When Anchorage Assemblywoman Meg Zaletel suddenly announced Tuesday that she will be taking medical leave starting May 24, she raised a few eyebrows and even more questions.
The announcement said she was leaving her role on the Anchorage Assembly for 48 days, returning July 11. As the Assembly vice chair, that means Chairman Chris Constant will not be able to take off for Las Vegas or Key West, knowing that Zaletel will look out for his interests as he phones in from a bar.
Unusually, the Assembly also announced that Zaletel would be leaving her day job at Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, a federal- and municipal-funded agency where she is the executive director in charge of a multi-million organization that is supposed to end homelessness but has had struggles doing so.
ACEH itself released no press release about how, right when dozens of homeless camps are springing up across the city, its executive director would suddenly announce she would be gone for 69 days, again starting May 24. The agency allowed the Assembly to make that announcement, which is a misuse of municipal resources, sources note.
A look at ACEH shows it’s having trouble at the top.
Four of its senior leaders have left this year, including Celia MacLeod, Director of Programs & Services; Tahnee Conte-Seccareccia, Director of Finance & Administration; Julie Frizzell, Senior Grants Manager; and Helen Renfrew, Grants Manager. The agency started the year with 14 people listed on its staff directory. With four of them gone, it’s 28% of the agency’s staff leaving.
Now running the agency as interim Chief Operating Officer is Terria Ware, formerly Systems Improvement Administrator for ACEH.
That is a lot of churn in the financial and program management area of the agency whose only mission is to get homeless people into safe housing.
Now, the agency’s executive director has quit for unknown medical reasons for most of the summer, leaving an agency without continuity in its operations.
ACEH is an extension of the federal government. It describes itself as, “the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) designated lead for the greater Anchorage area’s Continuum of Care (CoC). Under the governance of the Homelessness Prevention and Response System Advisory Council, ACEH is the local planning body that coordinates housing and services funding for homeless families and individuals.”
An effort to recall Zaletel did not succeed two years ago, but a sign showing support for her recall is still prominent on 36th Avenue near College Park, where Zaletel can see it as she drives across her district.
Wonder what a forensic financial audit would turn up?
Yep, as a federal grant recipient, the organization might be subject to some probing audit inquiries. I say “might” because with the current regime in federal power, they usually shield everyone on the correct team. I doubt if anything truly damaging comes out. After all, if they can protect Hunter, they can protect anyone.
I had exactly the same thought. Maybe HUD has announced an audit…..
Rehab?
Maybe she was diagnosed with cancer and needs lots of chemo or maybe she has a serious heart condition and needs to be cut open. Thoughts & prayers? Nope, as usual, jeers and/or sneers from the neocon clown car.
In case you missed it, over the last several years and months, it’s become quite apparent that Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump could benefit greatly via various psychological rehabilitation treatments.
Lincoln,
Your own compassion comes into question with your own bashing….
Meggy put herself in this position. You cannot so this much evil without needing an exorcism every now n again. She should be prosecuted along with felix and chrissy and adq and several other ‘members’.
In case you haven’t been paying attention, Trump was framed, still ongoing. Democrats, doj, biden, chillary, et al really did frame him and are continuing to try to frame him.
Trump, best president ever – i had money in my bank account, a retirement plan, a house, and a future. I could afford groceries, rent, gas in my car and to go out socializing…. Now i pick who gets paid and who waits.
AECH was likely just another cog in the homeless industrial complex, a cog who’s sole role was to reward the politicians that give them grants.
.
Wonder if Meg’s involvement in that has something to do with her sudden departure…
Best to be in a position eliciting sympathy when the potential for scrutiny arises?
Or is there dissension in the Communist ranks?
Probably out looking for a new pointy black hat and broom.
Should be a prohibited conflict of interest to be on assembly, influence, affect vote and money spent on homeless matters and work for ACEH homeless coalition.
I have feeling about this and it is Zinkish and Chicagoish.
Sounds like a financial scandal at ACEH is in the making, Embezzelment, misuse of funds illegal campaign donations? The rats may be leaving a sinking ship.
Overpaid and ineffectual, it’s time for her to be gone.
$250k as head proponent of Anchorage’s trash population and another $60k to defecate on the Anchorage Assembly. I wonder how much of that $310k she’s altruistically shared w/ the bums she feigns interest in?
“Zaletel would be leaving her day job at Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, a federal- and municipal-funded agency…” Isn’t this a conflict of interest that she is on the Assembly with the power of the purse to fund an organization that she is the executive director of?
Radical leftists: “It’s not corruption when WE do it!
We are the GOOD people!”
One may think that there is some sort of investigation going on involving wrongful graft, or grift, as the case may be, and one removing themselves from the public eye because of it, at least, one may hope for it, within the case of Poétique justice immanente.
Or, it could be a legitimate case of healing, regardless of the cause.
Either way, her departure, as ‘temporary’ as it may be, benefits the city as a whole, when she is no longer a monger of detriment within either position.
Perhaps she’s going on vacation with Tom Sconce.
Or checking into Betty Ford.
A lot of hateful people making comments. Phrases like “trash population” an insinuating she is a witch are quite revealing.
$161 million spent on homelessness in the past 3 years and she was a pivotal part of this allocated money and for what resolve? Anchorage parks, bike trails and woods are all very dangerous. She helped approve spending this $ which has only exasperated into an extremely unsafe city for children who can’t even enjoy a park to play in without stepping in human feces, needles and harassed by very unwell homeless people. $181M on approximately 1,100 homeless people and the majority of them don’t even want to live in a home. Anchorage folks want to know who is really benefiting from this unwell spent money (at tax payers expense) while she and others on the Assembly have their personal careers in making $ from the homeless industry and obviously have no viable plan to truly help clean up or house the homeless. $181M for 1,100 homeless. An intelligent middle schooler could have created a solution by now if given these kind of funds and a plan. But no, we are stuck with an assembly who is either inept, corrupt or purposefully trying to cause hardship to Anchorage – or all of the above. The lib assembly members should all take a permanent break and get replaced by intelligent children who would do a much better job.
If she signs more than this duck. Welll?
“Should” being the key here. We would have to get rid of most of the assembly in order to contend with their deep conflicts and animosity towards our mayor. Rid ourselves of nine, let the remaining three pick their replacements (i would put my name in until an election could be completed and ask agimarc to join me with mia costello) to turn our city BACK AROUND.
These members CHOOSE to MISbehave in the workplace, break their oath every single minute of every single day, taking apart our ONCE GREAT city one Tiesday at a time. Every ordinance, conflict of interest, tweek of language, new powers they grant themselves, creating conflict across agencies, agression towards employees, buddies with the unions that screw we employees…..
Chud, making critical comments is not “hateful” and for you to call people that, is your way of ignoring the substance of their complaints. Mrs. Zalatel is a public figure and having a bit of fun poked at her comes with the territory. She deserves a great deal of the ire, as she treats residents, who disagree with her with disdain and disrespect. She also appears to be ineffective in leading the effort to reduce and deal with the homeless population, while wasting a great deal of taxpayer dollars. People are frustrated when their green spaces are full of trash, they live in constant fear of a fire, due to illegal camping etc. Yet our powers-that-be are unwilling to put a stop to it, chief among them Mrs. Zalatel, all in a effort to make the mayor look bad regardless of the cost to the all citizen and that includes the homeless population. As I stated previously, I never understood why tents in Centennial Park are a “humanitarian crisis” but tents anywhere else in the city are totally acceptable.
I wouldn’t say”witch”, just perhaps something that rhymes with that!!
When the homeless situation gets tough, the leadership on the left responsible for creating change bails.
So what’s new?
I hope her health is well, and expect to hear more as she reveals her private medical concerns.
At the same time-clearly she has haters who think the worst of her and for her.
She is an unapologetic pox on Anchorage and has worked to funnel money into many pockets, including her own. Any audit would expose many on the assembly of the money laundering and fraud that has occurred int he last 5 years.
Took all the flying monkeys to lift the house off her
Wow $310k. No wonder why our once great nation is collapsing. Guess it pays to be a government parasite.
It is summer, afterall.
The dominoes might be slowly coming down. One can only hope. This assembly is absolutely USELESS!
Maureen Suttman,
you need to look at your former counterpart of Hawaii Tulsi Gabbard who saw the light and now embraces that the New Democratic Party is nothing like of its past; but a Borge of pestilence and a cabal of wokeness.
Rep Gabbard is now an independent. Look up her speech online (simply cut annd past the URL below) and “SEE THE LIGHT.”
‘https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UjpZhsexHyY
Hope she never comes back.
But best wishes in healing herself.
Just don’t go to Arkansas. Ask Ron Brown about what happens when you run afoul of a Clinton.
One of my co-workers wondered if the 45 days was perhaps for gender re-affirming surgery?
In that case, to which of the 47 genders would NutMeg be transitioning?
I just hope she never comes back.
Me too!
$250K to run an agency, ACEH, at taxpayer expense that has done…what? I went to Anchorage yesterday and it made me furious. Angering and heartbreaking. As we drove by, in broad daylight a man was ‘self stimulating’ on the sidewalk next to the FBI building. The homeless problem is only getting worse in Anchorage and simply creating more government agencies such as ACEH, has done nothing. I do hope Zaletel does not return to her position, the agency needs to be dissolved. Bring together all the groups that are making a difference and brainstorm. There are many people that care and don’t need a bloated salary to sit down at the table and contribute to useful ideas. It is my understanding Zaletel is an attorney – why is she heading up an agency that is supposed to ‘solve’ homelessness but isn’t?
Sounds like an audit is in order.
ACEH, lets get it started with an audit and structural review with her and her team now gone!
Mayor Bronson, how about some conflict of interest charges by doing an audit on any agency meg has had contact with to ensure compliance with muni policies?
Will Meg still be able to vote on assembly matters by phone?
No while on medical leave of absence.
She’s getting paid a lot of taxpayer loot to ameliorate a problem that has progressively worsened. Holding a position on the Assembly and on the ACEH at the same time sounds like a conflict of interest to me. Yet she was re-elected to the Assembly by the voters. Help me understand.
You think we voters elected her? The ASSEMBLY is in charge of our elections.
Our ASSEMBLY will not clean up the voter roles (dead, no longer at this address, they do not remove people when we report this either).
Sure are some small minded, angry, weak grippers here.
So, wanting to hold politicians accountable for their misdeeds is labeled small minded, angry, weak grippers. Aren’t you just a bit curious why, with all the money dumped into this homeless “crisis” that it’s just gotten worse? That goes hand in hand with all the BILLIONS “invested” into our public school system where we’re ranked what, 47th in the country? Lable me what you want but I’m just fed up with what has become of our city, state and nation.
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