The Anchorage Assembly will hold a special work session on Nov. 4 from 1-3 pm to review Mayor Dave Bronson’s nominations to boards and commissions. Bronson has reappointed 10 people and nominated 73 new volunteers to various civic panels that advise the city.
The work session can be watched streamed live at this link.
The meeting will be conducted remotely with Microsoft Teams software. The phone number to call in is (907) 519-0237. Meeting Conference ID: 723 849 169 #
In case of Microsoft Teams failure, the meeting will resume using the following conference bridge phone number: (907) 273-5190. Participant Code – 721227#
The nominations for board and commission appointments, as well as links to their resumes, can be found on the agendas for the Assembly Regular Meetings on Oct. 12 (Items 10.D.1-10.D.22 and 10.G.1-10.G.4) and October 27 (Items 10.G.2-10.G.3 and 11B. and 11.C.) The link is here.
While not part of this work session, a new batch of nominations will be included in the agenda for the Nov. 9 regular meeting, the Assembly said in a press release. Those will be reviewed by the Assembly at a later date.
The Assembly has turned down three of the mayor’s appointments to executive positions in his administration. They turned down Dave Morgan to run the Department of Health, Sami Graham to run Libraries, and James Winegarner as the director of the Real Estate Department.
The Assembly appears to be setting up for another brawl with the mayor over his appointments to the volunteers who offer their time and talent. Last week, the Assembly majority sent a series of questions to the mayor about his appointments, their qualifications, and specifically requested he make changes to his appointment schedule for the Elections Commission:
Questions sent to the Administration on October 26:
- What outreach and advertising was done to recruit the new appointees? Was the outreach done in a way that ensures broad community representation on the Boards and Commissions (several have specific requirements to meet geographic and demographic diversity)?
- There are 29 people whose terms expired in October 2021 who were not reappointed. How many of those submitted applications or indicated to their board/commission that they intended to serve out a new term? Can the Assembly have access to these applications? Were all existing members adequately informed that they would need to reapply for their positions (the past practice was to reappoint without a new application)?
- Several Boards and Commission have very specific requirements outlined in municipal code for who fills each seat, and sometimes technical requirements for appointees. Do the new appointments maintain these requirements?
- There were 23 people who expired prior to 2021, but according to OnBoard, that person was still serving (perhaps unaware that they had expired). Some of these were reappointed, but some were listed on the Administration’s appointment documents as Vacant and new appointees were put forward.
- Of those, how many were still actively participating in 2021?
- How many reapplied for their seats?
- How did the Administration determine which Members to reappoint and which ones to replace?
- The staggering is off for the Election Commission. Would the Administration be willing to readjust the new appointment for Seat 4 for one year to expire in 2022, to bring the Commission back into alignment with the code to have staggered terms?
- Jocasta Olp was appointed to the Health and Human Services Commission on 3/23/21 (see AM 183-2021), but does not appear in OnBoard. Can we assume that she is filling Seat #6?
The Assembly has also assembled a worksheet with all the names of those people who were not reappointed to seats.
