The labor union representing operating personnel for the White Pass & Yukon Route in Skagway authorized a strike after nearly six years of unsuccessful negotiations with the railroad.
SMART Transportation Division Local 1626 says the dispute involves wages, healthcare, workforce reduction, and safety.
The strike, if carried out, could have an impact on the early fall travel period in Alaska. But the union must first go through mediation with the railroad, and if that doesn’t work, it must still wait for a 30-day cooling-off period before it can go on strike. That would mean the earliest the strike would be may land at the end of August, but it could still disrupt the plans of cruise ship operators and tourists who are booked on the train.
The railroad is in its 125th year. Built during the Klondike Gold Rush with construction starting in 1898, White Pass is a narrow gauge railroad that is an “International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark,” traveling between Skagway and Whitehorse, Yukon. It also stops at Lake Bennett and Carcross.
The Fraser Meadows Steam Excursion trip is on a steam-powered train that chugs to the summit and back.
During the Covid pandemic, the train was only able to go to the border, since Canada was closed to visitors. This year is one of the biggest years for tourism that Skagway has ever seen.
The union is interested in higher wages that reflect the cost-of-living increases observed over the past six years, since its last labor agreement was signed in 2017. The union says that stagnant wages make it hard for workers to cover their living expenses.
In addition, the union says the railroad is going to shift some healthcare costs back to workers.
Also, the union says that White Pass may eliminate brakemen positions on the trains, something the union opposes because it would add more work to conductors. The union says that brakemen are needed as a safety concern.
Over the Independence Day weekend, a mediation session took place but was unsuccessful and no future dates for mediation meetings were set.ate for future meetings following the conclusion of the recent discussions.
The City of Nenana is abuzz with excitement as it prepares to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the completion of the Interior Alaska Railroad.
President Warren G. Harding drove the golden spike into the ground on July 15, 1923, to mark the completion of the railroad in Nenana.
Now, 100 years later, the city is gearing up for a grand celebration, including the grand opening of a new gazebo in town, purchased by the Alaska Railroad and donated to the City of Nenana for the occasion.
The celebration on Saturday will take place throughout the day in Nenana, with a block party, entertainment, food, and a reenactment of the driving of the golden spike.
The schedule for the festivities:
9 am – Opening of time capsule at Railroad Depot 10 am – Commemoration of first flight, whistle stop train arrives in Nenana 10:30 am – Unveiling of Mears bridge monument and Ralph Modjeski plaque 11 am – Lunch opens 11:15 am – Buses and special train arrive 12 noon – Ribbon cutting at gazebo
Ceremony 1:15 pm – Native drummers 1:20. pm – Greetings from Tribal Leadership 1:25 pm – National anthem 1:30 pm – ARRC Chair Shively welcomes guests 1:35 pm – Greetings from Mayor Verhagen, presenting miniature replica bridge gifted to President Harding 1:40 pm – Greetings from ARRC President Bill O’Leary 1:45 pm – Reading ARRC 100th plaque and reference to time capsule 1:47 pm – ARRC’s Mears bridge plaque reading 1:50 pm – ARRC Chair intro guest speakers 1:55 pm – Federal Delegation 2 pm – Gov. Mike Dunleavy 2:10 pm – Chair closing words 2:15 pm – AK state song 2:20 pm – Driving of golden spike reenactment
2:45 pm – Eielson fly over
3 pm – Board special train and buses
6:26 pm – whistle stop train leaves for Fairbanks
Worth noting, there will also be an Eielson Air Force Base flyover in the afternoon to commemorate the July 4, 1923 first flight in Alaska, accomplished by aviator Carl Ben Eielson, who flew in his airplane from Fairbanks to Nenana as a Fourth of July demonstration flight. His plane, “Jenny,” still hangs from the ceiling at Fairbanks International Airport.
The Alaska Railroad is one of the oldest institutions in the state, predating statehood by 36 years. The railroad has played a crucial role in the development of Alaska, connecting communities and towns and moving passengers and goods between Seward and Fairbanks in what has become known as “The Railbelt.”
One part of the community tells a side of the story about housing in Anchorage, but the data is not clear that there is an actual housing “crisis” in Anchorage, as some call it. If there is a housing crisis, it has been around for a long time.
People in Eagle River told their Assemblyman Kevin Cross last week that Anchorage people are moving to the Mat-Su Valley and a lot of them are also working in the valley. They are not moving for the reasons Cross was saying, which is that there is not enough affordable housing in Chugiak, Eagle River, or the rest of Anchorage.
Opponents of the Kevin Cross “fix” for affordable housing argue that people are moving to find a better political climate; Anchorage has become more liberal in the past decade and the quality of life has deteriorated, and schools have become unsavory due to unwholesome agendas being forced on students and their families.
Cross, who develops real estate for a living, had called the community meeting to discuss his massive rezoning plan, a rewrite of the Title 21 ordinance. His changes, in an ordinance he advanced in the Anchorage Assembly after taking office. The goal is to build more apartments and condos across every part of the municipality, including Chugiak and Eagle River, and Girdwood, which have their own zoning carve-outs from Title 21.
The ordinance was given a poor reception, however. Residents worry about multi-story apartments being built next to their single-family homes, and are also concerned about the deterioration of their family neighborhoods.
A look at the data shows a population in decline in Anchorage, even as more housing has been built over the past few years.
According to the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, the population of Anchorage was 298,908 people in 2015. Today, the population is down 288,000.
That’s a loss of about 11,000 people in Anchorage in less than a decade.
According to AFHC, in 2017, the municipality had 115,000 housing units, with 105,164 of them occupied, leaving an unoccupied inventory of nearly 10,000 units.
If those housing units were stable over the past six years, and with a falling population due to move-outs and low birth rates, there are still more than four housing units for every 10 people in the city, including adults and children.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, it threw a monkey wrench into many sectors of the economy, including apartment and home building. People in 2020 and 2021 approached housing in different ways — some rational ways, others not so much.
The supply chain dried up in 2020 and lumber costs skyrocketed, as did all other materials. Labor was in short supply starting in 2020 and continuing to today. These were impacts felt in every community across the country and Anchorage was no different.
At the same time, some people started working from home more, and their needs for space changed.
In November of 2020, the number of housing units approved by permits was about 415 in Anchorage, but vastly more homes were being built in the Mat-Su, which is lightly regulated.
Now, with mortgage interest rates near 7%, there’s yet another monkey wrench in the system.
According to AHFC, the rental vacancy rate was 5.7% in 2020 and slid to 4.3 in 2021. Typically, a 5-7% vacancy rate is considered a healthy balance, which puts Anchorage’s rental market a little on the tight side.
“As vacancy rates are going down, median rents have steadily gone up across the state from 2016 to 2022, with an average increase of 10.64%,” AHFC reported at the end of last year. The state reports that the average Anchorage rental is $1,400.
At the same time, none of this explains how the population loss of 11,000 in Anchorage would make the housing market tighter. The numbers from one agency to another don’t always tell the full story. After all, this is a city that is talking about the need to close a few schools due to declining enrollments; Anchorage has lost over 5,800 students since 2016.
What about the Anchorage street people? The unsheltered population in Anchorage, according to the Alaska Homeless Management Information System, is 3,198 individuals who are living in emergency shelters, couch surfing, or living on the streets or in tents in various greenbelt encampments.
Many of the unsheltered population suffer from behavioral issues that make them unsuitable candidates for a rental unit at any cost — they are drug addicts or people with serious mental illness. Some of them are repeat criminals looking for their next mark. A change in zoning to make more housing available at the bottom end of the market for this particular population is not going to be without controversy because they don’t make good neighbors.
For others in Anchorage, it’s actually far cheaper to live in Alaska’s largest city, where over 40% of the state’s population calls home, than in Seattle, the metropolis to the south. In fact, if you live on $53,000 a year in Anchorage, you’d need $60,000 a year in Seattle to maintain the same standard of living, according to Salary.com.
In fact, Anchorage doesn’t even make the top 10 list of cities with the biggest housing shortages according to multifamily.loansor Angi’s List.
Anchorage builders are frustrated, as they watch their contemporaries in the Mat-Su Valley build and sell hundreds of home.
Title 21 has, no doubt, raised the cost of building in Anchorage and made it more complicated. But Title 21 took years to write, and a quick overhaul may have unintended consequences.
The UCES Clown Party has left the circus in Alaska. The political party has no current registered voters in the 49th this month, although it’s still on the Division of Elections’ list of 16 official political groups.
Started in California as a pro-marijuana and progressive political movement in about 2014, the “Useless Clown Party” had 102 members registered in Alaska just three years ago in July’s voter roll update.
Not all that are called political parties are actually recognized as parties in Alaska. A group has to have 5,000 registrants in order to be considered an official political party, while those with fewer than that are called political groups by the state. More about the different categories of parties and groups at this link.
The Division of Elections publishes an update of voter rolls every month, and does a voter roll purge in early March of every year.
Must Read Alaska periodically reviews these voter trends, typically in March and at other times during the year to get a snapshot of the dynamics. The following are some that are noteworthy, particularly now that Alaska has just one primary election with all party candidates on the same ballot, while before 2020’s Ballot Measure 2, Republicans had a separate ballot that could only be voted by those registered with the party or not registered with another official party.
In the July, 2023 voter roll update, the Alaska Republican Party has increased by 1,702 members since July of 2020, and still stands out as the largest single party in Alaska, with 141,522 members. Republicans are down 2% in three years.
The Alaska Democratic Party has lost members, but is still the state’s second-largest political party. But since July of 2020 when they had 76,779 voters, the Democrats have shed 2,113 registered voters and are now at 74,666, a 2.75% drop in three years.
The Alaska Independence Party has gained members, going from 17,111 in 2020 to 18,865 this month. The party is unique to Alaska, and in its formation was created as a secessionist party 39 years ago by the late Joe Vogler, although it is now a conservative party not focused on secession.
Looking farther back at a 2016’s snapshot, the state had 144,445 registered Republicans and 78,713 registered Democrats in that year, when President Donald Trump won the Alaska vote with 51.3% of the vote.
The overall voter base has increased since 2016, from 530,653 to 596,637, a 12.4% increase.
Alaska’s population in 2016 was 742,575. By the 2021 U.S. Census was 732,673, a 1.3% decrease.
Some of the other party and no-party affiliations:
The Undeclared voters still rule the roost, with 266,874 registered voters, a gain of 5,255 voters in the past three years. The increase may be attributed not so much to people leaving parties but rather are probably newcomers to Alaska applying for the Alaska Permanent Fund dividends and drivers’ licenses, and thus being automatically registered to vote and assigned the “Undeclared” status.
Nonpartisan voters now number 83,090, a gain of 835 voters, or about 1% since 2020. Nonpartisans, unlike Undeclareds, do not gain in numbers by simply showing up at the Division of Motor Vehicles. These are people who register to vote intentionally; typically they are government workers.
The Libertarian Party has seen shrinkage, starting with 7,082 in July of 2020 and now down to 6,800 registered voters, a 4% decrease in three years.
The Green Party has lost about 70 registered voters in Alaska in three years, and is now down to 1,511 members.
Overall, the official Alaska voter rolls have 1.3% more voters this month than they did three years ago. Today, there are 596,637 registered Alaska voters. The number of overall voters changes as voter rolls are purged each March, and then fluctuates throughout the year.
As for the Clown Party, it will probably be dropped off the Division of Elections list of official political groups, since no one is registered with the party in Alaska. (We don’t know where the clowns went, but readers may have some ideas.)
The Ketchikan City Council has reversed an earlier vote and, by a margin of 4-3, has placed “Let’s Talk About It” in the adult section of the Ketchikan Public Library. The book was in the teen section, as it is in many libraries across the country, including Anchorage’s Loussac Library.
“Let’s Talk About It” is graphically illustrated to show how to administer oral sex, what gay sex looks like with some precision, and has descriptions of how to perform anal sex and why teens should access porn and participate in sending sexual pictures of themselves over the internet. Nationally, it is a book that has enraged parents and created distrust of public institutions that seem bent on delivering hyper sexualized material to children.
In Anchorage, the book is available in the Teen Underground, a special library room just for teens where many sex manuals and gay promotions are located and where adults are not allowed, except for the teen librarian.
In June, the Ketchikan City Council had voted 4-3 to leave the book in the teen section of the library. But Councilwoman Abby Bradberry filed a motion to reconsider, and the Thursday vote went against the book. Teens are still able to access the book in the adult section of the library.
The Internal Revenue Service will hold auctions next week, with property in Willow, Wasilla, and Sterling being sold to the highest bidders.
The first action is Wednesday, July 12, for property in Willow and Wasilla with one pacel in Willow and three in Wasilla, all three about an acre in size.
On Thursday, a 7-acre parcel in Sterling will go on the auction block.
More information on how to bid on the parcels is here and at this link.
Bidders must show that they have 10% of the bid amount prior to placing a bid and will have 60 days to pay the remainder.
Thomas Jefferson observed that ours is not a “government by the majority,” but rather a government by the “majority who participate.” The outcomes of our elections, and our nation’s future, are determined as much by those who do not vote as they are by those who do.
Our vote is our voice, a regular reminder to elected officials that they temporarily steward – they do not permanently own – the powers they wield. Their authority to govern us is conditional and based solely on our consent, as expressed through our vote.
Perhaps that is why the late Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis, believed the most important political office any of us will ever hold is that of private citizen.
He further warned that under our republican form of government, the duties of that office, such as our right (and corresponding duty) to vote, could not be neglected without causing “serious injury to the public.”
Similarly, Plato warned, rather indelicately, that among the injuries private citizens suffer when they do not fulfill the duties of their office is that they will “end up being governed by [their] inferiors.”
The late drama critic and co-founder of The American Spectator, George Jean Nathan, made a similar observation, noting that “[b]ad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.”
It therefore was particularly alarming that the November 2022 election resulted in the lowest recorded voter turnout rate in our state’s history, while the country experienced the second-highest midterm voter turnout rate the Census Bureau has recorded in four decades. As the voices of our sister states’ citizens thundered at the polls, the voices of Alaska’s citizenry were barely a whisper.
Recognizing that democracies decline and tyrannies transcend when the public does not vote, Preserve Democracy explored why our state experienced such a precipitous drop in voting last year. Was it because we no longer trusted our politicians, did we forget to vote en masse, or was it something else?
In an effort to unearth what happened, Preserve Democracy conducted a statewide poll through Cygnal, which theNew York Times, among others, has recognized for the accuracy of its polling. The results of the poll were informative.
The following were the most common voluntary and involuntary reasons Alaskans gave for not voting in 2022.
Most common involuntary reasons for not voting were:
Out of town: 26.5%
Sick or disabled: 12.8%
Most common voluntary reasons for not voting:
Lack of trust in the integrity of elections: 13.0%
Concern about the new ranked-choice voting (RCV) system: 6.3%.
An approximately equal percentage of Republicans (15%) and Democrats (16%) said they did not vote because of concern regarding the new RCV system, as well as 3% of Independent/Unaffiliated voters. Women voters, older voters, and voters who are people of color said they were less likely to vote because of RCV.
In addition, a majority of the respondents (51%) had a negative view of RCV, while 29% had a positive view of it. When asked how they would vote today regarding 2020’s Ballot Measure 2, which instituted RCV, a majority of the respondents said they would vote to keep traditional voting in place (older voters and Alaska-Native voters were more likely to vote to reject RCV).
Finally, 4 in 10 voters believed RCV gives an unfair advantage to one party over another, including 75% of Republicans, 15% of Democrats, and 36% of Independent/Unaffiliated respondents.
Readers will reach different conclusions regarding the results of the poll, but our main takeaway is that the poll’s data indicates there is great reason for hope with respect to future elections in Alaska.
Consider that almost 40% of the individuals who did not vote indicated they were either out of town, sick, or disabled, which is a challenge that can be addressed going forward by ensuring voters are better informed on how to request absentee ballots, and by improving our outreach efforts to remind them to return their absentee ballots before the established deadlines.
Such a coordinated effort could substantially increase future voter turnout rates; preserve the vigor and vitality of our republic; raise Alaskans’ voices from a whisper to a roar; and safeguard the office of private citizen, Alaska’ highest and most powerful political office.
We encourage our fellow Alaskans to stand together by working to increase voter turnout. In the words attributed to Benjamin Franklin, we still have a “Republic, if you can keep it.”
Niki Tshibaka is a former federal civil rights attorney and government executive. Kelly Tshibaka is the founder of Preserve Democracy and former U.S. Senate candidate for the State of Alaska. They have five amazing children, one of whom voted for the first time in November 2022.
The names of the two people who died as a result of the Kodiak Island plane crash on July 2 have been positively identified as:
91-year-old Byron Chitwood of Greenville, Texas
73-year-old Rodney Murdock of Kodiak
Alaska State Troopers recovered their bodies on July 3 and sent them to the State Medical Examiner for autopsy and positive identification.
Chitwood was the former mayor of Greenville, Texas, and had also served on the city council of the community about 50 miles north of Dallas. His two sons were seriously injured in the crash, which occurred when they were returning from their annual fishing trip to Alaska.
Chitwood was a member of the Rotary Club, Hunt County Master Gardeners and Hunt County Shared Ministries/FISH. According to the Herald Banner online news website, Chitwood was a veteran of the U.S. Navy and will be buried in the military cemetery in Grand Prairie, next to his wife, who passed away in July 2020.
Murdock owned an appliance repair business in Kodiak and was returning to Kodiak from working at Old Harbor, sources told Must Read Alaska.
The three who survived the crash were seriously injured had been medevaced off the island for advanced care after the Piper PA-32-300 operated by Vertigo Air Taxi crashed in mountainous area about three miles north of Old Harbor.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has named two Alaskans to the nine-member State Board of Education and Early Development, subject to confirmation by the Alaska Legislature.
Barbara Tyndall of North Pole is a 1996 graduate of University of Alaska Fairbanks, and is a longtime teacher in the Interior, including North Pole Christian School. She has served on the board of a crisis pregnancy center and Fairbanks Youth Advocates. She also served on the Alaska Women’s Commission and Alaska Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee.
Pamela Dupras of Anchorage has a bachelors degree in elementary education from Alaska Pacific University. She is a teacher in the Anchorage School District who has also worked in education around the state, including being a specialist in English as a second language, in Palmer and Kodiak. She taught on the North Slope and Glennallen. Since 2021, she has served on the Alaska Native Cultural Charter School Academic Policy Committee.
The two complete the board upon the expired terms of members Keith Hamilton and Sandra Kowalski.
