On Friday at 3 pm, the Anchorage Assembly will once again take up the compulsory mask ordinance being advanced by the leftist majority on the Assembly.
Assemblywoman Jamie Allard has been silenced on the Assembly by the majority, which passed a rule saying that neither she nor the mayor may ask questions of the many testifiers who come before the body. They stripped her of her right to engage with the public, as all Assembly members have been allowed to do. Never before in Anchorage Assembly history has the majority silenced one of its members through a ruling of the chair.
And so, without questions and answers, the three-minutes per testifier could burn through the list a lot faster. The meeting tonight is expected to last until 10 pm and could be extended, as the Assembly majority hopes to run out of people wanting to be heard. The majority wants this item ready for a vote at Tuesday’s regular Assembly meeting.
The majority will, if they can, try to continue the hearing on Saturday, with the hopes the public will be too busy to attend and the Assembly can then close the hearing. The hearing has lasted six nights — an historic event in Anchorage history. The vast amount of testifiers have been against the mask mandate, which is being advanced by Assemblywoman Meg Zaletel.
Originally, the majority, led by Chair Suzanne LaFrance, had tried to move the hearing continuation to 9 am Friday, but the public was in no mood to play Thursday night, booing loudly, and the Bronson Administration used its muscle to force a compromise so that people can attend.
The hearing takes place in a large auditorium on the ground floor of the Loussac Library. The Assembly’s official calendar shows the meeting starting at 9:30 am, but that is incorrect; the correct time is 3 pm.
On the Dan Fagan Show on Friday morning, Assemblywoman Allard warned that a mask mandate is step one, and that she expects the Assembly to next try to force through a vaccine mandate.
Assemblywoman Austin Quinn-Davidson has told the Anchorage Daily News that the majority of emails being sent to the Assembly are in favor of the mask mandate. But what the ADN did not report is that no one has sourced the originators of those emails to determine if those people live in Anchorage or if they are being generated by an Outside political group with an agenda.
