With early voting now underway in Fairbanks for local elections, the League of Woman Voters of Tanana Valley held its candidate forum for the School Board, Borough Assembly, and mayoral candidates on Friday.
The candidate forum can be heard on KUAC here.
The “hot button issues” that were notable for the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly candidates involved fiscal issues, public testimony, and property rights.
Miguel Ramirez, Tammie Wilson, and Jimi Cash kept the focus on supporting the tax revenue cap, and also mentioned the lack of decorum by some current Assembly members during public testimony, and the importance of private property rights.
The decorum issue has been raised by current members of the FNSB assembly and school board earlier. At the heart of the matter is that citizens come into the Assembly or School Board chamber and spend hours testifying to on issues of the day, only to have members of the elected bodies ignore them. One member — Kristen Kelly — uses Assembly time to badger and argue with the public member who is testifying.
During the candidate forum, Assembly members David Guttenberg, Kristen Kelly, and candidate Garret Armstrong favored eliminating the Assembly time set aside for asking questions of testifiers. All three lauded the assemblies in Anchorage and Juneau for putting strict sideboards on public testimony.
In contrast, Ramirez and Wilson said that people in the borough felt their testimony was routinely ignored and that they were made to feel like criminals by certain Assembly members, such as Kristen Kelly.
Ramirez, Wilson, and Cash highlighted that the Assembly has repeatedly ignored public testimony.
For instance, there had been extensive testimony against the recent special election to raise taxes, yet the Assembly voted to hold the election anyway.
There had also been significant testimony by veterinarians and animal rights activists on the cost and actually harmful elements of the animal shelter replacement project (aka puppy palace), and yet more money was allocated to the project.
Three Assembly meetings were dominated by public testimony opposing forming a committee to study mail-in voting. Finally, the Assembly voted down the resolution, pushed by Assembly Presiding Office Savannah Fletcher, after key members of the community made it clear the public was tired of being ignored.
Ramirez, Wilson, and Cash also took the current Assembly to task over fiscal matters. All three emphasized the bloated budget for the $33 million animal shelter replacement project, a facility they say will not meet the needs of the community and which has been opposed by both fiscal conservatives and animal rights groups.
Jimi Cash, who is in commercial construction, stated the cost of the proposed project is ridiculous, and Ramirez agreed the animal shelter price tag is excessive.
Kristen Kelly, David Guttenberg, and Garret Armstrong support the project. Armstrong talked about how his friend’s driveway was expensive and that costs may be escalating for the animal shelter if it doesn’t get built soon. Kelly supported expansion of borough services into pickleball courts, trails, and other leisure activities.
Kelly, Guttenberg, and Armstrong are not supportive of private property rights. In her closing statements, Kelly specifically stated that property rights are “fringe politics.”
Guttenberg, in his closing statements, repeated Kelly’s points, stating that borough governments should not be operating on political ideologies.
Armstrong echoed their sentiments and mentioned his support for running trail easements through private property. Under the current policies in the FNSB, trail easements are required for those who wish to subdivide, even if there is no demand for a trail in the area.
The Assembly up in Fairbanks has some very weird members. The chief officer of the Assembly entertained charges against a fellow member, while lining her pocket with large sums of campaign cash from the charging citizen. Then, she had the shameless disposition to sit in judgment and conviction of her fellow Assembly member. And she is a lawyer? Did she take the bar exam as many times as Lisa Murkowski (6)? She needs to retake the ethics portion a few more times. Kind of a retarded lawyer.
Savannah Fletcher.
The way you spend days and days thinking about and obsessing over her says a lot more about you than her. She doesn’t even know you exist, you know that right?
Ha! She reads MRAK just like you, Jenny. And be sure to pay up for your comments. There’s a place below to click for payment due. Cheers!
Sounds like some socialist plants are building a base of power; better get them out now, excise the infection before it gets too deep.
Fairbanks has been a hippie stronghold and it always will.
Cope harder.
Fairbanks is not a hippy stronghold. Fairbanks is interesting, a genuine blending pot. University types on one side town, oilfield on the south side , miners on the north side and military on the east. The hippies are strongly outnumbered. The problem is like across 3/4 of our country libs wiggled their way into power while the conservatives were hard at work providing for their family’s and community. I am just waiting for the conservatives to come wide awake. Should be interesting. The time is near.
Get rid of the Hopkins Political Farm and 3/4 of the pot smoking hippies who hide in the hills will be gone by sundown……..lighting up their wood stoves and settling down for a long winters nap.
John Coghill for Borough Mayor!
If Fairbanks succumbs to the same rectal decay that afflicts Los Anchorage, it may well spell the end of the Alaska into which I was born. Sadly. I keep the Golden Heart in my prayers and encourage all the readers here to do likewise.
‘https://nextdoor.com/p/gGgGFx9mCmFj?utm_source=share&extras=NDcwMjU1MzQ%3D
Coming to a city near you.
Despotic Assembly members don’t like it when their tactics of ignoring the public are called out. Guttenberg, one of the most partisan people to ever sit on the FNSB Assembly thinks that borough governments shouldn’t be operating on political ideologies. What a laugh!
Randall,
Correct you are. Dave Guttenberg is praying that his nephew, Grier Hopkins, becomes Mayor of FNSB. Then, the Hopkins family business will run the borough and the Assembly. And the brother-in-law, Scott Kendall, will show them how to do it both illegally and unethically while keeping them both out of trouble.
Guttenberg is the most partisan hack on the Assembly. And the most radical leftist. Get rid of all the Hopkins political animals and Make Fairbanks Normal Again. MFNA.
Alaska is so screwed
That might be hard to do, Lou, considering how many Marxist Democrats are living in the Borough boundary. Democrats vote……many times over. Get your Conservatives and Republicans to early voting. That’s how you beat these radical baby killers.
The lack of real GOP leadership is the real problem. Cry big mean democrats all day long but the truth is when you run people who can’t get through a forum without yelling and being snotty (Tammie “Carpetbagger” Wilson) or have no real job experience and pander to whoever is talking (Jimmi “More Taxes” Cash) we really can’t blame anyone but ourselves.
Anyone that is actually interested in doing the publics’ work and seeing to it that their intentions are spoken to and satisfied, would most certainly want to hear from them. It is only top down psychopaths that would think otherwise.
The ones who do not recognize the human rights recognized even by other nations and countries of the property right to family and one’s place In it and is literally expressly referenced in this US Constitution wherein it is recognized a child’s rights and status follow his father (not mother) and the state does not supplant it.
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