A voluntary evacuation is underway in Ketchikan, with a mandatory evacuation expected around 3 am Sunday, in areas below Ketchikan Lakes Dam.
Officials say with rainfall continuing through the night, the dam may be breached and may fail, which would cause a flash flood down Ketchikan Creek, which goes through a central portion of Ketchikan.
The Ketchikan Emergency Operations Center ordered everyone in the Ketchikan Creek area to evacuate to higher ground. This includes properties on Park Avenue, Harris Street, Freeman Street, Totem Drive, Nickey Way, Salmon Row, Woodland Avenue, Deermount Street (above Woodland Ave), Creek Street, and some areas East of Bawden Street (on Dock Street, Mission Street and Mill Street).
First responders are now going door-to-door asking residents to pack a bag and evacuate for between 48-72 hours.
“As of 4 pm today the reservoir behind Ketchikan Lakes Dam had reached moderate flood stage at 350 feet of elevation. Water levels are forecast to continue to rise and reach 351 feet by approximately 3am. At 351 feet water will be above the dam’s core which could lead to erosion of the dam structure and potential dam failure,” the EOC warned. The potential is for extreme flooding with no notice.
Normal creek conditions on the left, and today’s creek condition in Ketchikan on the right.
TheBorough Transit Bus will be available for anyone needing transportation to the Recreation Center. Starting at 6 pm buses will make one or more passes (depending on conditions) going down Park Avenue to Bawden St., turning left onto Mill St. to Creek St., heading south on Stedman and turning left up Deermount, before proceeding to the Rec Center. Those needing to flag down the bus are advised to use their phone flashlight or other light to draw attention to the driver.
Rain is expected to continue through the next 24 hours in the town of 8,300 people. The Ketchikan Gateway Borough has about 14,000 residents.
A group of Anchorage residents has organized a defense fund fundraiser to protect Anchorage Assembly Chair Felix Rivera from the recall effort that is currently being waged against him.
Led by fellow Assembly member Meg Zaletel, State Sen. Elvi Gray-Jackson, and Anchorage attorney Jim Wright, their ambitions are not huge: At this point they just want to raise $1,000 to defend Rivera.
Rivera is not the only Assembly member being targeted for recall. Zaletel and Acting Mayor Austin Quinn-Davidson are both fending off attempts at recall as well.
“Our neighbor and Assembly Member, Felix Rivera, has been unfairly targeted by a recall effort. We know Felix and we know the great work he has done for Midtown and for all of Anchorage. He’s worked hard for us and now he needs our help. Join this virtual fundraiser via Zoom to help raise funds for a Legal Defense Fund so a group of Midtown neighbors who have stood up to defend Felix can win in court,” the Zaletel group wrote on Facebook.
That was the first indication that they plan to litigate in order to prevent the recall from ever reaching the ballot.
The first to volunteer to attend the fundraiser was Russell Biggs, who actually heads up the recall effort. There’s a group organized called Reclaim Midtown that is front and center in attempting to rid the Assembly of Rivera.
“Great I’ll be there!” Biggs cheerfully wrote in the comment section, apparently with tongue in cheek.
Many of the comments underneath the event posting were not favorable toward Rivera, who was just reelected to his second term on the Assembly in April.
Soon, the comment section on the event posting became a troll-fest with one “Erica Ehm” asking each critic to confess whether he or she actually live in Rivera’s district, and then defending Rivera in his efforts to exclude people from plum jobs the city was offering by calling his critics mentally ill:
“The city’s public ethics officer said Rivera’s actions did not violate the city’s charter or ethics code, but did say would hurt public perception. No harm no foul. Jamie Allard(Republican)would have easily recruited from her own. Majority of anchorage support the actions of assembly. Loud minority feed from the same trough and just regurgitate the same stuff with blood shot eyes and their self inflicted mental illness,” Ehm wrote.
Of course, Erica Ehm doesn’t exist in real life in Alaska. Assembly member Rivera’s biggest defender is actually a troll on a roll who is neither a registered voter or a Permanent Fund applicant in the state.
Rivera came to Alaska from Texas and began working for now-disgraced former mayor Ethan Berkowitz in 2015-2016, running for office for District 4 in 2017 to become a Berkowitz ally. Berkowitz quit office in October after naked pictures of himsurfaced on a reporter’s cell phone.
When he ran for reelection in 2020, Rivera said, “This Assembly is the most transparent, forward-thinking and solutions-focused body I’ve ever seen.”
A judge on Friday heard arguments for and against a preliminary injunction to stop the Anchorage Assembly from pursing actions taken during a several-week span when it closed its meetings to the public this summer.
Superior Court Judge Una Sonia Gandbhir heard from Alaskans for Open Meetings attorney Michael Corey, who argued that the Assembly, by shutting out members of the public, had broken the Alaska Open Meetings Act.
From Ruth Botstein, the municipal attorney defending the Assembly, the court heard a “we’re too big to fail” argument — that the actions taken during the violation of the Open Meetings Act were so consequential, so monumental that they simply cannot be undone.
In late July, the Assembly forbade the public from entering the Loussac Library’s Assembly Chambers. The barricading of the Assembly came after former Mayor Ethan Berkowitz used his emergency powers and placed a ban on public gatherings.
For all of August the public was prohibited from observing the Assembly, Planning Commission, or other quasi-judicial meetings. The only way taxpayers could participate was by watching the meetings through a grainy, government-controlled camera, and by calling in their testimony via telephone — if they could get through.
The Assembly conducted some extraordinary business during those closed meetings: It decided on expenditures for $156 million in CARES Act funds, including the purchase of four buildings for homeless and vagrant services. It passed an ordinance prohibiting the counseling of gay teens in a practice loosely referred to as “conversion therapy.” And it approved the hiring of a new municipal employee called an “equity officer,” to address systemic racism in the city, at the cost of over $120,000 a year.
During meetings leading up to meeting closure and the final decisions on how to spend CARES Act funds, the Assembly Chair Felix Rivera spoke on the record that the funds would have to remedy racial equity, or he would not vote for them.
The State of Alaska’s Open Meetings Act (AS 44.62. 310-. 312) requires that all meetings of a public entity’s governing body be open to the public. The act also says the meetings may be attended by the public via teleconferencing, but the attorney for Alaskans for Open Meetings said that teleconferencing was never meant to be a substitute for attendance in person.
The fact that the Assembly members themselves were inside the chambers during those meetings was proof that it was possible to have in-person meetings, said Frank McQueary, a member of the group that is suing the Assembly.
“They had meetings. They even brought in people who they wanted to hear from. They excluded the rest of the public and created their own echo chamber,” McQueary said.
Botstein argued that the open meetings group had taken too long to file their lawsuit and that there’s too much to undo now.
“That argument is yet another barrier to participation,” McQueary said. ” The public is crippled on the best day of the year because it’s at such a disadvantage financially and in terms of time, while the city has its lawyers lined up and ready to go.”
McQueary said that the public assumes the governing body of the Assembly has its best interests at heart, and simply isn’t ready at any given moment to finance a lawsuit against lawmakers.
His group, whose members include former Lt. Gov. Craig Campbell, had to raise money and hire a legal team — all during a time when indoor gatherings were made illegal or impractical due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Alaskans for Open Meetings group itself has had to cancel some of its meetings due to lockdowns by the current acting mayor.
“This ‘Too big to fail’ argument is the Assembly admitting that what they have done is wrong, but is too costly to unravel. If that is given too much weight by the court, then it eviscerates any remedy in the Open Meetings statute,” McQueary said.
During the hearing, Corey explained to the court that the Municipality was trying to give the court all the reasons why it was OK for the Assembly to break the law.
It’s like telling a police officer all the reasons why was OK to drive 80 miles per hour in a school zone — the roads were dry, the car was in good shape, and there wasn’t anyone around.
Corey said it is not the intent of the law to say people can follow the law only when they decide it’s appropriate for them personally.
Judge Gandbhir didn’t give a sense on when she might rule on the matter. A ruling from her either way will almost certainly be appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court by whichever side loses the argument.
The open meetings group wants Judge Gandbhir to at least stop the purchase of the buildings, which are controversial uses of CARES Act funds, until the matter of the Open Meetings group works its way through the court appeals.
The public’s involvement is critical, the group said on Saturday.
“We think ongoing public activity on this issue is very important,” said Craig Campbell, who once served on the Assembly. “I would ask people to get involved. Attending Assembly meetings is one way to show that we want the meetings open.”
Campbell then pointed out the hypocrisy of closing the meetings in August, when the coronavirus was not yet that widespread.
Today, the Assembly chamber is open again for limited public participation, and yet the incidence of positive COVID cases has never been higher in Alaska. That reopening of the Assembly meetings only came about because of intense public pressure, including weekly and often noisy demonstrations outside the Loussac Library, where the meetings are held.
A 13-vote Democrat lead shrank to 11 votes after a formal recount Friday of the House District 27 race.
Liz Snyder, a university professor who presents herself as a public health expert, will be the new representative for the district after she squeezed by Rep. Lance Pruitt, who has represented East Anchorage since being elected in 2010.
Snyder only won 749 votes in the Democratic primary, where she ran unopposed, while Pruitt won 1,302 votes.
But ballot harvesting by Democrat candidate for U.S. Senate Alan Gross was targeted on urban Anchorage areas, and pulled Snyder and other Democrats to a win. She had with 4,574 votes to Pruitt’s 4,563 votes.
The hand recount was conducted in Juneau under the watchful eye of witnesses from both candidate camps. Pruitt gained one absentee vote and Snyder lost one.
The House is split between Democrats (and their independent surrogates) and Republicans, 19-21, which will make organizing the House especially difficult.
Several political insiders believe the Democrats will take control of the House once again, and now control more actual seats in the House of Representatives than they have in generations.
The last time Democrats had 19 actual seats in the House was in 1992, when they had 20.
Ballotpedia graphic
An audit of Ballot Measure 2, the remaking of Alaska’s election methodology, will begin Monday, according to the Division of Elections.
The Soldotna City Council on Wednesday axed a proposal to require people to wear nose and mouth coverings when in buildings open to the public.
An ordinance offered by Council members Pamela Parker and Jordan Chilson received hundreds of comments from the public. Health professionals lobbied for it, saying the medical sector could become overwhelmed if the virus spreads more quickly in Soldotna, while members of the public testified against the mandate and said it would kill the economy of the town of 4,700, which is situated close to the no-mandate City of Kenai. The testimony ran 4-to-1 against the Soldotna mandate.
Some private businesses already have mask rules but the sponsors of the ordinance wanted widespread mandates to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
While the Kenai Peninsula cities of Homer and Kenai do not have mask mandates, Seward implemented one last month and is the only city on the Kenai Peninsula to have done so. In Palmer, in the Mat-Su Valley, the proposal was nixed after hours of testimony, predominantly against it. The mayor of Anchorage has mandated masks for those in public places, and Juneau is a masked community, while Sitka is not.
Presumed president-elect Joe Biden, while running for office, said that he would implement a national mask mandate and criticized President Donald Trump for not doing so, but on Friday he softened his stance, saying he would “ask” Americans to wear masks for 100 days, after he is sworn in as president.
Readers, take note: You can download the Must Read Alaska app from the Apple App Store on your iPhone.
Launched this fall on Android, the app is now being used by hundreds of Android phone owners.
Now, those with iPhones have an app that will put the most recent stories from MRAK right at their fingertips.
Much thanks goes to John Quick of Nikiski, who developed these apps for Must Read Alaska. John, who joined MRAK this year as vice president of business development, has been working hard on this project for several months and I’m proud of the finished product.
Must Read Alaska also wishes to thank the two Republican women’s clubs on the Kenai Peninsula for test-driving the app before we launched it: Kenai Peninsula Republican Womenof Alaskain Soldotna, and Republican Women of the Kenai. Both Kenai clubs have been supporters of this conservative news site and their support this year allowed MRAK to take the financial leap to launch the apps.
You can find the Apple App Store on the front of your phone, and the Must Read Alaska app is a free download. Just type in Must Read Alaska in the search panel. And let me know what you think by sending a note to [email protected] with your comments.
The Senate Health & Social Services Committee will hear a presentation by the Department of Health and Social Services on the state’s COVID-19 vaccination plan on Monday, Dec, 7, at 10 a.m. in the Anchorage Legislative Information Office.
“Monday’s meeting will be an opportunity for the public to hear factual information about the state’s COVID-19 vaccination plan, which will help Alaskans decide what’s best for themselves and their families,” said Senator David Wilson, chair of the Senate Health & Social Services Committee. “I would like to thank the department for preparing for the distribution of vaccines and for disseminating reliable information about them to the public. Their hard work is critical to re-opening our economy and putting this pandemic behind us.”
Judicial Watch says in its 2020 study of voter registration data that Alaska is among eight states with statewide voter registration rates exceeding 100% of those actually eligible to be registered to vote.
Alaska’s voter registration rate is listed at 111% by Judicial Watch.
According to the conservative watchdog group, 353 U.S. counties had 1.8 million more registered voters than eligible voting-age citizens.
In addition to Alaska having too many registered voters, the group named Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
The September 2020 study collected the most recent registration data posted online by the states themselves. This data was then compared to the Census Bureau’s most recent five-year population estimates, gathered by the American Community Survey (ACS) from 2014 through 2018.
Must Read Alaska’s math is different from Judicial Watch’s math, but still shows a significant number of over-registrants.
According to the Division of Elections, Alaska has 598,737 registered voters as of Dec. 3, 2020. The U.S. Census says that 24.6% of Alaskans are under the age of 18, which would mean 551,585 Alaskans are of voting age, leaving over 47,150 excess voter registrations on the books in Alaska, or approximately 8.66 percent too many registered voters.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill Friday that would decriminalize marijuana, at least from federal law.
Alaska’s Congressman Don Young voted in favor of H.R. 3884, also called the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2018, or the MORE Act.
The MORE Act is also pending before the Senate, where it is not expected to pass. Among notable items in the bill, it would remove marijuana from the schedules of controlled substances under the Controlled Substances Act, legalizing several marijuana-related activities at the federal level.
The bill passed by a vote of 228 to 164.At least five Republicans voted for the bill and six Democrats voted against it.
For several years, Congressman Young has taken a more libertarian view of marijuana, and he serves as co-chair of the House Cannabis Caucus. He sees it as a states’ rights issue, especially because there are several states with varying degrees of legalization of the weed. Alaska has legalized commercial marijuana agriculture and trade, and it is today one of the few growing industries in Alaska.
Lastyear Young pushed for the passage H.R. 1595 – the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act, to protect financial institutions serving cannabis businesses operating legally under state law from punitive federal actions. The SAFE Banking Act passed the House by a bipartisan vote of 321-103. It has been stalled in the Senate Banking Committee by Chairman Mike Crapo of Idaho, who has outlines numerous changes he wants made in the bill.
“I am a passionate supporter of a states’ rights approach to cannabis policy. For too long, the federal government has stood in the way of states that have acted to set their own cannabis policies,” said Congressman Young last year. “I have met with many constituents, including owners of small businesses in Alaska’s legal cannabis industry as well as state leaders of financial institutions.”
Lacy Wilcox, president of the Alaska Marijuana Industry Association, said the group is grateful for Congressman Young “for always having our back here.” The MORE Act could languish in the Senate, “but that doesn’t mean we give up,” she said, adding caution that there is a particular amendment that she is concerned about, relating to people who may have a prior marijuana conviction being prohibited from participating in the industry.
