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Kriner’s War: Diner opens, code enforcers converge, and Anchorage takes to Facebook to discuss

Suzanne Downing
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108
Kriner’s War: Diner opens, code enforcers converge, and Anchorage takes to Facebook to discuss

BUSY DAY AT THE DINER THAT WOULDN’T OBEY BERKOWITZ

A war of words over restaurant closures in Anchorage broke out on Facebook today, as more than one popular restaurant in Anchorage openly defied Mayor Ethan Berkowitz’ order to close and people took to social media to discuss it. But it was the one restaurant that got everyone talking, even though a couple of other ones looked like they defied the ban as well.

Kriner’s Diner turned on the “open” sign this morning as usual and by noon the code enforcers of the municipality had arrived and taped a “Stop Work Order” on the building. The code enforcers, who warned Kriner of possible jail time, were roundly booed by the diners inside.

In the end, Andy Kriner said he was more at risk of having to close temporarily at 3 pm because he was running out of food, not because of the stop work order. The restaurant will be open again at 9 am on Wednesday, he said.

On Facebook, people were posting pictures of themselves at the cafe on C Street, and business was brisk. Some people came in and left money on the counter for the Kriner family, to pay the $500 per day fine the mayor was threatening to levy.

Also on Facebook, incensed critics raged about the irresponsibility of staying open and the patrons who supported the restaurants.

Harriet Drummond, the House Representative for District 18, ranted about the “incredibly dangerous behavior,” while her husband, Elstun Lauesen said that the Kriner’s Diner crowd were “hopeless, miserable people.”

  • There were 40 new cases of coronavirus diagnosed in Anchorage in the last 24 hours.
  • Alaska has the sixth lowest case load per capita in the country.
  • Hospitals rooms are half empty in Anchorage. There are 27 reported COVID-19 cases in Alaska hospitals currently.

Then came a text message from Mayor Ethan Berkowitz to the owner of Kriner’s Diner. The mayor wanted to talk.

“Come on in,” Andy Kriner responded on text. There was a phone call. Evidently the mayor was trying to convince Kriner that the CARES Act money would cover his losses. Kriner did not seem to have time; there were people to feed.

The war was definitely on as diners enjoyed their meals and as a server bought meals for veterans. Former House Speaker Mike Chenault was spotted, and so was a local reporter, who shall go unnamed.

The patrons cheered when a group of veterans showed up for breakfast, and gave them and Assemblywoman Jamie Allard of Eagle River a standing ovation. Allard arrived with legislative candidate Kathy Henslee, who is running for House District 23. The two were having breakfast before hitting the road for the door-to-door campaigning.

After the code enforcers left, a patron exited the building and tore the stop work order off the wall on his way out.

A city revolts: Anchorage residents defy their mayor

Trained by Greta’s winds of rage, the young rioters take on the police

Suzanne Downing
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11

Last August, teen sensation Greta Thunberg was aboard a sailing vessel heading across the Atlantic for the United States.

Powered by winds of rage, she was the international “it girl,” with her pigtails and scrubbed cheeks and righteous indignation, and would soon be named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.

We noticed an uptick in the wearing of pigtails last summer amongst young girls. Greta taught them to say, “How dare you!” with conviction. It was a wearisome time for parents of teenage girls.

Climate change was, in the summer of 2019, the most urgent matter facing our planet. We know this because the media told us so. Forest fires fueled the narrative across the West that we were burning down the house. TV footage of burning forests were the proof.

How quickly we forget.

This summer we are living in the world the climate change activists envisioned — commerce is crippled, people live off the government, and no one is allowed to have a good time.

This summer, few recall Greta and her climate strikes. Forest fires burn, as they normally do in the West, and no one cares.

Now, Black Lives Matter is the new “it girl” in school. It’s the police who are the global menace. The young have moved on from wanting a more green and cool planet to wanting a more cans of spray paint and commercial-grade fireworks.

Portland rioters sport Soviet hammer-and-sickle motif on a map of Oregon that is on a homemade shield.

After these many weeks of race riots in Portland, where more than 80 percent of the residents are white and fewer than 3 percent are black, the city is still unsafe and the blocks around government buildings are still war zones. Violent crime is at historic highs, as it is in Seattle, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City.

The rioters are mostly white, mostly educated, and as “woke,” as a generation of kids who won participation trophies can be. They’re not part of an underclass by any means, but are the fingerlings of our ailing education system and parents who themselves have been protesting Donald Trump’s presidency since the day he was elected. The homes of these rioters are no-doubt filled with pussy hats left over from the protests against Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court.

Portland Antifa is keeping the fires burning under this anti-American movement, as riot organizers hope to warm enough of the embers until the next outrage sparks a new wave of street fighting. After all, school will not be in session and the endorphin rush of being part of an important movement is intoxicating for this generation, which has hormones and boredom to spare. Always a deadly combination.

Mainstream media continues to describe the mayhem as “mainly peaceful,” and consumers of the media are lacking fulsome pictures from these riot scenes.

Over the weekend in Portland, the riots settled to skirmishes, but criminality still ruled the downtown district:

Around 9 p.m. on July 31, Oregon State Police reported a crowd forming at the Multnomah County sheriff’s office building in the Southeast section of the city, a sprawling area of homes and businesses.

By 9:32 pm, 150 protestors were on site, demanding entry into the building and alternately chanting they wanted to burn the building down. The police declared it an unlawful assembly, somewhat of an understatement.

A short while later, the crowd had moved back to the federal Hatfield Courthouse, where for several weeks rioting has been the order of the day in the liberal city along the Willamette River.

Roughly 700 protesters surrounded the courthouse, and spread themselves throughout Lownsdale Square, Chapman Square, Terry Schrunk Plaza, and the Edith Green Federal Building, where someone threw a Molotov cocktail at the building, according to the U.S. Marshal. An Antifa was seen walking through the crowd with what federal officials called an AR-15 rifle.

Sometime during the course of the evening, rioters shot paintballs at courthouse security cameras. Others blocked the vehicle entrance to the Edith Green Federal Building and threw bottles at the windows.

Department of Homeland Security officers, trying to protect federal property in spite of the Portland mayor’s wish to burn it down, conducted no arrests and reported no new injuries during the evening.

Portland saw a record number of murders in July, and August is shaping up to be another violent month in the city.

It’s hard for everyday Americans, who are just trying to survive in these coronavirus times, to keep perspective on the unfurling of the events that cross their news feeds.

But when the Portland School District said it would not dock students for skipping school last September so they could participate in a nationwide climate change strike, the school administrators themselves were setting the stage for this year, when the activists moved on to their new target: Police.

Group collects signatures to recall Meg Zaletel from Anchorage Assembly

Suzanne Downing
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24
Group collects signatures to recall Meg Zaletel from Anchorage Assembly

Saying she has violated the state’s open meetings statutes, a group in Anchorage has begun the process of recalling Assembly member Meg Zaletel, who represents Midtown Anchorage, including Airport Heights, U-Med, and Taku-Campbell.

Why Zaletel, and not the others on the Assembly?

Evidently she is the most vulnerable for a recall. If she had not been in a three-way race in 2019, she would have barely won her seat. Her current term represent Assembly District 4, Seat F ends in 2022.

A recall is in the works for Assembly member Felix Rivera, but since he was reelected in April, the recall effort must wait until he has served six months.

According to the group, Zaletel committed “removable misconduct by violating the Alaska Public Meetings Statutes at the Anchorage Assembly meeting July 28th, engagingly in willful, flagrant, and obvious collision to limit public testimony inside the assembly chambers. Zaletel conducted municipality business following the barring of public presence within the chambers except those approved by the assembly in a manner not disclosed to the public prior to the meeting.”

On July 28, Zaletel was presiding over the Assembly meeting, to which the public was barred by order of Mayor Ethan Berkowitz.

But one member of the public was allowed into the meeting to testify — Mike Abbot, the former Municipal manager. He now runs the Alaska Mental Health Trust and was brought into the chambers to explain land availability issues to the Assembly. No one else from the public was allowed in.

Mayor Ethan Berkowitz has for several weeks barred the public from entering the municipal library building, where the Assembly meets. He is using his emergency powers to order restaurants, bars, bingo halls, and churches closed as well.

“The misconduct occurred with and despite video evidence of ample physical space and availability to comply with the Mayor’s emergency powers proclamation which, regardless of intent, would not override AS 44.62.31’s proscription of actions limiting public participation in Assembly meetings.

“Zalatel disenfranchised both the economically disadvantaged without the electronic means to view the assembly, the 70+ members of the public outside the chambers desiring to be admitted, and the hearing and visually impaired public left without Robert means of participation.”

The group just needed 10 names and addresses of municipal voters to apply for the recall petition. Once the petition is issued, the group will have 60 days to collect the required signatures. The petition must have signatures from enough voters to equal 25 percent of the number that voted in the last election for that office. The group is looking for signature gatherers to volunteer.

The last election was in 2019. Some 9,872 voted for candidates for the seat, so the group will need 2,468 good signatures to force a special recall election.

A city revolts: Anchorage residents defy their mayor

A city revolts: Anchorage residents defy their mayor

Suzanne Downing
-
111
A city revolts: Anchorage residents defy their mayor

No one seems to know who organized the rally at the Loussac Library in Anchorage today, but over 250 citizens showed up after work to protest the mayor’s lockdowns of the Anchorage bars, restaurants, and the Municipal Assembly Chambers itself.

They stood along 36th Avenue waving signs and those driving by honked their horns in support. It was a festive atmosphere, impromptu and loosely organized. Although it was essentially a grassroots resistance, it wasn’t at all an angry Black Lives Matter rally, just a merry group of mandate defiers.

And they broke the law: According to the mayor’s orders, no groups may gather in Anchorage.

Mayor Ethan Berkowitz forbids gatherings in Anchorage under EO-15, through August.

Inside the massive building that houses the Assembly Chambers, the Planning and Zoning Commission was meeting, practically in secret. The public was shut out of the meeting, as the public has been locked out of all Municipal meetings for weeks, by order of Mayor Ethan Berkowitz.

Those phoning in to participate could not be heard by commissioners. And when the commission called people to receive their testimony, they couldn’t always get through to the person who had signed up to speak telephonically.

As with the Anchorage Assembly meetings, some who signed up to speak by telephone were simply skipped over when the governing body could not reach them.

The citizens of Anchorage have been relegated to waving signs of protest and writing out their frustration on Facebook.

Alaska has one of the lowest rates of COVID-19 in the country and Anchorage now is among the most locked-down cities in America, with hospital capacity at over half empty.

Earlier in the day, Kriner’s Diner stayed open in defiance of the mayor’s Emergency Order 15, which shut down all restaurants, bars, bingo halls, churches, and city public meetings. Judy’s Cafe also defied the mayor’s orders to close, and the newly opened Bear Paw decided to just say no to the mayor.

Dave Bronson said he waited for 15 minutes for a table at Kriner’s Diner this morning, where defiant Anchorage residents gathered for breakfast, in direct opposition to Mayor Ethan Berkowitz.

Anchorage Baptist Temple is rumored to be ready to defy the mayor’s order to shut down as well, according to an MRAK source, who says she plans to be there Sunday morning.

[Read: Anchorage mayor hands out favors to friends, while competitors are crushed]

The emergency orders were given on Friday, when Mayor Berkowitz once again shut down the hospitality industry, including weddings, funerals, and and restaurants. Mostly it’s the shutting down of the restaurants that have upset people. In fact, many of them were packed this weekend as people prepared for a month without being able to get out of the house.

Even former Mayor Dan Sullivan is loaded for bear. He designed a t-shirt that he is selling in cooperation with Dooley’s Athletics that reads, “Never Again – All Jobs Matter.”

Must Read Alaska has learned that an effort to begin recalls of city Assembly members has begun, with tens of thousands of dollars now collected for legal work.

Recall petition for Assembly member Meg Zalatel.

The Assembly voted 9-2 to extend the mayor’s emergency powers through October 16. Assembly members Crystal Kennedy and Jamie Allard voted against it; both represent Eagle River.

Berkowitz has had emergency powers since March, and the Assembly is taking up extremely controversial measures during the emergency lockdown and keeping the public from participating or observing the proceedings while they tackle massive restructuring of services for vagrants in Anchorage.

The Assembly is also considering AO-65, banning certain types of counseling within the city as it pertains to those under the age of 18 who want a counselor’s help with issues involving homosexuality.

The petition to recall Assembly member Meg Zaletel, who favors AO-65 and the mayor’s lockdown of the city, has already begun circulating. Signatures are now being gathered as petitioners go door to door in her district.

Organizers say they will also work to recall Felix Rivera from the Assembly after he has served for his first six months, after which he can be recalled.

Mayor Ethan Berkowitz was nowhere in the vicinity today to greet protesters, but just weeks ago he showed up at a Black Lives Matter protest in Anchorage to speak to the crowd there. While praising them as revolutionaries, he was not wearing a mask: “I look out and I see a crowd full of revolutionaries, and it makes my heart glad,” he bellowed. Roll tape:

Candidate Jesse Sumner wins as borough clerk rejects revenge-recall group

Suzanne Downing
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6
Candidate Jesse Sumner wins as borough clerk rejects revenge-recall group

A group of activists supporting David Eastman have encountered a setback: Their ambush recall effort against challenger Jesse Sumner has been rejected by the Borough Clerk, on advice of outside counsel. Sumner serves on the Mat-Su Borough Assembly and last week a band of Eastman supporters tried to start a recall against him.

Outside counsel said none of the complaints made by the group had anything to do with his office in Assembly.

Sumner is running for House District 10, Wasilla and would have to step down from his seat on the Assembly if he wins.

The recall effort was launched by John Nelson, who himself is a candidate for U.S. House and who is a supporter of Eastman.

But the petition was thinly veiled campaign tactic against Sumner, and is a possible violation of campaign finance laws, according to MRAK sources.

The novel approach at campaigning could draw a penalty from the Alaska Public Offices Commission since John Nelson is an experienced candidate and his collaborators have also been involved in campaigning for years. APOC penalizes experienced campaigners more than novices and it would be hard to characterize Nelson as a novice. But someone would have to file a complaint.

Early voting began in Alaska today and ends on Primary Election Day, Aug. 18.

Eastman supporters go after Jesse Sumner in recall effort

Falsey jumps in for mayor

Suzanne Downing
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25
Falsey jumps in for mayor

Bill Falsey, municipal manager for Anchorage, has declared he will run for Anchorage mayor. The position comes open next April 6, and formal filing is in January.

Falsey has worked in city government for five years, joining the staff of Mayor Ethan Berkowitz in 2015 as an attorney.

He played a pivotal role in facilitating the sale of Municipal Light & Power to Chugach Electric and has been a central figure in advising and leading during the 2018 earthquake recovery, the 2019 wildfires, and the 2020 pandemic.

A graduate of Dimond High School in Anchorage, he has a B.S. degree from Stanford University and law degree from Yale University. He clerked for the Alaska Supreme Court and has been in private practice as a lawyer.

His website is www.falseyformayor.com.

Also announced to be running for mayor are former Assemblyman Bill Evans, Eric Croft, Assemblyman Forrest Dunbar, and possibly Assemblyman Chris Constant.

Filing for office opens at the City Clerk’s office on Jan. 15, 2021, and closes Jan. 29, 2021.

Parents petition the school district to support their sudden homeschool status

Suzanne Downing
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32
Parents petition the school district to support their sudden homeschool status

‘SEND PARENTS THE STIPEND THAT HOMESCHOOL PARENTS RECEIVE‘

By KELLY TSHIBAKA

On July 30, the Anchorage School District notified parents the COVID-19 risk level is too high to reopen schools for the first quarter of the 2020-2021 school year. Administrators state that they are prioritizing school and community safety.

Parents with children in Anchorage public schools also prioritize the safety of our schools and communities. But, as a result of the district’s decision, thousands of us unexpectedly have become homeschooling parents right before school is scheduled to begin, even if, among other things, we missed the open period for the homeschool lotteries or don’t have the skills or resources to effectively educate our children.

We are unable to adequately serve as our kids’ teachers because:
• We work full-time during the day;
• We are unemployed and looking for work;
• We have kids with unique or special needs;
• We are teachers who have to provide digital instruction to other students during the day; or
• We do not understand the complexity of the material our children are learning.

Our reality as parents is that all Anchorage public schools have become “homeschools,” even though they’re not designated as such by the district. After being notified of the closure for the first quarter, some of us tried to enroll in Alaska homeschool options, but they are not accepting students or have long wait lists.

Others of us didn’t pursue homeschool enrollment, but there remains a significant burden on all of us to educate our kids for these reasons:
• The district hasn’t established standards for a minimum number of hours teachers are expected to provide online teaching;
• We received remarkably disparate (and often inadequate) support and interaction from teachers last quarter;
• We haven’t seen a plan for how the district will assess our student’s learning progress – which is absolutely unacceptable when Alaska has one of the lowest testing proficiency scores in the nation and we are increasingly concerned our kids are stagnating or regressing academically; and
• Anchorage School District engagement metrics showed an average of 25 percent of our students in 6th-12th grade didn’t submit their online school work last quarter, which means parents are critical to ensuring online learning is completed and submitted.

We refuse to be complicit in what amounts to the educational neglect of our children. We don’t believe we have to choose either to keep our schools and communities safe or to effectively educate children. We can partner with the school district in achieving both objectives, if we are adequately resourced to do so. 

Parents of students did not ask for financial assistance last Spring. We all understood the emergency situation the school district faced.

The Anchorage School District has had 5 months to develop a solution, however. If the solution is for children to learn at home, then the solution must involve resourcing parents to do the job.

We aren’t trained to be teachers. We did not choose homeschooling for a reason. We have been forced into homeschooling and we are expected to do the same work as homeschool parents in Alaska homeschool partnerships, but we haven’t been given the student allotment they receive. It’s not fair to our children.

Since local schools have unexpectedly been converted into “homeschool hubs,” placing the greater burden of teaching on parents, we are petitioning the Anchorage School District to send us the homeschool stipend amount for each of our ASD enrolled students: $2000/elementary and $2,400/high school student. We believe these funds can come from from the over $100 million non-instructional operational expenses that are not being used to run school buildings that currently are shutdown. This will help us to provide the educational resources we need, such as:
• Special needs providers;
• Tutors or assistants; and
• Supplemental or substitutional educational materials.

We have started a petition at http://chng.it/kLYDgV2r.   We are not requesting government handouts without accountability. This allotment would follow the same processes and procedures already in place for those parents in homeschool programs: ASD parents would submit receipts or invoices for authorized expenses, up to the total of the stipend. Not all families would need the full stipend, or the stipend at all. But those families who need supplemental assistance would have access to it.  

Sign the petition at this link if you are a parent of a student in the Anchorage School District.

We seek 1,000 signatures from Anchorage School District parents by the end of August. We cannot, we will not, fail our children.

Kelly Tshibaka is the Commissioner of Administration but is writing this column as a citizen and parent.

‘Let us work!’ petition started to roll back mayor’s order closing restaurants

Suzanne Downing
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0
‘Let us work!’ petition started to roll back mayor’s order closing restaurants

PROTEST PLANNED FOR MONDAY AT LOUSSAC LIBRARY

An Anchorage hospitality worker says he can’t afford Mayor Ethan Berkowitz’ Emergency Order 15, mandating closures of bars and restaurants, as well as bingo halls for the next four weeks, starting today. Due to the rising cases of COVID-19 in Anchorage, Berkowitz moved to what he called a “reset” of the economy, which will put thousands of people out of work again.

The petition reads:

“Our economy is already struggling here in Anchorage and this huge hit to the hospitality industry will only further complicate this problem. Thousands of people will be affected by this mandate that seems to have no factual basis behind it. Please sign this petition to let Mayor Berkowitz and the city council know that this is not okay! I think I speak for the vast majority of hospitality workers when I say, “Let us work!” In an industry where many people are living paycheck to paycheck this is going to have severely negative implications on countless families. This is a complete overreach of local government that must be spoken out against!“

By 11 pm Sunday, over 400 people had signed the petition, which can be found at this link.

Also, a protest is planned by Save Anchorage for Monday at 5:45 pm at the Loussac Library, to organize resistance against the mayor’s mandates.

Mayor Berkowitz handed out favors to business partners, while competitors crushed

VPSO sexual assault on village woman; where’s the media outrage?

Suzanne Downing
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0
VPSO sexual assault on village woman; where’s the media outrage?

This story should be national news, especially in these times of “Defund the Police” and “All Cops Are Bastards” coming loudly from the Left. But it won’t be national news.

On July 30, Bethel State Troopers received a call from Village Police Officer Brian Ilutsik from Eek, a small village of fewer than 300 in Western Alaska.

Ilutsik had just taken a complaint from a 24-year-old woman who said she was sexually assaulted by 22-year-old Village Public Safety Officer James Heakin in June, while Heakin was on duty investigating a domestic violence incident involving the young woman and her boyfriend.

The boyfriend was arrested for multiple counts, and the VPSO Heaken went back a couple of days later to take photos of the young woman’s injuries. That is when the alleged sexual assault occurred.

Here’s the State Troopers’ report on it:

On 7-30-20, Bethel AST received a report from a Village Police Officer (VPO) in Eek that an adult female alleged that she was sexually assaulted by Village Public Safety Officer (VPSO) James Heakin, 22 of Eek, in June of 2020 while he was on duty investigating a domestic violence assault between the complainant and her boyfriend. The complainant stated that VPSO Heakin came back a couple days after the boyfriend’s arrest to reportedly take updated photos of her injuries. She reported the VPSO sexually assault her during that follow up investigation.  On 8-2-20 at approximately 1200 hours, VPSO Heakin was arrested in Eek and transported to YKCC. He is charged with one count of Sexual Assault I and two counts of Sexual Assault II. 

One of the challenges with the Village Public Safety Officer is that the State has no control over any allegations, behavior, or how the employer deals with them. These programs are run by tribal entities with little oversight, and they want it that way.

Imagine if the allegation was against an Alaska State Trooper; this would be a national story. Instead, no news outlet has touched it. No public comment has been made by Rep. Tiffany Zulkosky, defender of the VPSO program.

In rural Alaska, Village Public Safety Officers can be hired even if they have felony convictions, and the nonprofit employers who manage them have no internal affairs investigation units to fairly review allegations. The employment pool is limited, and villages often don’t get the cream of the crop.

Rural legislators such as Reps. Bryce Edgmon and Tiffany Zulkosky fought against the governor’s legislation to prohibit the hiring of felons as VPSOs.

And yet here we are.

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