. And that's something that, that's an opportunity that I took advantage of to just think through what my legislative priorities are going to look like for 2027 and to sit down with Council and to actually roadmap it so that there's some clarity, there's some cohesion, and Council knows what they might want to, what they might expect from me and also can build that into their workflow in a more efficient way rather than sort of one-off ordinances coming down the pike or resolutions. And so would really love to encourage my colleagues to do the same.

If you have a specific set of policy priorities that you would like to move in fiscal year '27, take the time to sit down with council and put all of that out on the table so that there is an understanding of what your needs and your priorities are going to be. And then we're not no noticing our staff in a way that's unproductive and creates friction. So I just wanted to note that. Thank you. Thanks.

And then I'll note we were joined on the phone just now by Keith McCormick. Other—. Anyone else? Okay, don't see any. So that's the Council report.

So next, let's move on to Legislative Services. Clare.

And I'll note there's a couple things later on the agenda, so we'll come back to those as well. Thanks.

Thank you.

Hopefully you all have been enjoying the new muni.org website. Very nice. We are still experiencing some problems with documents, old documents, and you get the 404 message. So if you run into any issues just on the assembly pages, let Ali— and probably just Ali know. Administration was really great to include Ali and Jamie throughout the process for the website overhaul, and we were very busy in October getting our site ready, so we're glad that's done.

The Fiscal Future Summit a couple weeks ago was hugely successful, really great conversations Allie sent you all earlier this week a packet of the survey results, a list of the questions that were submitted during the summit, and the— we had some polling during the summit. I really hope you all will read that. It's pages and pages of really great direct feedback from your constituents about how they feel about the budget and what they're thinking about the future. So it's a wealth of information for you. Our next Nerd Night is December 8th at Sakana.

It's going to be Anchorage Artists Unite. So artists talking about how they collaborate.

We've been doing a series of Building Anchorage Housing Success Stories that Jennifer has been working on, finding different developers who've done housing projects that were made possible by the municipality's changes to housing policy regulation. Tax incentives. So that's been really fun. Hopefully you've been reading those. I think we're going to pull together all of them and do a display at Civic Anchorage at Lusak sometime early next year.

You have a meeting, your joint meeting with the Joint Village of Eklutna on December 3rd, and based on feedback at the last meeting, we've invited village leadership from Kipnuk and Kwiget, and I think they are all planning to come. So that will be a nice opportunity to develop some relationships with them. We've also invited earlier this spring members of— well, President Leggett and then former Chair Conson and I went to Salt Lake City and met with the city and the Northwest Band of the Shoshone Tribe. And so we've invited them to join telephonically via Zoom for that meeting so that they can see you all in action and hopefully replicate it themselves. And then finally, at the end of your packet, you will see our legislative services menu.

It's with the Clerk's Office menu. We started this project back in May, and I think you all seem to have figured out what we offer and have been using it quite heavily the last couple of months. So maybe, uh, no, but we wanted to just make sure that you all knew about all of the things that we could do. It's not just, um, writing press releases, but it's a whole gamut of research and communications that we can offer you. So please take a look at those menus.

We're going to post the Clerk's menu and our menu around the offices to remind you that you can take advantage of our services. That is all for my report. Okay, questions for Clare?

Okay, I don't see any. Then let us move on. So next we have our report from ombudsman. So we have Darryl. Go ahead.

Thank you, Anna. Last month I reported at the meeting that we were going to record our 1,000th constituent contact that day. We're over 1,100 now. We're running a little behind because we haven't had any snow, so when we get snow, that means our phones start ringing off the hook sometimes.

We are continuing to focus on training and professional development. Heather is working remotely Tuesday and Thursday this week. She's taken an investigative training, and Drew has been offered secured a seat at an upcoming Alaska Humanities Forum retreat. So we want to continue that focus on training and professional development. We're working on our strategic plan.

We had a session, a planning session, I believe it was October 29th. Thank you, Anna and Sydney, for joining us. Uh, ari from the Federation of Community Councils and Nora Morrison from the mayor's office. We thought it was important to have a perspective from the administration, and then Heather Drew and I were there, and it was interesting that the things that the group— the ideas, the priorities that the group talked about— matched what the consultant had heard from interviews she had conducted and surveys that assembly members responded to. And some of those are doing a better job of community engagement and outreach, educating about what our office does, and developing more robust internal policies and procedures to make sure we stay on track.

So we hopefully— we're hoping to have the plan completed and to the assembly before the end of the year, including an implementation timeline.

The administration invited me to join the mayor at the Freedom Fund dinner this Saturday, and I'm going to take some outreach materials for our office and put them out on the table there. Last month, the committee asked me to look into an issue that had been raised regarding the Kootenai Valley Community Council. I don't have a written memo. Ari from the Federation and I just met with Rick Senate, the newly elected president of the council, and his wife Lisa, who is the secretary. We met up with them about an hour and a half ago, and when I I talked to the previous president.

They acknowledged that the council had not met the requirements of code as far as the number of meetings to be held by the council, regular meetings. The code says, among other things, that to be recognized as a council and maintain recognition, you have to meet a minimum of 4 times a year and a minimum, minimum of once per calendar quarter. Kootenai Valley did not meet that standard over the last couple of years. The outgoing president, you know, said it was on her. So the— at the October meeting, they elected new officers.

I know Donald attended the meeting. I was going to attend, but my car was in the shop. But they had 25 to 30 people show up, which is one-third of the residents in their community council district. I don't think any community council is going to beat that level of attendance. And, you know, Donald reported back to me and the president today that that's their normal attendance.

So they do have robust attendance. It was just an issue with the previous leadership scheduling the meeting. So they have approved a schedule of meetings for the upcoming year. Ari with the Federation and I both committed to helping them if they need any help with training or planning, or if they have questions about the code, the Federation has offered to manage their listserv for them, send out notices, help them clean it up, provide them with training materials, and give them the link to the Federation Zoom account. So if there is inclement weather, they could do a pivot to Zoom meeting.

So my recommendation to the committee is You know, I believe they're on track. They're committed to meeting the requirements of the code, and I don't— I really don't think that the assembly needs to take any action at this time. I will continue to monitor it, and I told Donald that I will keep him and Jared informed of how things are going. And I don't know, Donald, if you wanted to add anything. Yeah, I mean, I was very impressed with the— I mean, walking into that room and just the number of people, because I know it's a small community council.

I was very impressed and did not have enough of my little newsletter, so I apologize to them for that, for underestimating them. But yeah, I mean, very good. I mean, group of individuals there, and yeah, I'm really excited that kind of having that ongoing relationship as an assembly member with that community council. Thank you. So I think they're on track.

I agree with Donald. So I don't— my recommendation is you don't take any action. We give them an opportunity to show that they're going to comply with the code.

Thank you. And I'll just remind members in the public too, so one of the very niche functions of what's been called the Rules Committee, now the Governance Committee, is to take up these recommendations and ask as a committee, you know, for those things.

So thank you, Darryl, for following up on that. And I think unless there's—. Unless folks have other opinions, then I think we let that one lie and let them catch up up on the meeting schedule. And I'll say that sounds like a challenge to other community councils, some of which may have 10,000 people, so fitting 3,000 people in a room might be challenging, but we would love to have that problem of too many people showing up to council. So, okay, any other questions, comments?

Okay, I think that's the reports. So thank you for that. So we all— we don't have any unfinished business, or really everything we do is unfinished business, but for this purpose, we will go to new business. So I'll just note, we are going to— one quick thing, we'll run through the list in order except I'm going to flip assembly discussion on pending business because I know that's something we don't often get to. So I'm going to put introduction of guests last.

And then similarly, before we get to introduction of guests, I'm going to move up audience participation for anybody else who plans to participate so that we can basically use the last part of our meeting with our discussion with youth. And then if we do need to go long, them, then that way we don't have to interrupt that discussion. So, so with that, we'll move into our new business. So the next one is our Assemblymember social media policy. I'm going to kick this one over to Matthew Hurt.

I will say the Microsoft being down this morning made this a little bit more painful than it needed to be. But I want to share— so this is a— before they turn it over, this is a draft. This is actually something that started at least a year ago, and the idea being that we don't have a social media policy, meaning official accounts for Assembly members. So we do—. There is a social media policy for the municipality.

It's mostly relevant and applicable to departments, you know, who are not elected officials, who are not Assembly members. And so I'll just share that this is— so we'll talk through what's in here, why it's there. There's been a lot of legal research. And then I will say my intent is to, when we feel this is final, to adopt this. It would be effective January 1, 2027, for reasons we'll describe.

But also to note, this is not intended intended to stop people from using social media. It is really to provide guidelines and really legal boundaries because this affects First Amendment rights, Open Meetings Act, records keeping, and there was a fourth thing that I don't remember. So anyway, but there's a lot of really legal frameworks that we are trying to fit this in without telling people don't use social media because we know that's where the public is. So with all of that said, I'll turn it over to Matthew. And again, if people have detailed questions about like the legal background, I'll just ask folks to take those offline.

But go ahead, Matthew. Thank you through the chair.

So yeah, as Chair Brawley said, this has been an ongoing problem, and I would like once again to recommend just not using social media, period. If me saying it one more time convinces one person, then it's worth saying it. Yeah, so, okay.

My work is done. Thank you for your attention.

As Chair Brawley was saying, this has been a longstanding problem, and up until this point, I think the— our branch has been treating it kind of like an unexpected clown at a birthday party, just like, if we don't pay attention to it, maybe it'll go away. And I feel like we're to the point where the clown is, like, juggling in our face, so we need to address it. As Chair Brawley said, the reason this is such a thorny problem is because there's 4 dimensions to it, the first being the First Amendment aspect, the ethics code aspect, the public records aspect, and the open meetings aspect. I tried really hard to come up with a 5th dimension so I could play Age of Aquarius during this presentation, but unfortunately I couldn't quite get there. So with that in mind, those are the Those are the dimensions of this problem that we're trying to address with this.

So first of all, with the First Amendment, this is the part that we have been most comfortable briefing y'all on because we have some case law on it out of the Supreme Court and now with the Ninth Circuit in the form of Linka v. Freed, or Linka v. Freed, very Germanic names in this case, Linka v. Freed.

Out of the Supreme Court in, uh, Garner v. O'Connor out of the Ninth Circuit, O'Connor Radcliffe out of the Ninth Circuit, which basically said, um, that if someone is purporting to speak on behalf of, uh, a municipality or the state, um, and, uh, has the authority to do that, then that's what delineates an official account. We haven't been able to really fill that in because As was stated, that the court usually is going to look at statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage to determine whether or not a person or agency has the authority to speak officially on behalf of the government. And there's no clear, no clear ordinance, regulation, or statute with regard to the assembly members' role, but I think most of you would agree that customer usage, you believe that it's it's part of your job to communicate with your constituents, and given that they are on social media, you have to meet your constituents where they are. So with that in mind, that's where some of this language comes from. If you look at the policy, we're trying to establish firmly, at least in written word, that we always recognize this as customary and necessary as part of your job.

That's under the fourth paragraph. And additionally, and this kind of bleeds over in the Venn diagram of all these dimensions to the ethics code portion, that's why we're requiring some indicia of the official nature of your account. So if you look at paragraph 5 requirements, there's that authenticity establishment where it's associated with your official account. Additionally, with regard to the First Amendment, we're providing guidance on how to handle it as a limited public forum, because if you— you do not have to allow comments, posts by third parties on your social media. It's fine to just use it as a one-way communication device.

But if you do, then you're triggering First Amendment protections for— potentially triggering First Amendment protections for members of the public who post on your site, essentially creating a limited public forum, much in the same way that an assembly meeting is a limited public forum. So it's providing guidance on that as well in paragraph 5.

Basically, the time, place, and manner restrictions are generally acceptable provided they are reasonably— they are related to the purpose of the forum and that they are viewpoint neutral. So this is mirroring a lot of what's in the administration's policy as well. Basically, post user guidelines, warn people if they violate them. If you If somebody violates the guidelines, it's okay to remove that post as long as you're able to preserve it for public records purposes in some way, shape, or form. With regard to the ethics code, this is again trying to provide clear delineation between your official life and your private life.

So the requirements to have the indicia of the official nature of the account under 5 are essentially there to ensure that the public doesn't confuse your official account for a personal account. And likewise, if you look at paragraph—.

So many paragraphs—. 5 On the back, on the last page, the intent there is to ensure that the public doesn't confuse your private accounts or your personal accounts with your official account. So just making sure that there's a clarity and delineation between the two.

Again, being cognizant of the fact that if it's an official account, it's essentially using your title, using your position, using the authority as an assembly member is essentially a government resource, so you can't use it for political or partisan purposes.

The idea being that, again, as part of your customary duties, you can express opinions on things that are before the body except for administrative and quasi-judicial matters, but you can't use them to support a candidate, affect the outcome of an election, endorse a political party or any sort, and that's pretty— I think everybody pretty much gets that. It's much in the same— it's the same rules that govern your conduct in daily life.

With regard to Public Records Act and the public records requirements in code, the paragraph 5 basically establishes the— clarifies the responsibility that if you are using this as an official medium to communicate with constituents, then you should assume that you're creating public records. The clerk is going to contract with an archiving agency that will be provided to you free of charge for these accounts, and it will automatically archive activity on your account. If you choose not to do that, there is an assumption of risk on you that you are going to have to preserve those records on your own, and it's the boogers on your forehead, to use the legal term.

And then finally, as far as Open Meetings Act, it just contains an admonition based off of the, the shenanigans that went on to our north regarding using social media to discuss, essentially to create a serial meeting by commenting on other members of a body's accounts. That if you are commenting or posting or messaging using social media to that, you're running risk of running afoul of of Open Meetings Act, because you can essentially violate the rule of three in social media in the same way you can, you know, in the back alleys where shady, shady legislation gets drafted. Um, for the record, that is not our current practice. That's not, not current practice. Uh, I don't know, my daughter's in, in an upcoming production of Guys and Dolls, so I just have like images images of people shooting dice in back alleys in my head, I guess.

So pending the members' questions, that is the policy as it stands now.

Okay, thank you. So I'll go to folks in the queue, but before we do that, I want something to be super clear. So this policy obviously does not exist yet. Obviously people are using social—.

I have an official account, for example. If for some reason somebody does— well, I guess what happens now if there is a public records request from a member of the public on one of these accounts? I guess I want to make that really clear. So if we don't have this kind of policy, kind of where are we now and what would happen? And then if someone sued the municipality over this, what would also happen?

Not this policy, sorry. If somebody makes a public records request, they don't get those records. From this member, whatever, what would happen?

It depends. Sorry, that's the default lawyer answer. It's not 100% clear right now what would occur. There's language in case law that would indicate that it's the individual member's responsibility and that the liability would be with them for failing to produce. What would otherwise be considered a public record subject to retention.

So I mean, at this point, based off case law, I would advise members to assume that they are responsible for preservation of social media activity as a public record at this point. Thanks. And I bring that up not because there is a pending case or I'm suggesting there should be one. It really is about a non-zero part of our job is considering legal risk to the municipality, and then our actions can cause legal risk, which causes taxpayer dollars to be spent on litigation. And so that's partly why we're doing this.

Mr. Keith, and then Donald, go ahead.

Thank you. Yeah, my question was to the attorneys. Is there a specific charter provision or code section that gives the authority to restrict or dictate how or what I post on my social media?

So as far as charter provision, I can't point to a charter provision. I can point to the ethics code, basically the provisions of it that govern use of assembly resources cited in the policy. Basically the point being that if you're going to use the title of your office and your position, then you're subject to the ethics code and can't use that official resource essentially to speak out on a political issue or partisan activity. The code essentially limits you to— nothing restricts you from expressing opinion in the normal course of your duties, But I would say it's the same provision that would forbid you from using official letterhead to mail people and campaign for somebody for state office or to push for a certain result on a ballot proposition or something like that. And I also see Eva has come to the table.

Thanks, Eva. She may have an additional answer.

Okay. Thank you. Hi, so to follow up on Mr. Hurd's comments, there are two different ways that the code, in the ethics code, addresses this. So one is if you're using municipal resources, there are some restrictions placed on that, as we've identified. Also, generally, it has been municipal practice that if municipal resources are being made available to, you know, to somebody, an employee, an elected official, then you can impose reasonable policies on how they are used.

So that would be one way to do that. The other one, in terms of you just speaking on your own, not using any municipal resources through a personal account, the ethics code says elected officials may use their titles when engaging in political or partisan activity, but shall not state or imply that you're acting on behalf of the Assembly or the municipality. So if you're speaking in your personal capacity, not, you know, acting on behalf of the municipality or the Assembly, and you make that clear, then you can really say whatever you want, as long as again, you aren't using municipal resources.

Okay, thank you. That kind of takes me to my next question, which is Section 5D. What authority does the assembly or city have over what I post on my personal social media accounts? Because that seems to be what we're dictating in Section 5D is what assembly members can post on their personal social media accounts, and I'm seeing an incredible amount of liability in that. If you could speak to that.

So with regard to 5D, the restriction on using the @anchorage.gov, I mean, that's pretty straightforward as the email address in and of itself is a government asset.

The provisions restricting use of cross-pollination between the two accounts is essentially to ensure that there is no— the entire point of the policy is to keep it clear in the public's mind as to what the official count is and what the private account is.

If those guardrails aren't in place, I believe we're exposing ourselves to greater liability on the part of the public reasonably confusing, uh, the two accounts. And, um, essentially it would undo the protections that are being put in place by this policy. So essentially, because it's an official account, um, it's not intended to be generating content for stuff in a private capacity. The the harder a firewall you can keep between those two aspects of your life. I believe the more protected the municipality is.

I agree that having a strong firewall is important, but this policy says my personal account shall not feature posts relating to municipal government, which seems like you're infringing on my First Amendment right rights as a citizen, not as an assembly member, to speak or post about what I would like to post about on my personal, not government-affiliated account? And are we concerned about the liabilities that that might raise?

And I think Eva also wanted to respond. Thank you. Just in terms— I want to take a step back and clarify where we are on this draft policy. This is the policy that was drafted. I understand this is an initial draft and it has not been—.

If I can clarify, it is not an initial draft because this has been worked on for a year, but it is not— this is not going to get adopted exactly as it's read necessarily. So it is an active draft. And with that said, I think that you make a good point, right? We do not want to restrict individual people's First Amendment rights out there in the world. And that's some language that could be fine-tuned to explain, you know, you might be able to repost things that are posted, but I think the goal here is really, honestly, it's to protect the municipality, to set clear boundaries, but also to protect individual members, because there is very clear, I think, US Supreme Court case law from recent years that explains if you are an official and you are using your personal account to communicate official information, then you're subject to all of the, you know, First Amendment rules as to the public, and so then if you block somebody or delete their comment then you can face personal liability for that.

And so I think the goal of this, as I understand it, and I wasn't involved in this particular drafting iteration, was to really set that clearly for your protection as well. And so again, I think that reposting information that has been officially posted somewhere else, but not using your personal account as the main mouthpiece for you to communicate official business to the public, would, would be something important. And we can— happy to meet with you and talk to you more about that legal precedent so you can understand it and consider how you feel about this policy or what your thoughts are. But it is a good point.

Okay, thank you. And then my last question is, who determines whether this policy was followed by a member? It seems, as I quickly review this, the municipal attorney.

So I, I guess, is that the appropriate place? Is it municipal attorney or legislative attorneys who determines whether the policy was followed and a member, I guess, deserves to have legal representation from the city?

Yeah, as it's currently written, it's deferring to the provision of code where the municipal attorney makes the determination as to whether or not the municipality will indemnify a member for their actions.

Okay, I guess I have, you know, some concerns over the Municipal Attorney's Office, you know, under the executive branch being the decider over, you know, whether legislative branch members receive legal representation. So I'll just bring that forward. But that was my last question. Thank you. Okay, thanks.

I have a few more folks in the queue. Also note that the Municipal Attorney's Office is actually a resource that's shared by both branches, and I know that's been an ongoing conversation and what that looks like in real life, but that per charter is something, a resource that we share between the branches. So next I have Donald and then Erin and then Yarrow.

Yeah, so I mean, I've got some concerns with the definition of defamatory content. This, I guess, is the first time I've ever seen in a legal document where defamatory content doesn't have the word false in there as well.

So this would be, I mean, if someone posted content of, hey, here's someone's vote, here's how they voted, someone could say, oh hey, I, I think that's defamatory towards me.

Am I missing something there?

With regard to whether or not something would tend to to harm the reputation of another or lower the person in the estimation of the community to deter third persons from associating or dealing with them, a reasonable person standard would apply to that. Um, additionally, in discussing how somebody voted on a matter of public record, um, I think it would be something of a stretch to characterize that as defamatory. Um, If the members wanted to add the term false, I mean, typically libel and slander is defined as something as both false and defamatory, with defamatory being the harming of the reputation aspect. But even if you are stating true content, you're essentially using the platform of the municipality to harm somebody's reputation, which, uh, is the reason it was defined as is. It's the same reason that we tend to go into executive session when dealing with defamatory issues, um, that might harm someone's reputation, even if they're true.

Um, we don't want to use, uh, the platform of the municipality for that purpose. But again, It's a draft policy at this point. Yeah, I mean, I guess I would like— okay, if the mayor comes out and puts out a policy that she wants to put out a tax on puppies, I go out there and say, hey, I don't like this, this is a bad policy. Could that be viewed, I guess, as defamatory, even though I'm stating, hey, this is what is going on, and saying, hey, I don't like this policy? Could that lead to, I guess, the harm and the reputation of of another?

I would think that would be quite a stretch to criticize somebody's public official actions based off of a policy decision. I don't— that would not qualify as defamatory. Again, it's a much more personal aspect as opposed to the official action somebody takes in the public realm. Okay, so the other thing, I mean, kind of back to Section 5D here, I guess that the campaign social media accounts, so the part that says feature posts relating to municipal government or the performance of the member's office. So if I'm running for reelection and I say, hey, I voted for this, and I mention anything about anything with the performance of my office, I am forbidden from doing that, taken literally reading this.

Is that true?

I can't talk about, hey, I've been a good Assemblymember, please elect me to another 3-year term?

That, I would say, that's a legitimate reading of that. That obviously was not the intent, but I see your point. So yeah, I mean, I think that, I mean, some of the stuff, I mean, having the, I guess, distinguishing parts, like, hey, I don't have any kind of objection with that. But I mean, some of this where we are— I mean, link to— and so if you go in, hey, I'm doing this policy, I'm trying to get it out there, of people go, go read this, and I go in on my personal page, go and share that, there's technically a link to that, to that post, to the assembly thing, just, just trying to share that out. And it sounds like that person would be in violation either on their personal or campaign account there.

And so yeah, I think this goes way too far with, I guess, trying to, I guess, micromanage what people are doing in their capacity outside of being an assembly member.

I think I'll jump in here and say, I mean, certainly, like I said, this has been reviewed. We are still looking at kind of where we can make sure that this language is clear, which is partly why it's taken so long. And I think I would reframe, it's not limiting what folks do in their personal capacity, it is making sure that there is a clear, bright, hard legal line between what you were doing in one role versus another role. And so I think it's—. So you could read it as limiting your First Amendment rights.

But I think when we take office, we self-limit because of the rules that we have to be subject to. And so there's certain things that even if maybe we legally can, Maybe it's legal that you go and participate, you know, testify at the Planning and Zoning Commission, but you also have to think about what is the implication of that because you are always an assembly member in the public, even if you say that you're not. So that's a different issue. But I guess I— we definitely want to work through what this needs to look like, but I want to offer that these limits are not intended to restrict your First Amendment rights as much as they are to say that it needs to be clear between when you're acting as an official and when you're acting as a private a private citizen. And it is very easy to blur those lines, especially on social media, and all of that creates legal risk for the municipality.

That's what we're trying to get to. So I'm not arguing this language is the perfect language, but I'm arguing that's why this is here, and somehow we have to distinguish between those two things. So I am very open to other versions of this language that still achieves that goal. Yeah, and I guess, I mean, with the campaign portion of it, I guess, is where I think, because like part of the nature of running a campaign is to discuss municipal government and the performance of members in office. And so that is like one of the key aspects of it.

And so I don't know how you could ever run a campaign for reelection and have a social media account with this.

So I guess I'll note, um, we have 4 additional folks in the queue.

We have two options here. We can continue through this and then we still have some other things we need to get to. We could also punt this to the next meeting because I think there's a lot of questions maybe that people want to ask and get answered offline in terms of kind of legal interpretations, because as I said, there's been a lot of research, but this is not necessarily— this is an evolving area of law. The other option is we can schedule a work session to discuss this because we can't do it outside of a public meeting. So I just offer those options.

I'm happy to keep continue going through the queue. I just imagine there may be more questions than we'll have time for today.

So I guess next I'll go to Erin. So I'll just note I have Erin, Yarrow, Jared, and Sydney in the queue. Yeah, I think I'm really happy to hold my questions for a future conversation. I want to be sure we can get through the rest of our agenda today. So I I, for one, would be in support of a work session or returning this to a future governance meeting agenda.

Thanks. Okay, and I'll ask folks to— I'll go through the queue. If you would like to ask a question, please feel free, even if it's to say I would like an answer as a follow-up as well. So, Yarrow.

Yeah, I think I'm happy to make most of my comments in a future work session or something. I think Donald really covered a lot of what I was concerned about in this personal or campaign social media account section. You know, and I guess I just really want to reiterate that this seems to be just really too broad and sweeping. You know, link to or reference from the member's official account. You know, so like literally I have a post on my personal account that says Hey, this is my personal account.

I'm not going to discuss Assembly business here. If you want to talk about Assembly business, go to this account, and there's a link. And what this is telling me is that I can't do that. And so my attempt to clearly delineate the two accounts is getting caught up in this. So yeah, I think I definitely want to have more discussion on it.

And thanks for just letting me get that brief bit out for now. Okay, Jared.

Yeah, ditto to everything Yarrow, Donald, and Keith have said so far. And totally, if we can—. I'll reserve my comments and questions for a later date as well, be that a work session or at another governance committee meeting. That's fine. Okay, and Sydney.

Thanks.

Yeah, I think work session sounds especially good to me so that we don't eat up other governance committee agendas, but that's your call, obviously. My questions for the future conversation are related to like how enforcement happens. Is it complaint-driven or is there a review? What happens if somebody violates. And then also, in that future conversation, we'll love to talk about guidelines for other elected officials in the municipality.

Is this just assembly members? Are there guidelines for the mayor's office that mirror this on their side? So yeah, looking forward to learning more.

Okay. Okay, that takes us to the queue. So next steps are, one, if you do have— and I know things have been flagged in the meeting, but if you have additional comments, questions, please send them directly to Assembly Council. And then I know we'll be working on additional research or kind of what the right wording of this is. Again, the goal is really to—.

Well, two goals. One is to provide clear guidelines on use of official accounts, which is within the bounds of the municipality for which we do not have a policy. And I'll just briefly answer Sydney's question. This would only apply to Assembly members. I cannot adopt a policy that applies to the mayor's office.

But obviously this has implications for other elected officials informally, whatever we adopt. And then also just to say, right now we are in a very unclear space of litigation risk, and so us not having this policy doesn't mean that someone cannot do a records request, cannot sue the municipality for lack of production of records and all of that. So, so that's the space we continue to exist in until we have some more clear guidelines. George. Yes, just to flag one question that's complementary, and we can discuss it later on as well.

I'm also looking at a project, a larger project that parallels some questions here, particularly around control of third parties information. Um, fundamentally, the question is, even with respect to social media— and I'm glad the municipal attorney's here— we've had conversations around surveillance, who controls our data, uh, within the municipal use of technology. Fundamentally, we're talking about third-party systems that no one controls within the municipality, and I wanted to flag that for us. Um, I think that's a larger question about about the integrity of public data, third-party corporations controlling information, and how we understand that across the entire municipality. I think multiple departments use social media as well.

And it's a question that I think is an intriguing one about control of information. So I just wanted to flag that as well. Okay, thank you. So I think that takes care of that discussion. So again, if you have feedback on this, And then, of course, the endpoint is, like, our— generally with our policies, this would be adopted by the chair.

But again, I want to make sure that this is correct before we do it. And also, whatever the effective date would be needs lead time for the clerk to actually procure and have that archiving service available. So that is partly the timing as well. So this can also go into 2027. And in the meantime, we'll be in the space that we are now, which is that these things are not defined other than our existing laws and code.

So let's move on then to our next item. So work plans, work plan progress, setting 2027 priorities. I'll say I don't think we need 15 minutes for that, for this. I'll turn to Clare first, and then I have just some ideas I want to put on the table that we'll come back to in a future discussion.

All right, you all have the Assembly work plan document in front of you. We typically go through this a couple of times a year, and now is a really good time to go for— well, it's a little late this year because hopefully you guys don't want to add anything more to your agendas by the end of the year. But I like to show this to you in the fall so you can see what you set out to do, see if there's things that haven't been worked on that are still important to you, and start thinking about what you want to carry over to the next year's plan. So I think we could go through this list each section and update it, but I think first it's better to have a big picture discussion on maybe what you want out of a work plan for next year. If this document is still helpful for you, it's very helpful for staff, and because we know what you're going to want to work on and we're kind of tracking it, making sure you're staying on task.

And then it was really helpful for me when I read through it last to see what hasn't been worked on so I could flag it with some of you that if this is so important, you might want to get something going on this. So it's very useful for staff. Hopefully it's useful for you. Before we dive into details, just want to have a little conversation on what you want to see out of a work plan for next year and if this document is still useful for you.

Okay. Members in the queue, And I know the goal is not to go through and make line item updates to this, but always if you have them or if there's corrections or you want to be on or off of something, then communicate directly with Clare. Sydney? I think it would be interesting when we do this re-review for next year to think about where these projects live. Like, are these— committee topic, you know, do these live in a specific committee?

How does— is the legal department working on it? Like, core partners? I think about like the community council one that I signed up for, like that's SCC conversation. I think it'd be interesting to map out, like, have a column or something dedicated to Yeah, just where the work is happening.

The work is happening with you, so this is kind of more a compilation of what you all want to do versus— there's another step that you could take where it could be the assembly setting some priorities and saying housing action items 1, 2, 3 are the assembly's priorities and we're all going to work on them, in which case then staff might be doing some of more what you're talking about of gathering gathering the partners, making sure it's happening. At this point, it's just a compilation of your goals. So it's really for you to look and see what your name is by and what you want to work on, and then set up a project and assign us work for it. Yeah, I think I was not asking you to say where it lives. I think it would just be helpful for us as, like, a team to think about, okay, because so many of these projects are multiple members working together.

So I think it'd be great to like just for us as members to think about, okay, we're going to work on this in Energy Committee. We're going to have meetings with FCC, et cetera. And like maybe that's too granular, but I think, or if you're interested in something and not wanting to be the person that signs up, knowing where you can go to like track it or learn more about it. But yeah, just, just a thought.

Okay, other comments, Erin?

Yeah, thank you. It's really helpful to, I think, revisit this at intervals. And I know there's, there's been some conversation happening in various quarters about doing some sort of an assembly retreat or something of that nature early in '27. And I think it'd be really useful to revisit this at that point. I think there are actually quite a few updates just at this juncture that could be made to some of these, and I'm wondering how— what would be the best way to communicate those updates?

Is that something you'd like for us to send to you? What's the best way to do that? I think once we wrap up this big picture discussion, we can spend 5 minutes or so just going through each section, and you you can tell me, or if you email me, that helps too. But I often find that— well, it's just quicker if you just tell me right now and I write notes, then people don't have to remember to follow up later. So maybe in a minute we can go through each section.

Okay, and as folks are reading, I'll just note the question about the retreat was one I wanted to raise committees as well. Not something we have to decide right now, but I think several of us did participate in one last year. It was probably around this time, actually, and I think it was valuable. And I think at minimum, having that discussion of what we collectively want to send where, I think is helpful. And again, we have to do it in a public meeting of some kind.

And so I know these meetings can be that. We have used those to kind of plot out our committees and things like that, but also having that space to kind of focus and not be running from meeting to meeting can be helpful. So I think, but I also know that requires folks to commit to coming to a retreat, you know, that could be 2 or 3 hours in addition to our regular schedule. So that's something for folks to reflect on, if you're willing and interested to do that. And of course, that would be after, after the holidays, after the New Year.

Do you have something additional, Clare? I was just gonna say, I kind of think of this like a budget more than a financial document. It's kind of projection for the year, and it's not like we're going to, you know, go bankrupt if you don't do every item on there. It's more of a projection than an actuals. And then throughout the year, we try to, you know, do our first quarter budget revision and keep it updated.

But if you think of it as a budget versus a financial document, I think that kind of helps. It's more projections. Should we go through each section really quick, and then you can just shout out things you want me to add? Starting with the housing action projects.

I think, I guess I'll just ask as folks are flipping through if they do see anything they want to raise here, and otherwise to just follow up with you directly.

I know, so I will ask if we don't discuss it today, if folks want this list to be updated as far as your own priorities, please take the time to look at it. It is in your email. I know we get dozens of emails a day, but otherwise this document doesn't get updated unless I've heard us both say that. So, yeah, I just— I know we're short on time, so thank you. And the other things I want to raise, it's in terms of setting priorities.

I think that is one question, is do we want to do a retreat, or what format do we want to have that collective discussion? Do we want to hold ourselves accountable and continue to have priorities, and then down to the level of individual projects? I think that's another question. We have the broad things, and then we have this list of specific things. I think it's helpful to track what we're working on.

But again, it requires us to be accountable for that. The other ideas, just, just gets back to schedule, but also just thinking about how we make sure that we're balancing all of these priorities. I want to just put some ideas on the table. I will follow up with these in writing when I have a chance to actually format this in a way that can be circulated in writing. But I just want to throw out some ideas that I've been contemplating in terms of workload management.

One is we could consider combining or ending some more of committees that we have. You know, we set the list, we did get rid of one committee. All of them are important and they are doing good work, and also that is an option if we want to have fewer committees. Additionally, we could have every other month committees. You know, we have Transportation and Infrastructure is now every other month.

Most of the other ones are monthly. We can talk about that. And again, I'm just going to list these out. It is a laundry list. I'll follow up, but I want folks to think about ways that we can, what we have control of changing versus what we can't control, which is that we meet every other Tuesday in assembly chambers, right?

Another one is, is to everybody hold each other accountable to stretch out the time between introduction of an item and the first hearing. So as you know, by default it goes to the next regular meeting. That can be changed either by the chair or when it's submitted. So that is another option is to give a longer runway, especially for bigger things. Another one is that we commit to using committees for workshopping draft legislation or ensuring that we send things to committees for discussion.

We talked about having fewer work sessions and utilizing committees. And again, when you have 2 weeks between when something's introduced and when it's up for hearing, then usually committee—. The committee schedule doesn't allow for that. So that's an idea. And I'm not suggesting that we make these rules.

I'm saying these are more norms that we can put into place. Another one that is a thing that a lot of other places actually use is requiring at least 2 sponsors on member ordinances or policy resolutions. So, so saying that you cannot unilaterally put something on the agenda, that is not the way this body has worked since, since to my knowledge, but it is something that we— that probably is a code change. We could put that into place, which would basically ensure that you need to find a second member no matter what when you're putting something on the agenda. And again, I'm not saying these are things I'm not saying these are things we should do, I'm saying these are options.

Two more. Another one is that we commit to really looking at doing multiple code changes and fewer items. So for example, we've run omnibus changes. There's one on our agenda related to elections. There was one on ethics code, I think, before most of us were here.

That's another way to kind of collect proposed changes. Another one might be the community council's code. There's a way to do that instead of running 5 different ordinances that touch one piece of it. Is just coming back to where I started, holding ourselves collectively accountable to what we said we were going to work on, and to say, maybe that means saying no to sponsoring things, or saying, I'm not going to do that this year, I'm going to do it next year, right? And again, these are all in the space of things we are individually deciding, and then how we decide to work together as a body.

So those are just ideas. I am not endorsing any of them. All of them have pros and cons, but I think there are ways that we can change how we do our work. But it requires us all to commit to doing that. So, Donald.

Yeah, just on the, the member introduction, or having multiple members, I mean, one of the kind of things that we're going to butt up against is Open Meetings Act with that, because like sometimes you want to sit there and kind of shop it around to try to get, get broad support. If all of a sudden you've kind of exhausted that, people don't want to sign on, then you're kind of somewhat tied on that. And so that's just a concern, but overall don't object to it. Yeah, and again, these are all— these would all require further discussion. So I think—.

But yeah, just hearing kind of thoughts about them. Kameron, then Erin.

Well, just first of all, I really appreciate the list of ideas, and you mentioned a retreat. We've done retreats in the past that were primarily focused on, you know, the work we wanted to focus on, right, this sort of planning. We've not really done retreats on how we want to function as a body and maybe setting some goals there in terms of how we want to sort of work effectively as a body. So that might be an interesting thing to add into a retreat and to maybe set some goals similar to what you've suggested. I think there's some good things there.

I also wanted to throw out this, you know, an hour of debate piece that we, you know, often go over and setting some goals around those kinds of things. Like if it's going to be—. If you know it's going to be a 3-hour debate, I mean, you can guess often, then maybe it's not ready to come to the dais. Maybe we need to put it in a work session or brand it to a committee. So anyway, those kinds of things, but I think collectively setting some goals around that, that doesn't bind any of us necessarily.

It's not like you're restricted. You can bring anything forward as a member you want and you you have a lot of rights as a member, but it's more like, can we collectively agree that these are the things we're going to try to work on, you know, and improve on? So I really like that idea. So thank you for bringing that forward. Erin.

Yeah, thank you. I'm primarily in support of a retreat because it gives us the flexibility to have some of these meta conversations that we really don't have an opportunity to have anywhere else. And I think there are a lot of really significant, dare I say, existential challenges facing the municipality right now. And if this body were to agree on a concerted set of priorities to address some of those challenges and, and work together to accomplish them, I think it's— I think we could make— I think we can make some really significant strides over the course of the next year, but that also requires us to understand what priorities our colleagues have and where there's overlap and where we can, where we can actually do that unified work. I personally think a retreat that helped us to do that and to, obviously not truncating what any member is able to do in any other fashion, but to identify what are the things that we actually believe are the most pressing issues facing Anchorage and what can we do as a body to address those things.

That, I think, feels really important to me. And I do think that how we do our work and the process by which the work gets done is also a really significant piece of that. I think it's in our best interest to streamline the processes that are currently available to us so that when we come to the dais, we have perhaps a better grasp on what legislation is before us and what members think about it. I, for one, am going to embrace the sort of the lost art of the draft resolution because I think that is a way that we respect OMA, but it also allows us to gain feedback from our colleagues and to— you can expect in the next year to see a lot of draft resolutions from me on committee agendas because that is a way that you can surface an idea, surface a concept, and sort out, you know, what concerns or challenges do members foresee, who might be interested in working with you, etc. I think for a while that was the practice of this body and then and then it wasn't over a period of an administration.

And so I think there's a lot of room that we haven't explored in terms of how we do our work together in a way that's more cohesive and that allows for deliberation, not just on the dais. I think that that has become really clear to me, is that if the primary place where we are doing the collaborative or the deliberative work is only on the Assembly dais, then we're going to have some real challenges getting substantive work done. So anyway, I think that that's just my, that's just my, my two cents in the matter. I would love to see a retreat. I would love to see more draft resolutions or ordinances landing on committee agendas.

And I would, I would like to see us think about how the ordinances and the resolutions that we introduce impact the larger workload, not just for the Assembly, but for the clerk, for Legislative Services, you know, for everyone else that's associated with the work that we're trying to do. So I appreciate this conversation, and I really hope that we can all find time for a retreat in January or early February. Thanks. Okay, next I have Sydney, George, and Donald. Thanks.

Don't want to belabor this too much, but I will also express my support for a retreat. I think, yeah, looking beyond work plan and going a level deeper perhaps to think about culture norms and really kind of, I think of it as like standard operating procedures we can broadly agree to in terms of the process. I'll say from the perspective of a new member, you know, the nature of this work is learning things as we go in a lot of ways and understanding implicit expectations. And I think it'd be great to have that conversation more explicitly. So thank you for surfacing that idea, and I think it's great.

George? Yes, Chair, just to echo support for a retreat, particularly around the nature of, of some of what you described, but the cultural question as well, and the nature of a term that I had used to describe individual members before that I I'll repeat now, and the nature of a branch of government. I have described individual members as savage sovereigns, high on the savage.

But we are also members of a branch, and earlier in a conversation around budget, for example, and resources of municipal resources, I highlighted that the use of resources, is our ability to either be team players or savage sovereigns.

And so I think that the nature of understanding the branch, I think there's a— I think asking people to be members of a branch, while the nature of the ability to be individualized is more obvious, requires education on the inner workings of the branch that you've offered. But additionally, I would love to track the way, for example, staff member times allocation across a year divided by 12, right? I would love to understand the nature of why certain— when you speak to legislative staff, for example, and communications particularly, they often offer a timeline around communication that is more thoughtful than maybe an individual member has at the start of that conversation because we're just trying to get shit done. And they may think, here's the strategy, timing, and resource questions that we may not be aware of. I would think that sort of depth of insight information to the inner workings at a retreat would be really helpful for us to be able to have have a work plan that makes sense to the ability to have a branch that functions.

Otherwise, the nature of the savagery inundates the functionality of the branch, and that's not efficient, and it's not a good way to do work. And I think we've run into some of those pain points at this point. Thank you, Chair. Donald. Yeah, I mean, another thing to maybe think about is maybe utilizing a Committee of the Whole.

I've talked to some other members about this with some of these larger topics, and I think it's one of the things that's somewhat beautiful is like we get on the dais there, we go back and forth, and then all of a sudden we get down to that vote and it's like it's 12 to 0 for that, like that wording amendment and stuff. And so if we could, some of these larger things, hey, take that offline so that it's, I mean, similar capacity to this of, hey, it's a little bit more low-key that we can kind of hash those things out and then kind of save the, okay, here are the 2 or the 3 amendments that we know are going to kind of be swaying one way or the other, and maybe get some, some of the minutiae out and run our meetings a little bit more efficiently. So I'll just throw that out there.

Hey, thanks. I think we've gotten through the queue on that one. So yeah, I will be working with staff, and we can also think about kind of how to structure that conversation. And, and to the point about branch resources, I think that's a good question to come back to. So more on that later.

Again, probably after the—. Yeah, go ahead, Clare. If you could, if you have markup during this meeting that you could pass me, that'd be great. A lot of times people forget to follow up. I—.

We use this for your 2026 accomplishments. So if there's stuff on here that you have done that that you want credit for in the public record, I'll need that to finish your report by in mid-December.

Okay, thank you. So I'll note we have a couple more items here. So again, my goal is to just ask maybe for the 1-minute version of the press release guidelines, just because I know we have already published those, but just so folks know what those are. Then we'll turn to Donald for his idea, Then as I said, we will—. I think at this point, given the timing, I'm going to suggest we don't spend a lot of time on the pending business updates, but I will make space if anyone does want to share.

That is something that this committee has been used for and we've gotten away from because we've had so much to do. And then again, we'll do audience participation and then move into our guests, our youth guests. So go ahead, Ali, on press release. Thank you all. Ali Hartman here from the Legislative Services Office.

To highlight for you all that we have written down our guidelines and procedures for press releases. This—. I'm happy to keep it brief because this is just putting pen to paper on the way that we conduct business and the system that we've built over the past 5 years of Legislative Services doing this work. So this will be a part of new member orientation, that packet that you all received as you were onboarded and future members will also receive. And it's also available at any point if you have questions about why we do the things that we do.

The electronic document has linked the relevant regulations that you can explore, and it also helped a lot with continuity while I was out over the summer to make sure that the team was all operating in the same set of rules that we've done for the last several years.

Yeah, and I'll just note this is available if you do have questions, follow up with Legislative Services, and this is trying to thread the needle again, of the individual members' ability to do things and making sure that we are not signaling that it is on behalf of the Assembly unless it is, right? So that's really what this is about and just giving those guidelines.

So, so thank you for the update, and document is available here. Thanks again to Ledge Services for your work. So next we'll move on to the next item, inclusion of materials circulated to all Assembly members.

So I'll turn to Donald just to update on that one.

Sorry. So this was the— oh yeah, inclusion members. So this was just, I mean, one of the things that I was hoping that we could maybe kind of make, maybe not policy, but kind of guidelines on that when we are sharing information amongst members and stuff where it's either going through staff and it's a link to an article, it's often related to pending legislation. And so I think that when we do that, that just so we have kind of a complete public record, uh, that, um, that is included also in an AIM, uh, for the assembly meetings. Um, that's something that for the surveillance ordinance, I took a bunch of the ones where we were sharing articles.

I know that members of the public can go and request those, but that's something that they have to know to be able to go and request. And so just making sure that, hey, all of our communication is not that it's in violation of OMA, but just so that we can make sure that all of our communication and all the kind of documents that we are using as kind of what we were contemplating legislation is kind of out there in the public. So just wanted to encourage members to do that for the future.

Okay. Questions, comments from members?

I do have one, I guess, clarifying question. So when you're—. What you're referring to is really, let's say a member, like, let's say I found an article about housing and I asked staff to send it to all members as information.

And let's say it's related to, or you could reasonably make the argument that it's related to something on our agenda. So you're referring to that? Are you referring to third parties that email us things or what are the edges of what you're describing? It was just for, I guess, members trying to, I guess, kind of just dispense that to other members because usually the proper process is, hey, we're putting in AIM, it's then part of the binder and then the official record and stuff and just trying to have that be— if someone wanted to go and kind of look at like, hey, here's all the discussion points that were kind of on that particular topic, that it's out there in the open, they don't have to sit there, well, hey, you also have to go and do an email record sharing something like, hey, if it's not really an agenda, I don't I'm not saying something like that, but more of the— we were having a lot of articles sent around, and so just wanted to include that. Okay, thanks.

Comments?

I just wanted to say that if the members could just keep in mind that staff had an uncomfortable conversation with the Daily News a year or so ago.

Right, and their work from behind a paywall. And so we have come to an agreement with the Daily News on how to do that and, and give them credit for their work, but just keep in mind that it is— that ADN makes their business is to put their stuff behind a paywall, and when we're doing it, we're pulling out from behind for the public to read. And so I guess I would ask that you use discretion in what you're sharing with your fellow members. And just keep that in mind.

And just to clarify, Jamie, so that conversation was about putting something in as an AIM, not, not just sending things around for folks to read, is that correct? Yeah, it's the AIM. It's the article being converted to a PDF and pulled out from behind the paywall and then put on, put on in our website. Then it just, it was something that the ADN was excited about. And I would punctuate that with that conversation concluded in an AIM template that ADN specifically requested attribution and a link to the article included in what ultimately becomes public records.

So the clerk's office does have a template for that work, and to Jamie's point, it is important to consider that implication. Okay, Sydney. Yeah, hopefully super quickly, um, I think this would be a great example of something we could talk about in a retreat around norms and expectations. And I also, with that, I mean, hearing about AIM template, there's just so many templates and documents scattered around at the municipality that at least for me I have a hard time finding sometimes. And so when we also— maybe a topic for retreat is like, we have this OneDrive thing that exists.

Is that a place where we can store templates and make things more easily accessible for us to find as we assembly members? We don't typically have district staff. Yeah, that's something I think that could also help us in terms of like standard operating procedures. So just wanted to surface that for future discussion, and thanks for bringing this up.

Okay, George. Yeah, just to— for the note and for the discussion at the retreat potentially, the conversation just now The paywall discussion with ADM is an example of the, the point I raised earlier in terms of who controls the data in the first place. So the ethical question of public officials utilizing paywalled information is the challenge there, and the, the business in this regard described a remedy for us to be able to use their information that would be work that works for them. That, in my mind, describes some of the control questions with respect to the distribution platforms that we use, the validity of those platforms, and then the control of the information after the fact. And so I just wanted to flag that that conversation is exactly the one that I hope we have at the retreat with respect to communications.

Okay. Thanks. Yeah, I know we're collecting items for retreat. I think this is good and for more discussion. So, okay, so then let's move on.

Instead of going down the line and asking everybody, I'll just ask anybody who would like to share pending business or updates or anything like that to just raise your hand, whether it's something that's coming up, whether it's introduced, anything like that. So I'll just scan and check on the phone. Cameron. So I want to give a quick update on the newly passed ad hoc committee. The—.

Anna has to— is required to appoint 3 additional members to that. And so if you're interested, let her know. All members can attend, but we need to put 3 additional members on that. And I just wanted to set a few expectations that the plan is to lay out a pretty clear and defined schedule over the next few months and year. So that it's clear, you know, what will be discussed, when it will be discussed, and so the members can look at that and plan for that, and that these will be substantive meetings to review policy, review the implementation of those, the data related to that, if that's appropriate, and then give members an opportunity to really understand whether those are working or not and the results of those.

So that's the intent. And so encourage members if they want to join to let Anna know. And likely, I can't imagine that this would launch in December. I'm likely going to be probably first meeting in January, giving us the rest of November and December to plan, lay out a schedule, and build that out. So just wanted to set those kinds of expectations.

I'll be meeting with Chief Case and other members of administration, and, and then whoever wants to join that will be meeting with them as well to do this planning. Thanks. Okay, thanks. And I'll just remind folks too, I don't have the list in front of me, so we have— it's at least 3 members in addition to the chair can be. So really all 12 of us could join it if we want.

I'm not joining it, more power to you. But just to say, and then of course, as Cameron said, anybody can join join at any time. Other updates folks want to give? Just raise your hand. It's okay if you don't have any right now.

Okay, and then I'll check one more time on the phone. Okay, so yeah, I think in the ideal world we will get back to where discussion of pending business is more, more of our agenda again, but we are working through a backlog of things to deal with here. So, okay, so then next I'm going to turn to audience participation. And how many folks do we have today? Guessing 2, and of course we have our youth, but so we'll get through the adults first.

So I'll ask whoever would like to go up first. Good afternoon. And before we do that, so we need to set a timer. There's a 3-minute—. Sorry, 3 minutes.

Yeah, OK. Yeah, and so let her get the timer up. And so go ahead, state your name, part of town, and you'll have 3 minutes to present.

OK, thank you so kindly. Teresa Obermeyer. It's so fun to see these masks.

Mountain City students with us today. It's such an inspiration to me to see all these young people. I, of course, have now submitted an advisory vote that I would hope could get on the April 6, 2027 ballot, and I'll read that. Should Alaska have an elected Attorney General? I, I think, uh, Jamie only said elected attorney, it's the Attorney General, based on Senate Joint Resolution number 21 2/24/2020, proposing amendments to the Constitution of the State of Alaska relating to the Office of Attorney General.

And I think— I don't know whether you realize the only way we can change— I forgot to say hello to Mr. Gates. Hi, my husband used to work with Mr. Gates. He's—. Tom always bragged about you, Mr. Gates. Would you forgive me?

Tom Tom worked here in the Municipal Attorney's Office from 1994 until 2005, and then he worked for the State Senate from 2006 to 2013. So forgive me for not saying hi. But anyway, what this is, is we have to, in order to change our Constitution, have a two-thirds vote of each of the houses of the state legislature. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I consider that, as someone that lives in Anchorage, and I can't I can't afford to fly down there anytime I want for $1,000. I consider that insurmountable.

That's why— and should I say, Erin had the idea. I'm so proud that Erin mentioned that, because my son and Erin went to elementary school together. That's how long we've known the Baldwins. Now let's see, I have 1 minute and 16 seconds. I don't know what else to say.

Did anyone have any questions? What I'd like to ask, if at all possible, is that we could get this off the ground, I believe, and you might know better of all your rules, I think it might be 30 days before this would be authorized. I think it's pretty simple. I would really appreciate it if we could expedite this. That would be why I came today.

And please feel free to be in touch with me at any time. I have a Facebook group, Elect Alaska Attorney General, and I put all 5 pages of this on that. I just wanna brag also about one other thing. Of our 10 original sponsors, we have 2 attorneys. We have Mark— we have Joe McKinnon, and we have Mark June, who has been on the Board of Governors of the Alaska Bar Association from '90 to '94, and he has been on the Commission on Judicial Conduct from 2017 to 2021.

So I was really pleased to get those 2 people. I'm running out of time, and I don't want to take any more of your time because you're tired and you have fanny fatigue. Thank you so kindly. Thank you. And just for clarity, we don't usually answer questions in this venue, but members can follow up directly with Miss Obermeyer if they'd like.

So then other person we have for audience participation, we got the timer reset, so go ahead, Jamie. Okay, other person, Jamie Lopez, Anchorage, formerly Girdwood, formerly homeless. So Mr. Martinez bringing the pure savagery, Mr. Hurst bringing dimensions of clowns and Miss Obermeyer bringing beams of energy. I need an energy drink to top that, another one. So anyways, breaking the fourth wall as I usually do.

Someday maybe I'll break the glass ceiling of actually being a lived experience person who's hired to help people, because right now you are not helping people. So I'll go through some of what I can in 2 minutes. So looking at this, the 2026 Assembly Annual No work plan, didn't really get through much at all, didn't have time. Continue improving outreach, state coordination, communication across the homeless response system. Well, Coalition no longer has office hours.

You cannot walk into that place at all. You have to place a phone call. And most of the homeless do not have phones. And then they say, "On Tuesdays, we'll see you at Third Ave Navigation Center." They didn't show up this past Tuesday. I know this because somebody I know was trying to get a birth certificate.

Or age 4, prioritize the right to services for the hardest to serve individuals, including those who lived outdoors for extended periods. Then you go to age 7, prioritize services and most housing for those who have most recently. So those that have been outside the longest, those outside that have been very short period of time, they get prioritized. What about everybody else? Sort of contradictory.

Achieve significant reduction or elimination of large encampments paired with services and housing pathways. This is ongoing. I can tell you there are any number of people right now being driven like cattle. They're not getting help. And I came across a guy yesterday, basically frostbite, lost his index finger.

And this happened last February. And clearly there's not enough housing even right now. And on Friday there was presentation by George Conway, chief medical officer of the Health Department, on cold-related injuries. And it was a nice presentation to watch. And at the end of it I asked him— I zoomed in Casper the Friendly Ghost, and I said, you know, basically, hello, sir, I am not really here, I'm a figment of your imagination.

And I said, are you going to be presenting this at the Health and Homelessness Committee meeting? He said, if I am invited. I think that presentation should be seen by everybody before they vote on the budget, because clearly they had sort of information about how long it takes to get frostbite. Pertaining to time series data where there's a giant spike in the number of cold-related injuries in 2026. I more or less said to Mr. Conway, the correlation here between the policies to drive people like cattle and strip them of shelter so they cannot build layers of insulation— this, when the wind hits you, your body temperature is dropping.

So with all that said, the last thing, since I have 14 seconds— so 2026 approved general government operating budget on the HOPE/AMDOT Team 5 $500,000 and said Third Ave Navigation Center. Well, the responses I heard from Thea were not which, which matched here, which basically says expanded presence of APD's Multidisciplinary Hope Team at the Third Ave Resource Navigation Center, $500,000. Thank you for participating. They do their meetings sort of at Dean's Cafe. So thank you.

Thank you. Okay, as we see, we always have busy meetings going on. So next we'll turn to our last item. And as I said, I know some folks may have to leave. We're gonna go a little bit longer to accommodate the time.

At least I'll stay as long as we need to, but other members, please feel free to head out if you need to. So with that, I'm gonna invite up our student guests. So I know there's not enough seats at the table, but I wonder if we could have each person come up to the microphone and introduce yourself. And then I guess I'll turn to the, the teachers in the room as far as how you'd like to structure conversation.

So please come on up. And I know it's a little unusual to just invite folks to the— Yeah, I don't know. This is our last item of business. We just got through audience participation. And so we are now inviting up some youth students from—.

Who will introduce themselves shortly. And then there's some microphones we'll need to share. And then I know our staff are heading out, so just make sure to pass the microphone. I'll say also, as folks are sitting down, so these microphones, when you press the button, you'll see there's a green light that turns on. So that means it's on and it's a live microphone.

And then I'll also ask if you're not speaking to turn it off because it can create echoes for folks on the phone. So So with that, I think, I guess we'll just start down the line. I'll start with you and ask you to introduce yourself. So your name, what grade you're in, and I mean, I think the goal is to have some discussion. Is that right?

So, okay, so we'll start with just name and what grade you're in, maybe what part of town you live in. Go ahead.

My name is Richard Ashil. I'm in 10th grade. I go to MCCA High School.

I just want to say thank you for having us here. It's a really be a good experience to like know what it's like to be in a committee meeting. That's all I wanted to say.

And yeah, just continue down the line, please. I'm Isaiah. I'm also in 10th grade. I come from the Goldenview area of Anchorage, and that's mostly about me.

I'm Ace Jokela. I come from East Anchorage. I go to MCZA. I am in 10th grade, and I just want to say thank you for letting us be here and participating in this.

Hello, my name is Aubrianna Cunningham. I live over off of Muldoon. I am in 12th grade, and I have really appreciated being able to listen to parts that I have been. Thank you.

My name is Natalie Erhardt.

I'm a senior at Mountain City. I live in District 11 of Anchorage. I just wanted to say that it's very It's very inspiring listening to each of you guys and how passionate you guys feel about different things that are in our town. Thank you. Hi, my name is Payton Dorner.

I'm also a senior and I'm in the Northeast. Thank you for having us here.

Okay, and then I'll also ask the teachers, just if you want to, maybe Jessica, you could introduce about both of you guys.

So this is our student government group.

I'm Dr. Jessica Parker.

I'm the superintendent of Mountain City Christian Academy, and we also have Little Mountain Movers Academy. So the Assembly— Thank you for the incredible movement in the child care sector that the Assembly has done. It has incredibly positively impacted our child care center. So just want to throw that out to all of you. You for the work that you've done.

And thank you for letting my students witness this. This was a great experience for them.

Hey, thanks. And I know we've had a long meeting, so I think maybe we'll go to about 3:15 or so, and then I'm going to suggest we can have assembly members go down the line, introduce yourselves, you know, what part of town you represent, anything else you want to share, and then we can maybe do a few questions if you guys have questions or or whatever we want to discuss. So go ahead, George.

Hey everybody, my name is George. I represent East Anchorage, so I represent where your school is located and where some of you identified where you live in. It's called District 5. And I just wanted to highlight, first of all, thank you for being here. I'm a homeschooling dad, so I'm going to take off while you are probably still finishing this up.

So do not take offense to that as well. But by show of hands, how many use, use or have ever used PeopleMover, a bus? All right. So what I want to encourage folks to know is, do you know that PeopleMover is free for 18 and under? All right.

So every day of the week for every kid in Anchorage, if you are 18 and under, you can ride PeopleMover over for free, even with your family, as you go on to community events or to school or to work, right? And so I wanted to let more young people know that this assembly took that serious. We did that, and I encourage you all to get on the bus with us. Right on. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Janice Park. I reckon I live in Midtown. I represent Midtown District 4. That is from Abbott to Northern Lights, roughly from Balmoral up to north to Rogers Park, and along Minnesota and a piece of Spenard.

Well, hey, thank you all for being here. I'm Erin. I also represent Midtown District 4. You may know that there are 6 assembly districts and each one has 2 representatives. So, Member Parker, Janice, and I represent Midtown together.

I'm actually a homegrown I grew up in East Anchorage and I graduated from East High School and never thought that I would be serving in this capacity. So it just kind of goes to show you that public service is something that you can take a pretty circuitous route to, and that's probably the most meaningful work that I've ever gotten to do, had the privilege of doing. It is, as you have seen here today, there's a lot of moving parts to navigate, but it is an incredible way to serve your community. So I'm, I'm curious how many of you are contemplating a career in public service yourselves.

Maybe that could be government, elected office, not elected. Yeah, elected office, some school board, anything like that. Okay, well, I certainly want to encourage you not to rule that out. I, again, it was not something that I thought I would ever do with my life, but it is— I think it's something that if you care deeply about problem-solving, you care about your community, and you care about seeing people's lives be substantively better, this is really an amazing way to put your skills to work. And we have a variety of different skill sets across this body.

I— Donald is an engineer by training, and I actually am— I studied political science, and I had no idea what I was going to do with that. I thought I was gonna be an attorney, and that didn't work out. So there's all sorts of ways to get get to this work and it doesn't necessarily need to be because you've set out to do political work. You can kind of back your way into it. So I hope that you consider that as you think about your career.

Thanks.

My name is Donald Handeland and because Sydney's already left, I represent the real north Anchorage, which is Chugiak State Park, Eagle River, and Jay Bear.

But yeah, I mean, encourage you guys, I mean, I was heavily involved in student council, and I think that's really what can help set you on if you guys want to get involved in the public process and stuff. I mean, learning Robert's Rules Order, I mean, just some of these basic things that become tools for life, whether you're serving on a church council, a board, any of these other things, the skills that you learn early on can really be beneficial to you throughout your whole life. So encourage you guys to stay involved.

Okay, thanks.

So we've got one more person in the room. I'll briefly introduce myself, and then we do have— they're just in the room, they're only nameplates, but there are 3 members on the phone. You probably heard them speaking as well, so we'll go to them for intro.

My name is Anna Brawley.

I am currently serving as the assembly chair, not just of this committee but of the assembly body, but I'm also a member, so I represent West Anchorage. So anchorage, north and south of the airport, if you know folks on that side of town. So that's— I've been serving for 3.5 years now, just got into my second term earlier this year. And as you heard, we always have a lot going on. So, so some of my priorities are making sure we have a good, responsible budget, working on housing, and then just generally making sure that in this role as chair that we're keeping our branch, the legislative branch, the entire legislative branch of the city, which includes the Clerk Assembly, but also a number of other functions too, making sure those are all working smoothly.

So with that, I'll go to phone. I'll start with Yarrow, go ahead.

Hi, my name is Yarrow Silvers, and oh wow, there's a huge echo. Sorry, we'll check if any of the microphones are on. Does everybody have their mics off?

Thanks. Yeah, that's better. Yeah, so anyhow, I am the other representative for East Anchorage, which is where Mountain City is located. And I'm really happy to see you here. And I'm happy to see our youth learning about politics and how to become involved in public service.

And I'm really looking looking forward to hearing what you have to say in our discussion. So thanks. It's nice to see you and meet you. Okay, next, Jared.

Oh, we'll come back. Keith.

Hi, Keith McCormick, born and raised in South Anchorage and represent South Anchorage. Sorry I'm missing you guys in person today.

Okay. And I think it sounds like Jared had to leave. I know we always have busy schedules, as you heard. So, okay. So I think that's everybody who's here today.

Of course, there's 12 of us. So you saw a few other members here and then it's hard to get all 12 of us in a room at a given time. So, so I guess from here I'll just see— I don't know if you guys had I know we had emailed about either prepared recommendations or just, I don't know if you had anything you'd like to share that's prepared, or you can also ask us questions. I think we can keep it pretty informal.

I was wondering how your guys' members come up with policies that you want to adopt? Like, is it from public comment or just things that you guys see around town that you want changed? Or—. Yeah, good question. And as we usually do, just flag me down.

So Erin, go ahead if you want to answer, but anybody can answer. Yeah, that's a great question. So I actually ran for office because I already knew what policies were important to me and what I wanted to work on. And, and it was the result of work that I was doing in the community already. And so one of the biggest priorities I have is increasing the supply of housing that's available in Anchorage and working to make Anchorage more affordable by bringing down the cost of housing.

So that was the result of my own personal experience of what I was seeing as a challenge in the community and advocacy that I was already participating in. And that's what ultimately led me to run at all. At some point, it made sense to rather than trying to convince the decision makers that certain changes were good and right and useful for the community, it made sense to try to become one of the decision makers myself. So great question. And then there are other things that do come up as a result of constituent concerns or other things that are brought to our attention.

Sometimes those don't actually materialize as legislation. Sometimes it's just, you know, a member being able to interface with a department and ask for changes to be made. So for example, there was a high school— high school kid who was— who made a presentation, a very compelling presentation in a format like this one. He happens to be legally blind, and he was asking for a specific type of pedestrian crossing signal to be installed at a couple of really key intersections in Anchorage. Well, that didn't involve me writing a new policy.

It just involved me getting connected with the traffic engineering department and asking them, hey, do we have this as a priority? If we do, can we move these intersections up the list and make sure that we're taking care of our highest use intersections first? Do you need more money to do that? And really working through that channel as opposed to something that you would see happening publicly at an assembly. Assembly meeting.

And so our work can happen in a couple of different ways, and I think the way that we get feedback really influences which pathway we use to make good changes. Others? Janice? Yeah, I would say sometimes it's personal experience. I have a background in nursing as a paralegal and in business, and so one of the things that impacted my life was that my husband became addicted and died of a fentanyl overdose.

So that's prompted me to have an interest in, in definitely rehab programs and also in enforcing drug policy because we are able to see right now that we have a real, a real problem with that and would like to see people, people helped out of that and back as productive members of society. So that's one of my areas of focus.

Yeah, I mean, it kind of depends. I mean, there's some things where, I mean, you'll have a constituent who comes up to you and it's something that they're dealing with the specific department, and you can kind of, as an assembly member, kind of put your weight behind that to try to solve that for that individual person. You don't really get any kind of glory or anything with that. It's just just kind of helping that individual person, which I think is really important that the members of your constituents there kind of have an advocate. And then there's other ones where it's like, hey, someone will bring up something that is more wide, has more wide implications, and that's where it's like, hey, you go and sit there and say, hey, let's go and work on either instituting some kind of legislation, kind of starting that process.

Kind of come from a variety of sources there. And so, I mean, if you guys have any ideas, talk to your assembly member or even email the whole body and say, hey, this is something I've got an idea for, and someone can sit there and say, hey, I agree with this, let's send it over to alleged counsel there to start working on it.

So, yeah, I guess I'll, uh, yeah. It's one of our attorneys. He's saying yes, please, please do that. I guess a question for you all. You don't all have to answer, but when we've had student groups in the past, we've asked, you know, what is something on your mind that you think is a priority?

So not saying, you know, you need to make this law change, or it might not even be specific to a local issue. But we've heard a lot of answers, right? Because you all, especially high schoolers, right? You're dealing with a lot of things. You see things.

You're coming up about to be adults in this world as well. So I'm curious kind of whether it's a local, national, whatever issue, you know, what's something that's on your mind as being important or something that we think that someone needs to do something about, I guess? And just feel free to jump in.

Okay, I have one on minors not being taxed because taxation without representation. Like, I don't have the right to vote in my state, but I'm still being taxed out of my money. And so it's like, I mean, either pass a law where like minors aren't taxed, or if we are taxed, like we could choose where our taxes are going, because some taxes like directly influence us, like say miners' taxes were going to the Anchorage School District, even though I'm not a part of the Anchorage School District, but you know, that directly impacts me as a citizen. Okay, there's Yeah, go ahead. I understand that the Anchorage School District has had some budget issues and needed to cut some things.

However, specifically in East High School, it holds the School of the Deaf, so I do not think that it was fair to cut their ASL program at East because that is effectively cutting off the way of communication where you are teaching the students who are sharing a building with a new generation of the Deaf community, just completely cutting them off and not allowing any area for them to connect with them or learn this skill so that you're effectively having two separate worlds in the same building, but taking away the ASL program has decided to put up a wall between them that did not need to be there. Thanks. Yeah, we know school funding is a big, big issue. Others? Maybe some you're hearing from friends.

Go ahead. I think one concern I have, I think the guy who left, I don't remember his name, but I kind of shared the concern that he had about like how a lot of corporations control like information, not only that like the government uses, but also that like normal people use. Like it's all controlled by like the whoever they're like Google or whatever browser you're using, all the information you see is controlled by them or whatever company you're using to get your information from. And I'm not, I don't know how you would solve that, but I just think that's a concern that I would have. Yeah, for sure.

That's a huge one. And I'll say we've got right now, you know, we're on the record, we're public. So we've also got the Google Corporation recording on this phone and the Apple Corporation recording on this phone. So, and I don't have any control over that data. Other thoughts?

Gentlemen? Okay, and that's okay.

Other— I guess, well, I guess I'll ask, are there additional questions on your sheet or other things you want to share?

Or I can turn to members too if you have a question you want to ask folks. Donald, go ahead. Well, I just kind of had a comment here, and so I plan on introducing legislation so that minors are not paying any taxes on alcohol, marijuana, and property. I'm just saying that the taxes that we deal with are more or less going to be only adults.

So yeah, Erin. Yeah, I, um, I'm curious, um, I think Member Martinez earlier, you know, asked you if any of you have have ridden the bus, but I'm, I'm curious if any of you actually use municipal facilities. Do you go to rec centers? Do you use pools? Are there, are there places that you go where you are actually participating or using the resources that are provided by the city?

Feel free to jump in. I mean, I would say that most of the time I just use the facilities that are like at our school. School, like, because we have like a weight training facility.

But other than that, I mean, I've used— I've gone to like the dome, but I don't think that's any sort of like facility like that, because I've never used any like public facility really.

Yeah, others feel free to jump in. I would say that we— if we don't do or don't use them, we're still being impacted by the facilities. For instance, like we all compete with the ASD for like sports and different activities like DDF. And so we still like use activities versus like domes or pools, stuff like that. I mean, we don't attend school in the facility, but we're still impacted by it.

Janice. Just wondering, do any of you ride on the municipal roads, use water from the muni, or attend Go to the library, perhaps.

Um, with the library question, it may not seem like it, but I did when I was younger always go to the library every single, uh, Saturday and Sunday, and I would always read books. So yes, I did use the library quite often when I was younger and still do sometimes now.

Yeah, and another big category is our parks and trails too. I know a lot of folks use those, whether it's sports fields or trails, things like that. And yeah, I know that, I think the Chester Creek runs through your area by the school as well. I was pulling invasive weeds there this summer. There's the chokecherry trees that can take over the whole area.

So definitely saw the impacts there.

Okay, well, see other, other questions from you guys, or just things you want to wrap up with?

Okay. So I see some bullying over here, but not really. But, but yeah, no, I think I appreciate you guys. And I know it's hard. It's intimidating to sit at this table, you know, whether you're a kid or an adult.

I mean, we have a lot of folks on that side of the table that, you know, they have to say, no, it's okay. Like, you know, it's— we're informal. But it does make it harder when we have these microphones and we follow these rules of procedure, and it's even more formal at the meeting. So that's partly why I'm glad we were able to have this opportunity, because it is hard when we're setting up on the dais. The thing, you know, the platform where we're sitting while we're voting, it can feel a lot more kind of formal or intimidating.

And we do have students come through there. So I do encourage you folks to come see our meetings. There are opportunities to testify, especially on items. I know our meetings go long and they're late, so you all have to be in school the next day. I'll also mention we do have a youth representative program as well.

So those are folks who we— in the last couple years we've had 3 people participate. And sorry, I'm just checking my phone to make sure— okay, didn't miss anybody in the queue. So those folks, there's an appointment process they go through and apply. We have, you know, we go through, we figure out who the folks are going to be, we do interviews, and then we choose those representatives and they serve through a school year. So right now we have 3 folks serving from different schools, but every year, I think it's in the spring, is when we open that up.

So I would encourage folks, obviously if you're a senior, you're going to be aged out of that opportunity. We do have a Youth Advisory Commission, though. I believe you can be a little bit older on that one into your— it's like up to age 22, I believe. But for you folks who will be returning back to school next year, that is also an option to, to consider applying for that. So you sit in our meeting, things, you're not legally voting, but you do an advisory vote.

And then, and then of course, they can participate in all of our meetings, although that is a lot to ask for somebody who's in school all day, right, and who is doing this as a, as a volunteer job. So, so that's another opportunity to keep out, keep in mind as well. And I think as Donald said, there's a lot of ways to be involved in student government and in your community generally. So those are always great ways to, to pursue. So any closing thoughts one more chance, or if the teachers want to say anything.

Okay, and then any closing thoughts from members?

I just want to say thank you for being here. Thank you for serving your school. I understand that you are part of student government, is that right? So you're already serving in, in the same capacity that we do, it's just on a smaller scale. So thank you for doing that.

For taking the time to be here and absolutely reach out to us. I know, I know there are very real concerns that, that our youth carry. My, my kids are just slightly older than you. And one of the things that we've heard really consistently from youth members and from other young people who have come to hang out with us is that mental health is a huge concern for a lot of you and for a lot of your peers. And so, because we represent you, we want to know how we can represent those concerns in the work that we're doing and in the policies that we're creating.

So please feel free to reach out to us. You can, you can get all of us at the same time if you email [email protected].

Is that right? Did I say that correctly? Anchorage, AK. Anchorage, AK. Oh, I thought it was uni.org.

Just kidding.

Anchorage, AK. And that's how you you can reach all 12 of us if there's anything that you think we ought to know about what it's like to be a young person in Anchorage right now. So thank you for being here.

Okay, well, I think that takes care of all of our business today. So again, thank you so much for being here, sitting through our long meeting. Not quite as long as our Tuesday night meetings. And thanks to members for sticking around as well. So with no further business, I'm going to use the gavel.

I don't usually do this in committees, but just because it might be fun. So this meeting is adjourned.