Southcentral

Anchorage city leaders are hopeful that a new team in the Anchorage Police Department will help keep homeless residents safe while connecting them with the resources they need.

Mayor Suzanne LaFrance touted the new pilot program, which is called the Homeless Outreach Prevention and Engagement team, at a press conference Wednesday.

“People experiencing homelessness are far more likely to become victims of crime,” LaFrance said. “The HOPE team consists of a sworn crisis intervention-trained officer and a social work navigator who work together to connect people experiencing homelessness to services and housing while improving community safety for all.”

Typically, the Anchorage Health Department has conducted homeless services and outreach. However, Police Chief Sean Case said his department operates around the clock, outside of usual health department hours. That puts the HOPE team in a good position to help support the work in addressing homelessness, he said.

“If we can deal with victimization and crime that’s happening within this population, while also connecting to resources, because we are the agency that frequently comes into contact with this population, we’re now just adding to the overall plan the Municipality has,” Case said.

The HOPE team has been running since the start of July and is headed by Lt. Brian Fuchs, who said a major goal is to have the team engaging with residents living in the city’s homeless camps.

“We want positive police contacts,” Fuchs said. “We want people to understand that the police are there to assist, the police are there to help. And in some cases, that’s connecting people to resources. In other cases, it may be taking a victim in and getting a better understanding of what they’re a victim of.”

The team is similar in concept to the Mobile Intervention Team, a program where officers are partnered with mental health clinicians to respond to mental health crises, Fuchs said. While that team responds to a variety of calls, Fuchs said the HOPE team is specifically aimed at helping residents in homeless camps.

“It’s a new concept as far as a mission, but the construct of the co-response model has been something that we’ve been doing for quite some time,” Fuchs said.

Farina Brown, special assistant to the mayor on homelessness and health, said having an officer with the social work navigator helps keep both providers and the people they’re servicing safe and helps build relationships.

“Sometimes it takes multiple contacts with someone before they even tell you their name,” Brown said. “And the HOPE team allows for that bandwidth to go in and create relationships and start to link people to services when they’re ready.”

If the pilot program goes well, city leaders said a second HOPE team could be out working on the streets next year.

A remote landslide produced a tsunami last month at Kenai Fjords National Park near Seward.

No injuries or fatalities were reported, but the wave caused minor damage to a privately-owned boardwalk. It also moved a Park Service campground food storage box about 20 feet.

According to the National Park Service, the Aug. 7 landslide splashed down into the upper part of Pedersen Lagoon about 20 miles southwest of Seward, producing a wave about 55 feet high. Then it crossed over a ridge and flowed into the lower part of the lagoon, hitting the shore at a height of about 3 feet.

Chad Hults, the Park Service’s regional geologist for Alaska, said the slope above the water is unstable. As a result, the landslide and tsunami didn’t come as a surprise.

“The landslide gave way during a very significant rain event that happened that week, I believe it was around 15 inches of rain that fell that week,” Hults said.

Hults said the region has seen several landslides within the last few years, and that heavy rains and thinning glaciers are making them more common.

“People should be careful about travel and understand when there’s heavy rain events, those are times when landslides can be triggered, and they can hit the water and generate tsunamis,” he said.

The Park Service recommends visitors to Pedersen Lagoon take precautions for the possibility of other landslides or tsunamis.

For Hermon Hutchens Elementary School Principal Jason Weber, a lack of housing is a big part of his struggle attracting new teachers to Valdez.

“If I’m trying to hire teachers outside of the community, I’m normally going to end up hiring two teachers, because one of them is going to back out a contract because they can’t find housing,” Weber said in an interview.

It’s a problem you hear a lot about in this community of about 4,000 year-round residents. And it’s rippled across the local economy, said Valdez’s assistant city manager for capital projects and facilities, Nate Duval.

“You see that in all the businesses, whether it’s retail or the schools,” he said. “I know there’ve been a number of folks who have been offered employment, but they couldn’t find a place to live, and so they had to turn down the employment to go work somewhere else.”

Communities across the state and around the country are struggling with a shortage of affordable housing. The Prince William Sound community of Valdez is no exception. Expanding housing has been at the top of the city’s priority list for years.

Valdez is dealing with many of the same economic factors limiting development in other places, like high construction costs and interest rates. But city officials are pursuing an all-of-the-above solution — and they’re hoping it pays dividends.

Anemic development and deteriorating housing stock

Valdez had its first major boom in housing development in the aftermath of the 1964 Good Friday earthquake, which required the town to relocate, Duval said. Since then, it’s grown in fits and starts. The opening of the trans-Alaska pipeline and the Exxon-Valdez oil spill each created their own mini-boom.

“After that, nothing, no major construction or adding to the inventory happened,” Duval said.

While the population has been roughly flat, a report commissioned by the city shows that the number of units fell 1.6% between 2010 and 2018. Some homes have succumbed to fires or collapsed under snow loads, and others moved to short-term rental platforms like Airbnb or VRBO, Duval said.

At the same time, lots of Valdez’s existing housing stock has deteriorated.

Around a quarter of Valdez’s housing is mobile or manufactured homes, more than any Alaska community except Craig. But many haven’t stood the test of time, said the city’s community development director, Kate Huber.

“The majority of them are from 1980 or earlier, so they’ve greatly outlived their lifespans in our community,” Huber said. “We live in a pretty harsh environment that these manufactured home units are not designed for.”

Valdez is the one of the snowiest cities in the United States. It averages about more than 300 inches of snow each year. And when you visit a mobile home park, you can see the toll the environment takes on homes that aren’t designed for this climate.

Despite diligent shoveling every winter, in Jeremy Casillas’ home, the ceiling sags.

“You don’t know if it’s going to ever cave in or not,” he said.

Casillas purchased the trailer for about $12,000, as is, and banks won’t lend out the money needed for most repairs, he said.

A multi-pronged effort to expand supply

But there’s reason to believe that the tide may be turning. The city has taken a wide range of steps aimed at making it easier for people to build new homes and upgrade existing stock.

One big part of that was a rewrite of the city’s zoning codes.

“Essentially what we did was just make sure that more types of housing were allowed in more places,” said Huber, the community development director.

The city expanded single-family zones to allow manufactured homes and duplexes without special permits and expanded mixed-use zoning for housing in commercial areas.

The city is also requiring owners to get permits for short-term rental properties, though Huber said it’s yet to cap or limit them. At this point, Huber said, the city is relying more on incentives.

For example, there’s a $10,000 rebate program for anyone who adds a housing unit — on the condition that it can’t be used as a short-term rental for five years.

“We have seen just a couple instances where somebody created a new apartment, came to discuss with us the short-term rental process, and then opted to participate in the incentive program,” she said. “Those units are now long-term rentals.”

The city’s also taking an active role in expanding supply. The city donated land to a developer to build a 28-unit senior housing facility. A grant program helping developers pay for infrastructure helped pave the way for a 50-unit subdivision, Duval said.

“A number of them have been sold, and they’re building some triplexes and duplexes on those properties right now,” he said. “Without the city’s investment in that, I don’t know that those projects … would get off the ground to even be developed.”

Valdez has also applied for a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant to bring 140 new manufactured homes to Valdez with low- or no-interest loans. Some would replace existing homes for low- and moderate-income families, and others would go in as new stock.

“Those would be units that are designed for our conditions, for our snow loads, seismic conditions and wind to make sure that we weren’t just repeating the issue and perpetuating the problem, but to provide a high quality, sustainable source of housing,” Huber said.

It’s too soon to say whether the city’s efforts will be enough to turn the tide, Huber said, but Valdez is pulling out all the stops, and she’s optimistic that the city’s multi-pronged approach to solving this intractable problem can help other communities do the same.

“I think for those outside of Valdez, we’re a really great test case to be watching, because these issues, we see them in communities all over the state of Alaska and all over the country,” Huber said.

The board of Homer Electric Association, or HEA, unanimously approved a purchase contract on Aug. 13 with Renewable IPP, a power producer that’s built several large solar farms in the state.

Jenn Miller is the CEO of Renewable IPP. She said the company is working to give Alaskans energy options beyond natural gas.

“When we started the company, our mission was to not only diversify Alaska’s energy generation mix, but to do it in a way that actually reduces energy costs for Alaskans,” Miller said.

The path to get the project approved is years in the making.

Renewable IPP has been working with HEA to build a solar farm on the Kenai Peninsula since 2021. They previously considered a site in Sterling before settling on the current location. Miller said they expect to finish construction by 2028.

“While folks might say, ‘Man, can’t you move faster?’” she said, “you know, we spent three years working it, and I think without that level of due diligence, you wouldn’t have a project that delivers value on so many fronts like you do with this Puppy Dog Lake Project.”

The Puppy Dog Lake Project in Nikiski would be the largest solar farm in Alaska. Once it’s built, the farm could produce up to 30 megawatts, which is enough to power about 9,000 homes where the average household uses about 550 kilowatt hours a month. Renewable IPP also built the state’s current largest solar farm in Houston, which produces 8.5 megawatts of electricity — less than a third of the power the Nikiski project is expected to.

The purchase agreement comes as Alaska’s railbelt faces a looming shortage of natural gas, with utilities looking for ways to import natural gas.

Since Renewable IPP set its sights on the peninsula, the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly also approved property tax exemptions for independent power producers.

The new solar farm would double the amount of renewable energy the region uses from about 12% to 24%, according to HEA. Keriann Baker oversees strategy for the utility, and she said the contract will allow them to purchase electricity for less than what they currently pay for power. But, Baker said the utility continues to support developing natural gas.

“We’d like to see some policies like royalty relief that makes it easier for producers here, because a strong and thriving natural gas environment is healthy for everyone, but at the same time, we also want to protect our members responsibly from the volatility that we’re seeing in the fuel market, and we want to diversify,” she said, “we just don’t want to do it in a way that provides rate shock to our members.”

In addition to solar energy, the board also approved replacing an old, inefficient gas turbine at the power plant in Nikiski. The utility doesn’t expect the replacement to happen until late 2027 or early 2028. Once both projects are online, Baker said they could cut about one sixth of the natural gas currently being used.

HEA’s board threw out its old energy portfolio goal at the end of last year, which was to have 50% of energy coming from renewable sources by 2025. They updated the utility’s strategic plan to simply diversify its energy sources instead.

Baker said HEA is looking at other renewable energy sources outside of solar to accomplish that at the lowest cost to ratepayers.

“Really it’s anything right now. We’ve talked to tidal groups. We’ve talked to geothermal groups. We’ve talked to nuclear groups. We’ve talked to wind groups. I mean, we really are an all of the above utility,” She said.

HEA currently has an agreement with GeoAlaska, which is collecting data on Augustine Island to see if it’s possible to connect geothermal energy to the peninsula and beyond.

While the project and contract costs aren’t public until both parties finalize paperwork with the Regulatory Commission of Alaska, Miller said they received a $2 million grant from the Alaska Energy Authority that’s bringing down overall costs for ratepayers. They expect to finish the filing in the next couple months.

The purpose of Tuesday’s primary election is to narrow each field to four candidates. But few races have more than four to start with.

One is the state Senate race in Eagle River, at the northern edge of Anchorage, where the incumbent, Republican Sen. Kelly Merrick is under attack for her willingness to work across the aisle.

Republican Jared Goecker, who’s running a well-funded campaign to challenge Merrick from the right, is hoping that plays to his advantage in a community where Donald Trump won roughly 60% of the vote in 2020.

“When you’re voting 90% of the time with (Democratic Anchorage Sen.) Forrest Dunbar, and you’re saying you’re a conservative, that’s not conservative,” Goecker said while canvassing supporters ahead of the primary in a get-out-the-vote push in Eagle River this week. “That’s not even, like, moderate Republican — that’s left of center at that point.”

For the last two years, Merrick has been part of the bipartisan Senate majority, which includes 17 of the state’s 20 senators: eight Republicans and nine Democrats. The caucus has governed with a focus on down-the-middle policies, and it’s often been at odds with the conservative-led state House and Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy.

Goecker was an appointee in former Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson’s human resources department, and before that, he negotiated contracts with labor unions on behalf of the Dunleavy administration. He pitches himself as much more aligned with the governor.

Take the Permanent Fund dividend — Goecker said he prefers a 50-50 split of the state’s annual 5% draw from the Permanent Fund to go directly to Alaskans, just as Dunleavy has supported. Also like Dunleavy, he opposes a return to a defined benefit, pension-style retirement system for state employees, which he called “unaffordable and unsustainable.”

Or consider the fight over education funding: This year, the House and Senate passed a bill that would have boosted the base student allocation, the biggest part of the state’s funding formula for public schools, by wide margins. But they failed by a single vote to override a veto from Dunleavy.

Goecker wouldn’t say how he would have voted if he’d been in the Senate at the time, but he said it never would have come to that.

“We would have had a Republican Senate that’s working with the governor, actually negotiating with the governor to figure out what those priorities are, instead of passing something without knowing if the governor is going to sign it or not,” he said.

A spokesperson for Dunleavy declined to say whether the governor had a preferred candidate in the race, citing state ethics rules.

Goecker, whose brother Josiah was shot and killed last year, said he was also interested in tightening bail requirements and speeding up court proceedings.

“There’s such a terrible bottleneck in our criminal justice system that’s really making it hard for us to put bad guys away and keep bad guys away,” he said.

Merrick defends her work across the aisle

In an interview at her home, Merrick defended her work with colleagues from both parties.

Before her election to the Alaska Senate, Merrick spent four years in the state House. Merrick spent her first two years in the minority, and she “was not able to get a lot done” in that position, she said. That influenced her decision to join the emerging bipartisan majority caucus after her November 2022 election to the Senate, she said.

“You have to be in the majority if you’re going to deliver,” she said.

Merrick has taken some positions contrary to Dunleavy’s. She voted for the education bill twice. She supports a defined benefit retirement plan, citing a fiscal analysis of the bill that found it would save the state money and improve employee retention. (Competing fiscal analyses of the bill have come to mixed conclusions on the cost of returning to a pension-style plan.) Merrick also supported using 25%, rather than 50% of the annual drawdown on the Permanent Fund for dividends while on the Senate Finance Committee.

But Merrick said there were plenty of ways she did work closely with the Dunleavy administration. She points out that she was with the governor on legislation addressing the state’s natural gas crunch and a wide-ranging crime bill.

“When I’ve talked to people that said, ‘Oh, you work with Democrats,’ I ask, ‘What policy did I support that you disagree with?’” she said.

While she often voted alongside Democrats in the Senate, Merrick said she worked with her colleagues to lend her conservative point of view to legislative debates before they reached a final vote. Most of her constituents, she said, want basic government services, not partisan hits.

“I think that there might be sort of a fringe group of folks that want a legislator that’s going to go down to Juneau and throw bombs and, you know, keep things from happening,” she said. “But I think the majority of people want results.”

Merrick said she hopes that’s a message that appeals to voters more than the call for adherence to Republican unity.

Other Republican candidates oppose bipartisan majority caucus

Of the three Republicans challenging Merrick, Goecker has a sizable lead in fundraising. But he’s not alone in making Merrick’s willingness to work across the aisle a key issue.

Former state Rep. Sharon Jackson, who served two years in the House after Dunleavy appointed her to fill a vacancy, said she’d only join a majority led by conservatives similar to what exists in the state House.

“I will be loyal to the Republicans,” she said in an interview at a Chugiak coffee shop and bakery. “I will not turn my back on them, no matter what.”

Jackson said her focus is on improving Alaska’s economy, including by making the state into a destination for those seeking treatment through regenerative medicine, which she said includes unconventional therapies like platelet-rich plasma infusions and sessions in high-pressure hyperbaric chambers.

“That would really be a major boost,” she said.

Former Rep. Ken McCarty, who succeeded Jackson in the House, said he, too, would only join a coalition if it were led by Republicans.

“Being able to look at moderate issues, but conservative-led, yes,” he said in an interview at a bustling cafe in Eagle River.

Like Jackson, McCarty said he would seek to use his time in the Legislature to improve the state’s economy. The state’s infrastructure needs an upgrade, he said, from a western extension of the Alaska Railroad in the Interior to port development in Point MacKenzie and Seward.

“There’s places in the world that want to buy our resources, and if we can’t move it out of the state, then we’re failing ourselves,” he said.

Lone Democrat in race faces questions over legitimacy

Newly registered Democrat Lee Hammermeister is the only candidate aside from Merrick who said he would join a bipartisan coalition similar to what currently exists in the Senate. He cast himself as a moderate.

“Ideally, I’d like for everyone to be able to work on common ground legislation, and be able to find legislation that can meet all of our needs, and be able to make the sacrifices necessary for that to happen,” he said in an interview at an Eagle River real estate office.

But his campaign has had trouble getting off the ground, struggled to fundraise, and is facing questions over its legitimacy. The Alaska Beacon reported that Hammermeister co-hosted a fundraiser for conservative Eagle River Republican Rep. Jamie Allard in 2023, and that the president of a progressive group had accused him of being a “fake Democrat” seeking to siphon votes from Merrick.

Hammermeister said he was frustrated by the accusation and by the Alaska Democratic Party’s decision not to support his candidacy. He said he’s been reaching out to local Democrats and “trying to establish contact with the party for weeks and weeks,” to no avail.

“If the Alaska Democrat Party has abandoned the Democrat voters of this district, that means that I’m the last thing standing in the way of four Republicans getting into that seat,” Hammermeister said.

Two Alaska State Troopers are being charged with misdemeanor assault for using unreasonable force while arresting a person in Kenai who they thought was someone else, according to criminal charges filed Wednesday.

Joseph Miller Jr. and Jason Woodruff, both state troopers based in Soldotna, are facing one count each of fourth-degree assault. Both have served as troopers for more than a decade.

During a news conference on Thursday, Alaska Department of Public Safety Commissioner James Cockrell said he was “totally sickened” by the incident. He said it’s rare for troopers to face criminal charges for use of excessive force in the field.

“I’ve been with this department 33 years and I’ve never seen any action like this before by an Alaska State Trooper,” Cockrell said. “Let me be clear, the action of these two individuals is not acceptable to me, not in the line of our training and our policy and I know it’s not acceptable to the Alaskans that we serve.”

A 20-page charging document against the troopers, signed by Assistant Attorney General Daniel Shorey, lays out what prosecutors say happened.

According to the charges, Soldotna’s 911 dispatch center received a call on May 24 from someone asking about public camping. Dispatchers believed the call was placed by Garrett Tikka, who had an outstanding arrest warrant, and reported it to local law enforcement. The warrant was for not showing up to serve 10 days in jail for driving with a revoked license.

Charging documents say dispatchers gave law enforcement a description of a vehicle “associated with” Tikka. The Kenai Police Department later located the vehicle near Daubenspeck Park in Kenai. The charges say Miller, who was on duty at the time, waited to contact the man in the vehicle until additional law enforcement arrived and called Woodruff, who had a police dog with him.

Charges say Miller told Woodruff he’d like to have the dog nearby in case Tikka tried to flee.

According to charging documents, video footage from a Kenai police officer’s body-worn camera shows troopers ordering a person inside the vehicle to come out. Then, they break one of the vehicle’s windows and pepper spray inside. The person inside exits the vehicle and gets on the ground.

Law enforcement didn’t ask the person for their name, the charges say, and didn’t learn until much later that the person was not the man they were looking for, but instead his cousin, Ben Tikka.

The incident was recorded on Miller’s camera and the Kenai officer’s camera. Cockrell said Thursday that Woodruff’s camera was not activated during the incident because it had run out of battery power.

The charging documents say the camera footage shows Miller kicking Ben Tikka in the shin, punching him in the back of thr head and pushing him to the ground. Miller then steps on his head, tases Tikka from less than a foot away and puts the end of the Taser directly against his body, according to the charges. While tasing Tikka for a second time, the charges say, Miller incidentally hits one of the other troopers on the scene.

The charges say the dog starts to bite Tikka while he’s on the ground and being tased while trying to get away from the dog. Woodruff gives the dog a bite command and Tikka is bitten multiple times while Miller tases him.

The documents say body camera footage also shows Miller raising his foot and bringing it down quickly near Tikka’s head, Tikka “bleeding profusely” from the face and head while rolling on the ground and Tikka telling troopers he can’t breathe.

A still image from the Kenai officer’s body camera footage shows Tikka on his back and bleeding from the face. To the left, Miller stands over Tikka, tasing him. To the right, Woodruff holds the K9 unit’s leash while the dog bites Tikka.

Charging documents say troopers requested emergency medical services after Tikka said he needed to go to the hospital. Another trooper who arrived on scene after the altercation rode with Tikka to the hospital and learned en route that the victim was Ben Tikka and not Garrett Tikka.

At the hospital, Ben Tikka was interviewed by troopers about his dog bites. Investigators later learned that Tikka underwent surgery after the incident and that he suffered a bite on his arm, a fractured scapula and lacerations on his arm and head.

Troopers later opened a criminal case against Tikka, in which he was charged with three counts of fourth-degree assault, disorderly conduct and resisting or interfering with arrest. That case was later dismissed by the Kenai District Attorney’s office.

While looking into the troopers’ use of force, the Alaska Bureau of Investigation found discrepancies between what Woodruff and Miller wrote in their reports of the incident and what was shown on body camera footage.

The report concludes that Miller and Woodruff’s use of force in the incident was “objectively unreasonable” and that “aspects of their reports are inaccurate and contain omissions.”

Miller is a 14-year veteran of the department and most recently served as a night shift supervisor. Woodruff has been with the department for 16 years and most recently worked as a K-9 officer. Cockrell said both officers are on administrative leave, but said he could not say whether that leave is paid. The police dog is not currently in service.

Deputy Attorney General John Skidmore said in his 25 years of working at the Department of Law, he’s seen charges associated with excessive use of force brought one time, against a police officer in Bethel.

Cockrell said the department is reviewing some of Miller and Woodruff’s previous cases as a result of their conduct in the May 24 incident.

He said it was an “unfortunate day” for the agency and that he hopes Alaskans will continue to put their trust in troopers.

“It’s hard for me to equate how this has affected me and other troopers that wear this uniform,” he said.

Woodruff and Miller are scheduled to be arraigned at the Kenai Courthouse on Sept. 10.