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The Anchorage Assembly heard testimony Friday from two of the four people it subpoenaed to discuss an election challenge filed earlier this year. It’s the first time the two — Sami Graham and Daniel Smith — have spoken publicly about the complaint, which has prompted concern among Assembly members about whether city officials are interfering with elections.

Graham, former chief of staff to Mayor Dave Bronson, told the Assembly she wasn’t trying to overturn the election results when she filed her complaint. Graham’s complaint cited an unvetted policy sent to her by the city’s IT director, Marc Dahl. The policy had to do with the use of USB drives to transfer election information, and Graham said she assumed it was a legitimate policy.

“I read the whole policy,” Graham said. “It was from the IT director. I took it at his word that that was the policy.”

Graham and her attorney both attended Friday’s meeting at City Hall, called by Assembly members who have said they need more information about what led up to her complaint. In a rare move earlier this month, the Assembly activated its subpoena powers to get answers.

Already, the city ombudsman has concluded that Dahl sent Graham the complaint to impact the election, and Dahl has since resigned. As an election observer, Graham filed her complaint on April 11, the same day that Dahl sent her the policy she cited.

Assembly Chair Chris Constant said the purpose of questioning Graham Friday was not to implicate her in a crime. It was so the Assembly could get information on how to better update its election laws.

“None of it is intended to be inquisitorial,” Constant said. “This is not called an investigation. It’s an inquiry as we move forward towards our Title 28 and other code changes.”

During the meeting, Graham’s attorney, Bill Ingaldson, emphasized that Graham wasn’t trying to change the results of the election.

“It never says anything in here about overturning the election, does it?” Ingaldson asked.

“Not at all,” Graham responded.

“And in fact, it actually is a recommendation that some sort of procedure, like it sounds like the Assembly is doing now be adopted to ensure the integrity of these thumb drives, right?” Ingaldson continued.

“Right,” Graham answered.

The Assembly also subpoenaed two other election observers who signed on to the complaint, as well as Dahl. One of the other observers, Daniel Smith, provided testimony, stating that he only heard of the IT policy through Graham.

“I was told by Miss Graham, she found it,” Smith said. “And therefore, had no reason to doubt it.”

Dahl and the other subpoenaed observer, John Henry, did not show up to Friday’s meeting. Their attorneys said they needed more time to prepare for the Assembly’s questions.

After the meeting, Constant said he looked forward to hearing more testimony surrounding the challenge. Elections are run through the city clerk’s office, which is meant to be nonpartisan. He said he’s concerned at the implication that a mayoral appointee, like Dahl, could impact an election.

“We have to figure out how to buffer and secure the elections from that kind of influence,” Constant said. ” And hopefully, you know, we never have this again, or in the next 10 years, we don’t see any repeat of this.”

He said he’s concerned that similar challenges have been levied across the country to sow doubt in the election process.

“This is a national campaign to create a lack of faith in our electoral processes,” Constant said. “From the presidency, and the run for the U.S. president right on down to local elections across the country. So I’m really glad we’re here looking closely at our policies to make sure that kind of abuse never happens again.”

He said the Assembly will likely hear testimony from the other people it subpoenaed in the near future.

Anchorage has joined a long list of organizations and local governments petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case that challenges a precedent on a key homelessness issue: when and how a city can clear camps.

Mayor Dave Bronson announced the move at a news conference on Tuesday.

“Last week, the Municipality of Anchorage at my direction joined the amicus brief … to ask the Supreme Court to nullify the Ninth Circuit Court ruling so cities can effectively address their homelessness crises,” Bronson said.

Amicus briefs are a way for third parties to formally weigh in on court cases. This particular case stems from Grants Pass, Oregon, trying to enforce a local ordinance dealing with homeless campers. The city was sued over it and lost. Grants Pass appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and lost.

That means the Ninth Circuit precedent set in a case called Martin v. Boise in 2018 is still the law in Alaska and eight other western states: It is unconstitutional to punish homeless people for camping in public spaces when they have nowhere else to go. There are some exceptions, but for Anchorage, that means the city can’t clear homeless camps if shelter spaces are full. Anchorage’s shelters have been full since the city shut down its winter emergency shelter in the Sullivan Arena in the spring.

In August, Grants Pass petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its case. A lot of amicus briefs in support have followed.

Meghan Barker with the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska said these briefs are a pretty common move.

“We don’t think it’s very significant,” she said. “Nothing, from our perspective, has changed.”

Barker said the ACLU maintains that the municipality has a legal and moral obligation to develop meaningful solutions to homelessness.

The amicus brief Anchorage joined argues that the Ninth Circuit’s decisions were “flawed in theory and unworkable in practice.” It says they force local governments to “build more shelter or surrender public spaces.”

Bronson has previously said that the Martin v. Boise decision created problems, but “was not that bad.” On political blogger Jeff Landfield’s podcast in July, Bronson said he wouldn’t fight it.

“I’m not gonna fight Martin versus Boise,” he said. “But I don’t think principally we ever want to get to the point where we punish people for being homeless. But we do need to compel them to do what’s best for them – and I don’t think that’s punishment, whatsoever – and get them into treatment.”

Anchorage officials are in the process of standing up the city’s winter shelter plan, which relies on reserving hundreds of hotel beds and paying some nonprofits to provide extra space. The city is also exploring setting up a temporary winter shelter. They hope to bring all of the elements online in October, clear camps and move Anchorage’s entire unsheltered population indoors.

Two bears climbed into a Krispy Kreme delivery van and spent about 20 minutes eating doughnuts and ripping apart packaging last Tuesday morning at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage.

The driver had left the van’s doors open while making a delivery to a gas station convenience store called JMM Express.

Store manager Shelly Deano says he won’t be leaving those doors open anymore.

Deano says it’s a lesson learned for the driver and store employees, who are used to seeing bears in the area.

Listen:

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Shelly Deano: Normally, we didn’t really think anything of it, until that day, when we saw the mama bear walked by the van. And it was in the morning, so it was dark. I tried to bend down to see where she was, because we have gas pumps out there and there were customers. And then all of a sudden I heard, like, movement in the van. Then I heard her breaking open the packages of doughnuts, and then the baby there followed suit. And they just started eating all the doughnuts. Not all of them, but about half of them. So we tried to get them out. We were banging on the van. No luck. They were probably in there for good, maybe, 20 minutes. We then had to call security police. They sounded off their loud sirens. Took them a few minutes to get out of the van, and then they just kind of lingered in front of the store for a little bit. But it took them a little bit, the security police, to get them to move on into the woods right by our building.

Casey Grove: Do you guys see bears out there pretty often?

Shelly Deano: Oh, yeah, we do. We have to take the garbage out three times a day. We close at midnight, so we do the last garbage takeout closer to midnight. We try to go in pairs if we can. But yeah, they usually frequent around here, because we’ve got woods on all sides of us. And apparently they know where to come.

Casey Grove: Yeah, I was wondering, I mean, when you saw the first bear, the mama bear, and then kind of realized it was in the van, were you worried or were you surprised? Or what?

Shelly Deano: I was, I don’t know if I was surprised. I was more worried about customers taking pictures from so close to the van. And so I had to go out there and say, “You guys need to be careful.” And then I proceeded to go out there and take pictures. But she wasn’t paying attention. She was just eating the doughnuts. It’s like she didn’t care. And so I wasn’t really worried. It was amusing, is what it was.

Casey Grove: Hard to blame them though, right? I mean…

Shelly Deano: Yeah.

Casey Grove: So I called the, you know, base public affairs folks to ask them about this. The woman there kind of chuckled for a second, but she didn’t really think it was quite as funny as I think like the rest of us do.

Shelly Deano: Yeah.

Casey Grove: Did they convey to you, or did the base convey to you that, you know, they don’t want the Krispy Kreme truck doors left open or anything like that?

Shelly Deano: No, but I mean, Krispy Kreme has taken measures, and we’ve also told them the doors need to be closed, obviously. And now he’s gonna start delivering in the back of our store. He usually delivers out front, because it’s easier for him. But he’s gonna go to the back from now on. And he has since started closing his doors, because we just, we never thought about it, honestly, before. You always think of bears and garbage, and always make sure your garbage is taken out, make sure garbage is put inside your house or anything like that. But never did I think about closing the van doors. I didn’t think about that, honestly.

Casey Grove: Yeah. Well, there’s a first time for everything, right?

Shelly Deano: Yeah.

Casey Grove: It sounds like you’ve gotten a few phone calls from people like me that are are interested in it. Who all have you heard from?

Shelly Deano: So NBC and CBS. Of course, our local news, Alaska’s News Source. It’s aired on CNN. I got a phone call yesterday from someone in the UK. And then I got the Washington Post last night. It’s in the Seattle Times. Someone from the Associated Press, and, you know, Insider
Edition I want to say.

Casey Grove: Oh, Inside Edition.

Shelly Deano: Yeah. So, and then, of course, you, and then our own, we have a thing called the Exchange Post just within our company. So that was today also. So it just keeps going viral.

Casey Grove: Yeah. I guess I’m the last one to call then. Maybe I’m not doing a very good job here.

Shelly Deano: It’s OK, you’re the second phone call today. I was like, “Oh, I’m still getting phone calls.”

Casey Grove: Maybe it’ll, it’ll quiet down for you soon.

Shelly Deano: Yeah, I’m sure.

In a statement, JBER public affairs officials said, “Wildlife may be our neighbor, but they should not be attracted to our human food sources. Please use caution when storing or disposing of food to ensure you are protecting our wildlife and yourselves.”

The Matanuska-Susitna Borough has declared a local disaster for Talkeetna after high water caused rapid erosion in the community.

According to a statement by the borough Tuesday morning, the disaster declaration allows access to emergency funding as well as support from state and federal agencies. It also allows for emergency response plans to be carried out.

Downtown Talkeetna lies at the confluence of the Susitna, Chulitna and Talkeetna rivers. Multiple days of heavy rain resulted in high water throughout the Northern Susitna Valley earlier this month.

That high water event destroyed over 300 feet of the rock revetment near the end of Talkeetna’s Main Street, meant to stabilize and protect the riverbank from erosion. In less than a day, the riverbank was eroded back more than 60 feet, threatening some cabins near the river.

Last Friday, the borough authorized transporting 900 tons of rock to the end of Main Street to stage for future repairs. Staff from the borough’s public works department and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have visited the site multiple times since last week.

According to borough spokesman Stefan Hinman, the public works department and the Army Corps of Engineers are working on both immediate protective measures and long-term repairs.

A rare double glacial dam release into the Kenai River is causing high water levels and flood risks on the Kenai Peninsula.

Two glaciers — the Snow and Skilak — are releasing large amounts of water at once, which is flowing downstream into the Kenai. The phenomenon is a glacial dam release, which can happen after part of a glacier melts, leaving behind a seasonal lake where ice used to be.

“And that is dammed up by the main glacier. Every couple years, when that gets full, it releases. It’s enough of what we call hydrostatic pressure that it can force its way under the glacier, and then it will all flow out within a couple of days,” said Kyle Van Peursem, a forecaster at the Alaska Pacific River Forecast Center in Anchorage.

Usually, these two glacial lakes release every two or three years, but two at the same time is unprecedented.

“It’s pretty rare that those go in the same year, even more rare that they go within a few days of each other,” he said.

It’s also unexpected, because the Snow Glacier Lake also released last year. Van Peursem said there’s no good explanation for why that’s occurring.

He said the Snow Glacier lake began releasing water Wednesday into the Snow River and down to Kenai Lake. Skilak Glacier Lake started releasing on Thursday, sending water into Skilak Lake and ultimately down the Kenai River.

The low-lying Kenai Keys area in eastern Sterling is at the biggest risk for flooding.

“They’re already seeing some pretty high water in the Kenai Keys. Our observer there is giving us observations, saying the canals in the Keys are completely full, and the roads are about to be inundated overtop by water,” he said.

A glacial dam release is the same type of event that caused major flooding and damage in Juneau in early August. But Van Peursem says the Juneau release was a 1,000 year event — this double release on the Kenai may be unprecedented, but it’s not expected to bring that level of destruction.

Van Peursem said the peak threat will be tomorrow, but a warning remains in place through next weekend. He advised boaters not to create a wake through those high water areas, where it would cause even worse flooding for riverside residents.

A military jet intercepted a small civilian plane over Anchorage Monday, after it entered restricted airspace during President Joe Biden’s visit.

An F-16 fighter jet launched flares to get the pilot’s attention shortly before noon, according to the North American Aerospace Defense Command. Soon afterward, Biden spoke at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson to mark 22 years since the 9/11 terror attacks as he returned from a diplomatic trip to Asia.

The Anchorage Daily News reported Anchorage residents described the small civilian plane as a Piper PA-18 Super Cub that appeared to have tundra tires. NORAD said the plane was escorted to a nearby airport.

A NORAD spokesperson, Canadian Army Capt. Alexandra Hejduk, said Tuesday morning that two jets intercepted the plane. Both were based at Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, but were flying over Anchorage on Monday to enforce temporary flight restrictions during Biden’s visit.

Hejduk said that pilots are responsible for reading notices to airmen, or NOTAMs, informing them of restrictions like the ones in place Monday. But Bush pilots can sometimes miss them.

She called Monday’s intercept a teaching moment for pilots to “remember and to read their NOTAMs, and to pass it on to their friends and colleagues, especially if they’re out in the Bush hunting or fishing.”

Few additional details were available by Tuesday morning about the plane or the pilot.

Hejduk deferred questions about the intercepted plane to the Federal Aviation Administration. FAA officials referred questions to the U.S. Secret Service, which didn’t immediately respond to a Tuesday request for comment.