As Anchorage prepares for a high-profile meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, the Mayor’s Office is making no visible moves to clear downtown streets of the vagrants, public inebriates, and encampments that have plagued the city’s core.
On Wednesday, Municipal Manager Becky Pearson sent a note to all city employees addressing preparations for the visit, but notably she omitted any mention of a cleanup effort to present Anchorage in its best light for the national and international media expected to descend on the city.
“We know that Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson (JBER) is the likely location for a Friday visit… We are collaborating closely with JBER, the Governor’s office, the Anchorage School District, UAA and others,” the memo said, before thanking municipal staff for “significant extra time” spent on the effort.
The message reassured employees that most activity would be wrapped up by Friday evening, with no anticipated disruptions to city services, schools, or transportation. It also directed all media inquiries to the Mayor’s Office.
Conspicuously absent from the internal communication was any directive to spruce up downtown streets, where panhandlers, public intoxication, and homeless encampments have become entrenched.
In years past, large-scale events or visits from dignitaries have prompted visible cleanups and enforcement sweeps, but those efforts appear absent this week.
With world media focusing its lenses on Anchorage, some residents question whether the city is missing a chance to improve its image.
Here’s what the Must Read Alaska photo crew saw early Wednesday morning:
What an embarrassment the mayor is to Anchorage! im so glad i left
Maybe Trump will all out the National Guard to help
Failed to?
Or deliberately chose not to?
.
Big difference.
These losers will get what they deserve….voted out!
In ANC libs win by landslides!
What are you talking about?
She wants to show everyone that Anchorage is truly a Sanctuary city. Congratulations!
Compare Anchorage to 20 years ago.
It is a shxthole city now.
It’s really sad – the responsible citizens deserve more from the biased policing and deference to drug addicts, mentally ill, homeless, thieves, and rapists.
We pay a lot in taxes to have miscreants ruling our sidewalks, bike paths, and park zones.
Sad.
I am positive this was ALL PLANNED by LaFrance and her gaggle of geese.
She wasn’t going to do JACK to clean up the city
Too bad The President doesn’t declare Anchorage a troubled city as he did with D.C. We could use The National Guard in town.
She’s not going to. She wants the feds to see the state of the city, then she’ll claim that if they “just had more federal funding they could clean it up and help people”.
Cleaning up Anchorage for dignitary visits would do nothing more than put lipstick on a pig.
This is a meeting with Putin and the press never mentioned about Trump taking a tour. Who knows, maybe Trump and Putin will take a cruise around town. In that case, leave Anchorage the way it is. Putin will say to Trump, “I thought Moscow was bad, this place is a dump. Glad we sold it.”
While that is likely true, their staff, support, security are going to be all over. The press is as well. Several downtown hotels have large blocks dedicated to this summit. They will talk about what a dump the place is. Not only to co-workers, but also to friends.
Net result, the word that Anchorage (will will turn into all of Alaska) is a dump will spread.
I really doubt Trump or Putin will be touring Anchorage after arguing the fate of Europe unsuccessfully on base.
She doesn’t care. Or, she is trying to finagle free money so she can “clean” that which should be cleaned immediately after last snow pile is removed. And not this year but every cotton picking pre-tourest year.
Unfortunately she has no pride.
Madame mayor probably didn’t get an invite to a photo op so she’s got her nose bent.
Downtown Anchorage has become disgusting. Driving through a week ago I was appalled at the grime, graffiti, vagrancy and visible illegal camps. The only few blocks somewhat cleaned up and beautified seemed to be the area around the courthouse and Captain Cook hotel. It is really sad and hopefully all attendees of the summit meeting are just landing and staying at JBER.
Just what anchorage needs:a mayor with no civic pride it why should she? So far she has done nothing to make Anchorage a desirable place to live
She has done some very nice things for her friends running the Coaliation to end Homelessness, and several hotels in need of renovation. So, there is that.
GOOD let him see what laFrance has/hasn’t done
Well, being from the Interior I’ve always had a ‘low opinion’ of Los Anchorage. However, I’ve never seen an administration stoop to validate my opinion. Sad times for the “Big City” in the GWN.
This is something that should definitely be taken care of!! The bad thing is there is only a day to get it done!!
Might be a good idea for LaFrance to pull on the big girl panties and actually make an attempt. Anything would be better than nothing.
Here’s what’s currently underway in DC:
‘https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JIT1nek6om8
Good!! Let our President see how Anchorage has become under the leftist leadership!!! I hope he gets to see how bad it has become & personally address the HUGE problem with the failing leadership!!
Saw 2 (probably outside) reporters down on 4th today w/ a big mic.
They seemed to be interviewing locals, but had no camera.
Mayor LaFrance is and embarrassment as a mayor and in way over her head.
She’s not over her head, she WANTS squalor. Destruction is the goal of the !eft. You can’t create ” revolutionary consciousness ” in happy people enjoying their lives in good surroundings!
Disgusting people allowing bums to ravage the city…. Anchorage is officially now a hovel like Seattle and Portland.. That is no compliment!!!
I applaud Mayor LeFrance for showing her city as it really is for the residents rather than trying to sweep the cigarette butts and roaches under the couch when the Social Worker is coming for a home check.
She doesn’t see a need to clean up Anchorage since the participants won’t even be outside of JBER. They will never see the homeless camps.
After taking a walk through some of downtown tonight, I see there are those who wander hanging around, but there are security guards in several places keeping and eye on things and corralling folks who are disturbed out of the right of ways.
Perfect. Show the World what a Democrat-run city looks like
How about a Fed takeover of APD. Anchorage doesn’t have a mayor.
One has to assume the mayor and her lackeys on the assembly are white trash. They don’t know what a beautiful city should look like.
Thanks for paying attention to this detail, SD.
Mymymy, no class, no intelligence, no self pride..no back bone..
Maybe President Trump could spare some National Guard troops for Anchorage.
Why try to hide it. It’s a nationwide thing due to the high cost of housing.
LaFrance is a useless tool, and a blight upon our once great city. Beholden to buying votes of the “gimme free shxt” class of government leeches. Over $250 million on homeless bs. Result? More homeless less service, and a gaggle of moronic cheerleaders on the assembly helping promoting $500K outhouses. They all suck.
Were there no homeless during Bronson’s reign?
There was no Bronson reign. Ever action he took to address the homeless was counteracted by the leftists in the assembly. The veto proof majority. Have you not been paying attention at all?
What I like about the current assembly is that all the responsibility lies on them and they have absolutely nobody to blame but themselves. We just watch and applaud their inevitable downfall.
Cleanup crews on standby.
The lack of a clean-up is simply evidence that the Mayor and Assembly view the squalor, decay and degeneracy as entirely normal. They like it. Congratulations to the Left; mission accomplished.
And why should the current administration want to clean up Anchorage?
The Marxist Nine, plus the tenth one who is the mayor, clearly take pride in their nihilism and destructionism.
It’s sad that we think we just need to clean it up because someone is coming to visit. She probably would shine the streets like Newsom did for Xi but not for a US president.
Honestly, it would be a lot easier if someone investigated where these homeless people are coming from. Did they get sent here from other cities “cleaning up” during covid? Much of the homeless population disappeared in many urban cities during that time – weird, huh? Are they illegal aliens? Up until “Covid” our homeless were drunks from the villages sleeping it off until their next check = now they’re living in massive camps with gear and vehicles.
Even better, fix our damn elections and we wouldn’t be given “leaders” whose direction is to destroy everything in the country.
We drove past the park that was built for young people and children last Friday. The park that is located close to the intersection of Spenard and Minnesota. Were there children playing and enjoying the skate board park and play ground equipment with their families???? NO, that place has been taken over by the homeless. They were sitting on the playground equipment and all of the picnic tables etc…Passed out or having their get togethers doing what ever they do all day long which is absolutely nothing except polluting every ones public spaces. What a terrible site. All the way down Minnesota on the west side of the street. Trash, tents, homeless druggies and drunks. It is very sad to see but what is even sadder is that all of us have to put up with it. They don’t care and neither does our mayor and assembly. I feel sorry for the kids. I grew up without all of this and we could feel safe at play grounds that were meant for us.
Don’t interrupt your enemies while they busy making mistakes. Let the world see more of the misery democraps produce.
Maybe the Trump-Putin meeting should have been held in, say, November.
.
Big enough snowfall could solve bum and protester problems at the same time, for free.
Why bother polishing the turd of Anchorage? I would rather it look blatantly obvious what the progressive leftard leadership has done to this city.
Of course she “failed”. While I’m not a political analyst or anything like that, I have a little horse sense, and I’ve seen this tactic used before. She won’t take any actions to clean things up, and when called out on it, she claim that the city would “if we just had more federal funding to help address it”. It’s a play for more money, plain and simple. The vagrancy and crime problems plaguing Anchorage area source of income for many people in the city government, as well as many tied to the government. They’re going to use any method they can to get more money pumped into it.
Homeless in Anchorage is not a left of right problem. We’ve have mayors on both sides try to tackle the issue and neither have polished the streets of Anchorage with any success. We’ve also thrown tons of money into it with zero success. It’s time to recognize that homeless is a problem of Alaska, especially considering other towns send their unwanted to Anchorage (shhh…I hear Valdez does it too).
The hard working people of Anchorage make it a prosperous place. It is only natural in the current state of the world that parasites move to find a healthy host to feed off of.
Time for some Raid.
I’ll never understand the crisis-level panic to “clean things up” for dignitaries. Why? I’d suggest we stop wearing masks now that the world’s deadliest virus is about gone. Let the elites see what we, the lowly taxpayer citizen lives with every day. Drop the phony veneer.
I grew up in Anchorage since the 1980’s. This has been a problem ever since we moved here. No politicians has been able to figure out what to do with people who gave up on themselves. You can’t help people who only won’t work and only wants handouts. All I see are complaints and no solutions.
Why try to hide the fact that Anchorage is just another third-rate town? Get over it: we peaked out with our pastel murals! So we’re nicely located geographically–how does that correlate with the living God? Who really gives a damn about our societal debris? Sure the Bible talks about the poor, the widows, and the orphans. As good bleeding-heart Christians, we need to address real life situations, but not in some facile, hocus-pocus fashion: certainly President Trump can understand that!
If we have no answers to our mundane problems, to hell with the poor. So we didn’t pretty up the town, eh? There is nothing wrong with being tight fisted!