Assembly Quality Municipal Services Ethics and Elections Committee Meeting - August 27, 2025
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Assembly Quality Municipal Services Ethics and Elections Committee Meeting - August 27, 2025
The Assembly Quality Municipal Services Ethics and Elections Committee met on Wednesday, August 27, 2025, from 12:00 to 1:00 PM at City Hall, Room 155, to discuss two agenda items: an overview of AO 2025-91 concerning public notice requirements, and a presentation on language access in elections. No members of the public provided testimony.
Discussion Items
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AO 2025-91 – Public Notice Ordinance Overview
The Municipal Clerk and staff presented a comprehensive overview of AO 2025-91, a three-year effort to standardize public notice requirements across all municipal boards and commissions. The ordinance applies best practices from Title II to Title I, aligning with the Open Meetings Act. Key points included:- New definitions for agenda, emergency special meeting, executive session, minutes, municipal body, and public notice.
- Staff duties to ensure public notice on the website and event calendar (7 days for regular meetings, 24 hours for special meetings, 48 hours for work sessions).
- Emergency special meetings (primarily for emergency declaration extensions) now require an attempt to provide notice prior to the meeting, rather than no notice.
- Work session recordings will be retained for 10 years (instead of permanently) to avoid excessive conversion costs.
- The ordinance was reviewed by the Anchorage School District’s board secretary and attorney; the full school board was not specifically briefed.
- The ordinance is scheduled for assembly action on September 9, 2025, with a planned rollout of training and implementation by January 1, 2026. Estimated cost for new recorders across all commissions is about $3,500.
- Committee members asked about emergency special meeting terminology and the treatment of Girdwood Board of Supervisors when acting as a community council (not subject to 1.25 when no service area business is transacted).
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Language Access and Elections Presentation
Election Administrator Liz Edwards and Deputy Administrator Amy Solberg presented on language access provided via Language Link, a telephonic interpretation service used since at least the 2021 regular election. Key points:- Federal law requires language assistance if >5% of voting population is limited English proficient (LEP); Anchorage does not meet that threshold but provides the service as a courtesy.
- Top languages served include Tagalog, Spanish, Hmong, Korean, and Pacific Island languages; over 100 languages are spoken in the Anchorage School District.
- Voters point to a language poster at vote centers; workers call Language Link (cost <$7 per call, about once per election).
- Voters may also bring a friend/family member as an assistant, who signs an affidavit; these are tracked in assistant logs.
- No voter data or confidential information is collected through Language Link.
- Committee members asked about data on usage (only once per election at City Hall, Spanish), security, and whether a broader review of language access by Amy Kaufman had included elections (it had not—only a general presentation attended by staff).
Key Outcomes
- No formal votes were taken; both items were informational only.
- AO 2025-91 is set for assembly action on September 9, 2025.
- The committee will continue to explore language access in elections, with interest in obtaining data on the number of language-related assistant affidavits.
Meeting Transcript
Get us started. Um I know that we are competing with one of the luncheons, the lunch and learns for the 50th anniversary upstairs. So thanks everyone for coming here. Um so I'll go ahead and call this um actually let me double check. Are we good to go on recording and everything? Fantastic. I'll go ahead and call this assembly quality municipal services ethics and elections committee meeting to order. We are noticed today, Wednesday, August 27th from 12 to 1 p.m. here at City Hall, room 155. Let's go ahead and do introductions of assembly members. We'll start in the room and then go to the phone. George Martinez, Felix Sivera, and then on the phone, we have Member Brawley. Hello. Thank you. And then Member Johnson. I'm here. Wonderful. Thank you. All right. So we just have two items on our agenda today. So I don't imagine we'll be using the full hour that we have. Um we're gonna have an overview of AO 2025-91 dealing with public notice, and then we'll have a discussion around language access and elections. So let's go ahead and start with uh AO91, and I will turn it over to the clerk. Thank you. So this ordinance, well, first of all, I'm gonna say that Barbara Jones is very sad that she couldn't be here. Barbara has been working on this with me since 2023. Um we started it, she retired. I was gonna carry the carry the candle on it, and um it and then we keep having an election in between, and so then I have to pause it, and then I start it again and then deposit again. So um when Barbara came back back on as deputy chief of staff, the mayor um let her work with uh Dean and I to finish it up. So um it's been a labor of love, and here we are finally. Um, and we're excited to be here. Um so I'm also gonna bring back this concept of a crosswalk. We used to make crosswalks to explain um the different sections of codes and um where the changes are. So um on your page of the ordinance, starting on page two, uh, in the definitions is where we'll start. Actually, I want to start by saying that um what I think the basis of this ordinance does is takes the best practices from the clerk's office in Title II and applies them into Title One for all boards and commissions. Um and it keeps us in line with open meetings act and ensuring that we're all boards and commissions are in compliance with open meetings act, and it's also beneficial for the public that we're all doing things the same way. Um and so they understand what they're getting. Um, so in the definition. Before you start, just want to note for the record that we've been joined by a member Baldwin Day. Thank you for joining us on the phone. And then for anyone on the phone, either members or members of the public, you can find the documents for this work session on the committee website. Thank you. Thanks. So in section one, starting on page two, um, is definitions. And I'm not gonna go into a bunch of definitions. We are adding a definitions for agenda, um, emergency special meeting, we're updating definitions for executive session. The criteria for executive sessions comes from open meetings act. Um updating definition for committee meeting, and then we're removing a couple of things. Um, this announcement that I was just talking to Amy, and we both worked here in 2014 and we didn't do these announcements back in 2014 either. So it's been a while since we've uh uh done an automatic replay of a reporting.
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