Some Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly members haven’t gotten the memo on DOGE — government efficiency, a priority for Americans who voted for the Trump Administration to reduce the size of government and make it more efficient.
The Assembly is considering granting yet another holiday to borough workers, which would bring the total number of holidays — in addition to personal leave days — to 15 per year, or three five-day work weeks.
ORDINANCE NO. 2025-03 would add Juneteenth as a borough holiday, which means offices would close and government service would generally not be given. The ordinance is being sponsored by Assembly members Scott Crass, Kristan Kelly, and Liz Reeves-Ramos.
A public hearing is scheduled for Thursday in the Mona Lisa Drexler Assembly Chambers at the Juanita Helms Administration Center, 907 Terminal Street during the regular Assembly meeting, which starts at 6 pm.
Juneteenth recognizes June 19, 1865, when the news that the Civil War had ended reached Galveston, Texas. The word “Juneteenth” is Black English contraction, or portmanteau, of the month “June” and the date “Nineteenth.”
Already the State of Alaska has succumbed to the pressure to add another holiday, and so has the municipality of Anchorage (and Anchorage added another — Indigenous People’s Day). The Fairbanks Assembly trio of big-government wants to let workers off on Juneteenth.
The ordinance can be read here.
The cost to the borough taxpayers is estimated to be between $193,000 and $218,000 for that one extra day, depending on whether the borough is as currently staffed or fully staffed. That is more than $2 per resident of the borough that taxpayers will have to shell out for the privilege of having access to borough services one day less.
Currently, borough workers get the following days paid, without working, of if they must work, they receive double pay:
1. New Year’s Day (January 1st);
2. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday (third Monday in January);
3. Presidents’ Day (third Monday in February);
4. Seward’s Day (last Monday in March);
5. Memorial Day (last Monday in May);
6. Independence Day (July 4th);
7. Labor Day (first Monday in September);
9. Veterans Day (November 11th);
10. Thanksgiving Days (fourth Thursday;
11. and following Friday after Thanksgiving in November);
13. Christmas Eve (December 24th);
14. and Christmas Day (December 25th).
Juneteenth is a Texas holiday. Are they gonna start celebrating our Flag Day?
White liberals showing how “ compassionate” they are. Again.
You are uninformed, it’s a Federal Holiday.
Yes, that is just what we need: another fake, stupid, divisive holiday, based on ignorance and the slaughtering of the English language.
How about a federal holiday on January 6th, commemorating the extreme political persecution of the protest of a stolen election? We could call it “Janteenth”.
I like that Jefferson!?
OOH.. This state employee would love another paid holiday. Especially that one.
We also should lobby for an “Uncle Ted Day” (his birthday)
Oh, I forgot, we will of course also need another new federal holiday recognizing all our glorious fallen transgender heroes.
We’ll need to add “Tranteenth” to “Janth” and “Juneteenth”.
How is it “divisive”?
Do you still support slavery?
JMills, how is this stupid “Juneteenth” NOT divisive?
Any official holiday that targets only a specific subsection of society is divisive by definition. I am not black, so not only does “Juneteenth” mean less than nothing to me, it is insulting and divisive to have radical leftists DEMAND that I celebrate a holiday that has no meaning to me and that has no bearing on me or my heritage, nor has any meaning to most Americans.
You realize pursuing your argument to its logical conclusion would cancel Christmas, right? Vacation eve and day days. WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO CANCEL CHRISTMAS, JEFF!?!
The lefty wackos on the FNSB Assembly apparently have yet to get word that Donald John Trump is back in the White House. And the really dumb ones don’t realize that a couple more dead holidays to celebrate will help shut down another elementary school in the district. These strange Democrats just don’t have any common sense or reasoning powers. See y’all at the Assembly meet-up on Thursday.
Thanks, Jose. We’ll be there. No Juneteenth for government workers. Rather, “RIFteenth.” Lay-off about 25% of the Borough workers. Take reductions in force, just like school closures. BtW, the lunar eclipse on Thursday night is a harbinger of things to come. Show them where the sun don’t shine.
It’s a Federal holiday and has been for a few years. Most southern states celebrate it.
So long as we get a non-paid holiday…
It won’t be an issue with me.
“Juneteenth” meant to degrade the unifying purpose of July 4th. No more leftist race marxism please.
Describe the “unifying process” of July 4th? what do you mean?
Juneteenth celebrates the fact that some black folks in Galveston Texas were too ignorant to know that the slaves had been freed months before. What in all that is holy does that have to do with Fairbanks, or Alaska, or anything other than ignorance?
Too Ignorant?
Wow, you really work for the Army Corps of Engineers in Anchorage huh? Oops!
What a disgrace. The government made a stupid sounding holiday for a certain demographic of people who aren’t stupid. The fact they made the holiday sound stupid is proof that Democrats don’t actually respect the people the holiday is supposed to represent. They want them to stay on the plantation for sure.
Good thing the D party is crumbling before our very eyes.
May as well pay themselves to take the whole week off… The damage is already done… I’m watching people vote with their feet faster than ever… It may be slightly better someplace else but there is nothing DJT 4547 or Doge Boy is going to do to save the ship from sinking… Just way to much dead weight across the entire spectrum… ***
If you do the arithmetic, which Suzanne has begun to do here, 3 weeks of paid holidays, 6 weeks of regular vacation for an average employee, and a 37.5 hour week it’s clear that a full-time job for municipal government amounts to only working part time (and not even counting paternity leave, training, etc.) yet the public employee unions, their chief lobbyists, Senator Cathy Giessel and Senator Jesse Kiehl, say that the retirement package is inadequate. The public employee unions and their lobbyists are walking the Capitol halls and hitting the Juneau bars for reverting PERS and TRS to defined benefit. DB puts the risk of bad arithmetic and poor trust fund earnings squarely on the Permanent Fund and taxpayers.
Juneteenth is a racist inspired holiday, designed and promoted in and amongst other CRT initiatives by communists seeking to divide the people instead of unite them, in order to create a fracture in the social order that they can exploit. See it for what it is.
I love the left and most of the media. The Gettysburg address and Abraham Lincoln did not end slavery. Juneteenth did not end slavery. Slavery was abolished on 12/6/1865 with the 13th Amendment. Leave it to the left wing media and democrats to not even celebrate the right days! I guess December 6th would suck in Alaska for a holiday. Why are we celebrating the wrong days? Summer vacation, that’s why.
The 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865, says: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
It’s always struck me as illogical and unjust that the military draft was never ruled to be in violation of the 13th Amendment, which it demonstrably is, being as much involuntary servitude as plantation slavery. It is worse, in fact, as most slaves at least were not regularly demanded to put their lives in imminent danger in the course of their slavery, unlike military draftees.
Did you forget about prisons lol
Speaking of doin’ things on the “right day”: The resolution declaring Independence was adopted on July 2, 1776. We celebrate Independence Day on July 4th but the to successful vote occurred July 2nd. John Adams assumed we’d celebrate July 2nd. Just sayin’…
5 States did not originally ratify the 13th in 1865. Delaware did in 1901. But I agree with you on incorrect dates ( esp in Alaska) where slavery was practiced later than anywhere else in the present USA. I will address separately.
FNSB employees “buy” the election outcomes. In exchange, they get massive overcompensation. Benefits, last time I checked, were close to 70 percent of the salary. So a $100,000 per year employee, costs over $170,000.00. Over half the employees are getting over $100,000in base salary.
Madness to make this insanity worse with yet another paid holiday.
Alaska had slavery later than any state in the present USA.
I don’t have an opinion on a new State holiday. But, I wish to address a common misconception that Alaska was immune to slavery. While in fact, we were the last place in the present USA to have slavery.
Some say slavery ended in the present US (emphasis on present) with the Emancipation Proclamation, some say the end of the Civil War, some say Juneteenth, others say with the ratification of the 13th Amendment. In reality and practice all are incorrect. After all of these events, it took the US Indian Treaty of April 1866 to force sovereign Indian Nations within the US to free 40,000 slaves( source: US Library of Congress). Choctaw Chief Greenwood LeFlore himself had a mansion, 15,000 acres and over 400 slaves.
“Russian” slavery in Alaska ended with the purchase of Alaska in 1865. However slavery continued to exist in Alaska with slaves and owners of various races, but mainly women from the Atta islands enslaved by the Haida, Tlingit and Tsimshian. Slavery was a significant part of Tlingit life and culture. Alaska has the famous 1886 case of a slave’s lawsuit for his freedom “In re Sah Quah”. District Court of Alaska. 8 May 1886 ( source: Alaska State digital archives). Alaska has documented cases of slavery as late as 1903 and an unconfirmed account in 1920. The provisional Governor and Judges wrote of the horrific physical abuse of slaves in Alaska ( Alaska State digital archives available
Online).
Perhaps, if Alaska wishes to commemorate the end of slavery we should consider May 8 because Sah Quah won his freedom from slavery in a Sitka Courtroom on 8 May 1886.
You just gave them an excuse for yet another holiday?
Juneteeth is a holiday for black folks. 4th of July is a holiday for all Americans. Juneteenth Divides Excludes Incites. 4th of July celebrates Freedom.
The company I work for, one of Alaska’s largest, has six paid holidays. The demand by government workers for more and more time off at the expense of the people whose taxes pay their salaries is unconscionable or at best tone deaf. Bring on DOGE Alaska. The sooner, the better.
What company? I work for one of the biggest companies in AK and we get six weeks of paid holiday after 5 years of service. That includes two weeks around Christmas, the week of the fourth etc. It sounds like you have a bad job, that’s not a flex Rollo. I make less than six figures by a bit, sure, but I have a month and a half off paid to see the Grandkids, take the Mrs. to Mexico for two weeks. Life is for living not working.