In September of 2018, Alaska was home to 97,301 residents enrolled in Medicare, the health care program that serves residents ages 65 and above.
Today, Alaska has just tipped over the 100,000 mark, a threshold it’s never reached before. The state’s population is getting older as Baby Boomers cross over into senior citizen status, and seniors try to stay in the state for as long as they can.
Medicare beneficiaries now make up 14 percent of the state’s total population, just under the rest of the U.S., where they make up 15 percent.
Today, one in nearly seven Alaskans is enrolled in the health care program that was created by President Johnson in 1965 for those over the age of 65.
The population of Alaska more than doubled in last 40 years, increasing at more than four times the rate of the rest of the country. In 2010, Alaska was home to 55,000 senior citizens. In nine years, that number has nearly doubled.
2019 is shaping up to be the ninth year in a row that Alaska has had the fastest growing population of those over 65.
Most people become eligible for Medicare when they turn 65, and most who turn 65 are forced to enroll in the program or pay a hefty penalty to the federal government. For many, it’s not a free program — elders have to pay a premium to the federal government and it often comes out of their Social Security check. It can cost them $135 a month for Part B Medicare, which pays for doctor’s services and outpatient care. Recipients have typically also paid into Medicare for most of their working lives.
Medicare coverage is also available to people who are disabled. In Alaska, 14 percent are eligible as a result of a disability or permanent kidney failure.
As for communities with the most Medicare enrollees, Anchorage is the largest, with more than 38,495 enrolled as of July, 2018, an increase of 1,556 from the prior year. Fairbanks North Star Borough is down by 139 Medicare enrollees since last year. The Mat-Su went from 13,986 Medicare enrollees to 14,665 in the past year.
According to the Institute on Aging, America’s 65-and-over population will nearly double over the next three decades, from 48 million to 88 million by 2050.
A controversy is brewing about a female member of the swim team for Dimond High School who was disqualified at a swimming and diving meet between Dimond and Chugiak High Schools on Friday. The girl was having a wardrobe violation, or a malfunction, or perhaps she simply wasn’t wearing her swimsuit properly. The coaches said she could not compete.
There are rules about bathing suits in high school swim programs, and they govern standards of “propriety” including modesty and decency.
According to one account, the girl is a large swimmer with a curvy body and she was wearing her suit without prohibited modifications. She was disqualified because of her shape, which is shapely, and possibly because of her race.
According to another account, the girl was wearing her suit in a way to purposely to show more skin.
Not so, writes Lauren Logan, who opened up the Pandora’s box when she criticized the disqualification on the publishing platform Medium and suggested the girl swimmer was being subject to racism, sexism, and a bit of fat shaming.
But Angel Mock, a former swim coach familiar with the situation, had a different view: “I have personally witnessed this swimmer’s suit and can say that it is not being worn in the intended manner. USA swimming has put guidelines in place for us to follow involving coverage of swim suits, and these guidelines have been ignored.”
Special edition of the Almanac with a listing of September-November conferences around the state:
9/14:Alaska Democratic Party Fall Gala, in Anchorage, 6-9 pm, Sheraton Hotel. Rep. Ivy Spohnholz is the mistress of ceremonies. More info here.
9/18-20:Alaska School Safety Summit at the Egan Center in Anchorage. Information here.
9/19-21: Alaska Nurse Practitioner Association annual conference at the Hilton Hotel, Anchorage.
9/20-21:Alaska Republican Party State Central Committee Fall Meeting in Fairbanks at La Quinta Hotel. More information here.
9/21: Bartlett Democratic Club annual banquet and awards at Anchorage Senior Activity Center.
9/21:Anchorage Pirate and Pub Crawl, downtown.
9/23-25: Northwest Chapter of the American Association of Airport Executives annual conference at the Westmark Hotel in Fairbanks. More information here.
9/23-27:Alaska Fire Conference in Ketchikan. More info here.
9/23-27:International Association of Women Police meets at the Dena’ina Center, Anchorage. Information here.
9/25-27:National Association of Social Workers Alaska Chapter meets in Juneau on the theme of “nurtured hearts nurture hearts.” More information here.
9/25-28:Museums Alaska Annual Conference with Alaska Historical Society, at the Best Western Kodiak Inn and Convention Center. Theme is “critical conversations: Diversity, equity, accessibility, inclusion.” More information here.
9/26-28:Alaska Council of School Administrators meet in at the Westmark Hotel in Fairbanks. Information here.
9/30-10/4:Alaska Association of Harbormasters and Port Administrators meet in Juneau at Centennial Hall. More details here.
10/7-10:Alaska Travel Industry Association meets at Centennial Hall in Juneau. The theme is “Legend of Alaska.” Get details here.
10/10-12:American Institute of Architects Alaska third annual conference meets on the 3rd and 4th floors of the Anchorage Museum. The evening of 10/12, they’ll be at the Hilton Hotel for the AIA annual design awards. Seewww.aiaalaskaconference.com/for details.
10/11-12:Alaska Pediatric Association meets at the Hotel Captain Cook. More info here.
10/12-13: Alaska Physical Therapy Association meets at Alyeska Resort for their fall conference. Details.
10/17-19:Alaska Federation of Natives Annual Convention in Fairbanks. Information here.
10/19-25: Alaska Occupational Safety Summit at the Hotel Captain Cook in Anchorage. Information is here.
10/23-24:Alaska Telecom Association Tech Showcase and trade show, Hilton Hotel in Anchorage. Details.
10/28-30:Alaska Chamber of Commerce Fall Forum at the Alyeska Hotel in Girdwood. Sign up here.
10/26-28:Alaska Principals Annual Conference at the Hilton Hotel in Anchorage. Register here.
10/31-11/3:Sitka Whalefest at the Sitka Sound Science Center. Details.
11/3-9: Alaska Miners Association Conference at the Dena’ina Center in Anchorage. Sign up here.
11/6-9: Associated General Contractors annual conference at the Hotel Captain Cook in Anchorage. More info here.
Juneau’s Perseverance Theatre makes another sortie from the Workers’ Paradise to the bourgeois hinterlands of Anchorage this week with a presentation of Steve Martin’s adaptation of “The Underpants” at the Sydney Laurence Theater at the PAC.
I’ve had a long and schizophrenic relationship with Perseverance Theatre going back to the mid-Nineties when I was the Juneau Empire’s theater critic.
It’s fair to say that I’ve almost always appreciated their performances and quite often disliked their plays.
First, a bit of background about; yes Steve Martin, the playwright, is that same “wild and crazy guy” of Saturday Night Live fame. Though it is little known outside artsy circles, Martin is a very successful award-winning writer, playwright, and dramatic actor.
Art Chance
Martin’s deconstructionist comedic style is perfectly in keeping with the Wilhelmine German origins of Carl Sternheim’s original play from 1910. Deconstruction and post-modernism have their roots in late-19thand early-20thCentury Germany.
Continuing the schizophrenic theme, belle époque Germany was riven by social dislocations. Germany had been an autocratic almost feudal agricultural society at mid-century. By the early 20th Century, only 30 percent of its population was engaged in agriculture, the cities dominated cultural and civic life, and it had surpassed England as the World’s leading industrial power.
The majority political party in the German Parliament was the Socialists and Wilhelmine and Wiemar Germany had a level of socialism and central government power that today’s US socialists can only imagine.
That said, the church and the traditional aristocracy were still very powerful and influential as witnessed by the fact that the Kaiser’s censors forced Steinheim to change the name of his play from “The Underpants” to “The Trousers.” In Wilhemine Germany the culture war took place largely in the arts. In Wiemar Germany the culture war took place in the streets. The few who know a little history know the result.
The New York Times said “The Underpants” was “laugh out loud funny.” If you read the NYT or the Anchorage Daily News, it is laugh out loud funny. If you don’t, you realize that if you laugh, you’re laughing at yourself.
Perseverance Theatre has never met a traditional value or figure that they didn’t want to make fun of; their idea of good fun and good art is to make St. Joan of Arc into a foul-mouthed lesbian barmaid.
The Underpants isn’t that extreme, but it has a go at just about every traditional role and institution. The overarching theme is a mostly-by-double-entendre attack on traditional sexual mores and gender roles. As usual, men get the worst of it, but the women aren’t spared. There are plenty of jabs at religion, government. Of course, we must have a few jabs about how anti-intellectual traditional men are.
In keeping with the deconstructionist approach, there aren’t really any likeable characters. Gertrude, the busy-body upstairs neighbor, played by Shadow Meienberg, comes closest. She encourages Louise Maske (Kelly Gibson) to adultery but redeems herself when she foregoes the opportunity for an adulterous romp with Louise’s husband, the insufferable Theo Maske (J. David Dahl).
There really isn’t a protagonist or anything like a hero in the story, but most of the play revolves around the interaction between Frank Versaci (Ben Brown) and Louise Maske. Frank witnessed Louise’s “wardrobe malfunction” and lost his mind over her as the result.
Ben does a superb job as the fey, foppish, wannabe poet and philosopher lecherously pursuing Louise.
Louise, dismissively referred to by Theo as a “little housewife,” is a ditz in the best Edith Bunker tradition. An adulterous fling with Frank fascinates her, but interestingly, it is Frank who abandons the quest for her virtue.
Tai Yen Kim’s Benjamin Cohen makes today’s pajama boys look like models of masculinity and his interactions with Theo give the vehicle for showing some good, traditional German anti-Semitism, which was in fact a real thing in Wilhemine Germany. Charles Cardwell’s Klinglehof, albeit a minor character, is used to make traditional attitudes look silly and weak in the face of onrushing modernity.
In sum, “The Underpants” is well acted and well staged as one can almost always expect from Perseverance. The themes from 1910 still reverberate over a century later. You’ll either like the play itself or you won’t. The snarky, pseudo-intellectual humor will appeal to sophomores of all ages. The adults among us have just learned to observe and grade adolescent snark whether we find it in art or politics.
Art Chance is a retired Director of Labor Relations for the State of Alaska, formerly of Juneau and now living in Anchorage. He is the author of the book, “Red on Blue, Establishing a Republican Governance,” available at Amazon. He was once described by KTUU as the epitome of “toxic masculinity.”
Here is the good news: It appears there are only 11 people in Austin who do not see what a disaster the homeless camping ordinance has become for our city in just two short months.
Here is the bad news: The 11 people are the mayor and the city council.
I don’t know what else city leaders need to see to realize they made a horrendous mistake in allowing homeless people to sleep and camp anywhere in public.
Matt Mackowiak
By the time you read this, 30,000 people will have signed our petitionto rescind the Homeless Camping Ordinance. That is with zero paid advertising.
The Homeless Camping Ordinance is turning Austin into a dirty city, one that is not welcoming to visitors and tourists, and rendering it unsafe for women and children at night.
Mayor Steve Adler has recently said that the Homeless Camping Ordinance will stay in place until there is sufficient housing for our 2,200 homeless population.
That will take years.
That is totally unacceptable.
Recently the University of Texas Police Chief asked the city to ban homeless camping on the entire campus due to safety concerns.
In response to the public uproar over this unwise policy, the city is planning to ban homeless camping on a few streets (like 6th Street and Congress Avenue) and in high pedestrian areas.
But is this not an admission that homeless camping is unsafe? If it were safe, they wouldn’t need to ban it on certain streets.
The net effect of this minor policy change is that it will make all other streets more unsafe because that’s where the homeless population will go.
Our city spends $30 million a year on homeless programs and city leaders admit past efforts have totally failed. The city is planning to more than double that for 2020 to $62 million.
We have about 800 beds for homeless individuals through all sources and need another 1,400 beds.
Where will they go? How long will it take to build new or retrofit existing buildings?
I am tired of hearing ridiculous arguments from city leaders and advocates.
At a forum last week, an activist on the panel named Chris Harris said ‘Homeless people in your neighborhoods are your neighbors’. This is absurd. They are transients. Neighbors are people who live in a community and pay money to be there.
We all want our homeless population to be safe and receiving care for drug abuse and mental health challenges. Everyone else needs to be working and on a path to self-sufficiency.
Our city leaders are destroying our city’s image. Business meetings and conferences are cancelling. Tourists are expressing horror at what Austin has become. The Austin Police Association say they cannot cite or arrest homeless individuals under the current policy due to confusion over what it means.
Enough is enough.
On Sept. 20, the day after the next City Council meeting where homeless policy is expected to be debated, we will take action.
Along with local Democrat and neighborhood activist Cleo Petricek, we are forming a new nonpartisan nonprofit organization called Save Austin Now.
We will launch a petition drive to ban homeless camping in public for the May 2020 ballot, which is the next opportunity. This will require at least $150,000 and at least 20,000 verified signatures from Austin residents. We will need your help and will ask for it soon.
Please visit SaveAustinNow.com and subscribe to our emails. If you are willing to contribute to our efforts, please do so here.
City leaders are fiddling while Austin burns, and this disastrous policy is getting worse by the day.
It is time for Austin residents to rise up and make their voices heard.
Matt Mackowiak is the co-founder of Save Austin Now, a nonpartisan 501(c)3 organization dedicated to educating Austin residents about standard of living issues. Their website is SaveAustinNow.com.
SAN FRANCISCO DECLARES NRA ‘TERRORIST ORGANIZATION’
The NRA board of directors had scheduled its annual meeting to be held in Anchorage on Sept. 13, with some fishing and other outdoor excursions planned.
But in late August the board hastily decided to move the meeting to the Washington, D.C. area due to several anti-gun measures being considered in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives.
The House Judiciary Committee started hearings on Sept. 4. after Chairman Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat who wants stricter gun laws, heard three bills, all introduced by fellow Democrats:
Disarm Hate Act, H.R. 2708, introduced in May by Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), which would disqualify anyone convicted of a misdemeanor “hate crime” from being able to purchase a firearm;
Keep Americans Safe Act, H.R. 1186 introduced in February by Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL), which includes a ban on magazines over 10 rounds’
Extreme Risk Protection Orders Act of 2019, H.R. 1236, introduced in February by Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-CA).
The NRA board has been in turmoil all year and in the past several weeks four of its member have resigned, three of them stating that they were concerned about the financial decisions and wasteful spending of President Wayne LaPierre.
The NRA meeting in the DC-Virginia area is now scheduled for Sept 11-14. The cancellation of the Anchorage meeting is said to cost the organization about $100,000, due to cancellation fees for rooms and excursions.
Alaskan Wayne Anthony Ross sits on the board of directors and told a reporter from Newsweek that he was “disappointed” in the decision to relocate the meeting.
“We worked for four or five years to get it approved by the board to come up here,” he told the reporter. “In 2005, we had the NRA board come to Alaska. We have the highest percentage of NRA members of any state in the union.” But Ross conceded that if the board needed to stay close to the action in the U.S. Capitol, he could not oppose the move.
Last Tuesday, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution that categorizes the National Rifle Association a “domestic terrorist organization.”
San Francisco city and county governments “should take every reasonable step to limit those entities who do business with the City and County of San Francisco from doing business with this domestic terrorist organization,” the resolution says. It makes it official city policy that San Francisco should “encourage all other jurisdictions, including other cities, states, and the federal government, to adopt similar positions.”
The NRA issued a statement: “This ludicrous stunt by the Board of Supervisors is an effort to distract from the real problems facing San Francisco, such as rampant homelessness, drug abuse and skyrocketing petty crime, to name a few. The NRA will continue working to protect the constitutional rights of all freedom-loving Americans.”
It’s off to Japan for Mayor Ethan Berkowitz for sister-city meet-and-greets.
Back at home, Camp Berkowitz, the Whack-a-Mole tent encampment that moves from city park to city park, has returned to Valley of the Moon Park, within eye-shot of the children’s playground. The 30-or-so tent city is a project of the Poor People’s Campaign, a couple of local churches, and various political activists.
A couple of weeks ago, the campers were forced to move from that very Valley of the Moon location; camp organizers chose Cuddy Park, until the police department’s 10-day abatement notices were tacked on trees.
Earlier this summer, the campers had laid claim to a large swath of the Delaney Park Strip in downtown Anchorage until they were shooed off after two weeks of occupation.
The roving tent city is one part home-brewed solution for those without housing, and one part protest movement to call attention for the need for more services for a population of wanderers, some of whom can’t afford housing, and some of whom are making homelessness a hobo lifestyle for all sorts of reasons.
Remarkably, no fights, crimes, or disturbances have been associated with the self-policing, loosely knit community. And a tour of the Cuddy Park encampment area revealed that the area had been cleaned up after campers left, and city crews have cleared the brush that had hidden the encampment from the road.
The mayor on July 24 declared this situation a civil emergency. The Assembly extended the emergency until Aug. 6. Then, on Aug. 6, the Assembly again extended the emergency until Sept. 24 at 11:59 pm.
But where’s the mayor, and where are the reports he was asked to give to the Assembly?
Berkowitz, along with a posse of other city officials are in Japan, on a friendship mission to Chitose. Traveling with him are Assembly members Christopher Constant and Forrest Dunbar, both who are understudies for the role of mayor, once Berkowitz is retired in 2021.
Why Chitose, Japan? It’s Anchorage’s sister city, located on the island of Hokkaido.
When Berkowitz declared the emergency back in July, he said it was to “address the impacts of state budget cuts that pose dire and imminent public health and safety risks.”
His declaration continued: “Municipal Code 3.80.060 allows the mayor to make use of all available resources of the municipal government, including municipal personnel, as may be reasonably necessary to cope with an emergency. Actions may include alternate deployment of current MOA employees and the swift reallocation of resources necessary to preserve and protect the public safety, health, and welfare.”
“This is an unprecedented decision for an unprecedented situation. Existing shelters have lost funding at a time when demand for their services is projected to skyrocket. First responders and health care professionals are anticipating a massive surge in 911 and emergency room calls, and it is imperative that we meet this impending humanitarian crisis with the resources that we deploy when responding to all emergencies.”
[Read: Berkowitz declares a civil emergency on homelessness]
And yet, the encampment is still doing its 10-day abatement rotation.
Assembly member Felix Rivera had toured the nomadic colony late last month and noted that a sense of community had started to develop and he saw merit in creating sanctioned permanent tent cities.
Meanwhile, the junket to Japan has been kept largely under wraps, although Assemblyman Christopher Constant has been posting cryptic messages about it on social media.
BP operations in Alaska date back more than 60 years. The company has had significant investments on the North Slope, specifically Prudhoe Bay, and almost half ownership in the trans-Alaska pipeline. Now, we know they are on their way out, selling their remaining Alaska assets to relative newcomer Hilcorp, a privately owned company.
All BP’s Alaska operations and upstream business are headquartered at its iconic Anchorage office building on the corner of Benson Boulevard and the Seward Highway; you can see its unique yellow and green helio lit up on the side of the building for miles around. While the company has been selling some assets to other producers since at least 2015, the news of its departure poses big questions.
Brandon Spoerhase
What does BP’s departure mean for the commercial real estate market? First, some history.
BP’s Anchorage headquarters is a 15-floor, 324,000-square foot, Class A office building. It was built from 1983 to 1985, and the entire campus is 18 acres and includes a cafeteria and atrium. It is one of the most recognizable buildings in Alaska. (The company also built and operates the BP Energy Center, a building in midtown where nonprofit groups can meet for free. The Energy Center is the only Alaska asset not included in the sale to Hilcorp and BP has said it will remain in Anchorage “as a legacy.”)
The first phase of development was as an office building, with enough land to be able to accommodate a second tower if Alaska’s operations required one. In addition, it was designed to be able to convert to into a hotel when and if the time came for such a transition.
A few years ago, BP’s Anchorage property was sold to Oak Street Real Estate Capital, LLC, a private equity real estate firm based in Chicago, Illinois. The firm manages accounts for institutional and high net-worth investors, including public and corporate pension plans, insurance companies and trusts.
In Anchorage, the office Class A market vacancy rate was 15% in January. The market has continued to soften due to state budget concerns, with companies contracting and minimizing their occupancy costs. In the midst of this, BP attracted a new tenant to its building — Oil Search. This rapidly growing oil company relocated to this building from downtown, and has announced plans to ramp up with more employees in Alaska as it develops the exciting new Pikka development.
It is unknown what BP will do with its existing work force, although we can reasonably assume that some employees will be retained, some will move to other BP locations, and some will be laid off and potentially picked up by other oil and gas companies.
The other unknown is what BP will do with the remainder of the lease space and the remaining committed lease term as it prepares to transition out of Alaska. The continued softening of rental rates and rising vacancy rates has been the trend in 2019, and the Anchorage office market is going to feel the impact if BP’s current occupied space is vacated and available for lease. If Hilcorp moves into the BP building, the immediate impact will be lessened, though questions about how long they plan to stay there remain.
In the end, from a commercial real estate perspective, more questions are being asked than answered right now. It serves as a vivid reminder that change is the only constant in Alaska, whether in politics, the economy, or real estate. These types of events can be unsettling, but also present new opportunities. Office space owners and renters would be wise to take advantage of them.
Brandon Spoerhase is a lifelong Alaskan, a broker for BSI Commercial Real Estate, and a former member of the Anchorage Planning and Zoning Commission. He specializes in commercial and investment real estate. His column runs monthly in the Anchorage Daily News and is offered here with his permission.
Fitch Ratings downgraded Alaska’s general obligation bond rating from AA to AA1 on Thursday, as it warned it would do months earlier if spending continued to exceed revenue.
The message from Fitch is that the State doesn’t have its fiscal house in order. The Legislature has continued since 2013 to appropriate more than the revenues can support, digging deeper and deeper into savings accounts. Political realities prevented this governor, and the previous one, from cutting spending as much as needed to avoid a downgrade.
Gov. Bill Walker, before leaving office, added hundreds of millions of dollars to the state budget before pronouncing it “balanced.” It was up to Gov. Michael Dunleavy to bring a dose of courage needed to make the cuts.
Fitch and other ratings agencies don’t much care if Alaska cuts its budget or raises taxes; it just wants to see the books balance.
House Bill 2001, the operating budget that included $156 million in budget restorations, reduced one third of the state’s deficit with a reduction of $650 million in total state spending. But it came at a political price that was born primarily by the governor, not by the bipartisan Legislature — he’s now the focus of a recall campaign led by Democrats.
On the bright side, Fitch said the State’s rating outlook is stable. In 2017, it said the outlook was unstable.
The AA+/Aa1 rating signifies that the issuer or carrier has strong financial backing and cash reserves, according to Investopedia. But it means it will cost the State more to borrow money for general obligation bond projects.
SAME RATING DOWNGRADE AS HONG KONG
Like Alaska, Hong Kong suffered the same rating fate, as it was downgraded by Fitch last week from AA+ to AA.
“Ongoing events have inflicted long-lasting damage to international perceptions of the quality and effectiveness of Hong Kong’s governance system and rule of law, and have called into question the stability and dynamism of its business environment. These features are integral to Fitch’s assessment of the territory’s creditworthiness, and while still strong in a global context, are at risk of being further eroded as a result of enduring social strife,” the agency said.
