Running

Hello and welcome again to running 2000 the Anchorage municipal election I'm Robert Hawke and tonight we're going to get to know a crowd of people who are hoping to be the next mayor of Anchorage. The mayor's job is a three year term and there is no incumbent current mayor Rick Meister Mr. served two terms and under law cannot run for a third consecutive term. 10 new mayoral candidates are on the ballot for next Tuesday. And we have invited them all to appear on our forum tonight as on previous programs we are simulcast doing this live broadcast on KSK FM ninety one point one anguage Public Radio and all of the candidates on the ballot have joined us tonight in the studio. They are in alphabetical order. Mark Begich Bob Bell Dave Donnelly. Jack Frost Rita hall Grace Jones John Kerry Jr. Pete caught Teresa Overmeyer and George works. That's a lot of candidates. And then we're going to review the ground rules for our forum time limits here will be strictly enforced tonight but what candidates will have a one minute opening statement and during all

your responses when you have 10 seconds left you will see a light on top of the camera that's facing you. And when you're out of time you will hear the sound and we will go into a candidate round of questions you'll be given the opportunity to select one of your opponents and ask that upon the question framed the question in 30 seconds your opponent has a minute to answer. Here we have a minute for a rebuttal. And your opponent gets a 30 second final response as time allows we'll go through two or three of those rounds. And following that if time allows again I will ask a general question of all the candidates and I will ask the same question to all of you and will speak in rotating order will begin alphabetically so that gets us going work very good your first up where we go alphabetically Let's go around. Thank you very much Robert. Thank you to the viewers for allowing us this opportunity. I'm excited about this campaign. Anchorage is a great city. There's incredible opportunities ahead of us. Tonight I get to share with you a few my hopes and dreams about our city. I believe Anchorage can develop an economy not only locally but globally. I believe we

can be the safest city in America. I also believe we can protect the unique quality of life that we have here and provide the quality education that our kids deserve. Anchorage is unique. Its people make it unique. I look forward to working with people throughout this city listening to their ideas. Bringing them together and working on the ideas and the future of our city tonight will be an opportunity for you to see those ideas. I'm excited and I hope you are too. Thank you very much for this opportunity. Mark Megat show. Next up Bob Bell opening statement. Good evening. I'm Bob Bell. Before I start I'd like you to get a pencil and paper and write this down. Mayor Bob dot org. That's my Web site. And you can go to that site and get position papers on most of the issues that we're covering tonight and have covered during this campaign. I'm a 30 year resident of Anchorage 26 of those years I've run my own engineering firm here in town. I've also served six years in the municipal assembly. I think that's very important to have experience not only in the private sector but in the public sector. So American

know how things work on both sides of the table. All of my kids and all my grandkids live in Anchorage. That's one of the reasons I'm running for mayor. I think it's very important to have this city be all can be for them and for your families. While I was on the assembly I was the one that took on the tough issues and I think elected officials should do that. My big issue comes up rather than duck. You need to take it on. I think that's kind of where you need with the experience and the courage to take on the issues. Thank you Bob. Well they've done it. Next up in Anchorage is my hometown. I was born here. I've lived here my entire life. I'm running for mayor because I believe I offer a clear vision for the future of our community. Together with the experience to meet the challenges before us. I've been a strong advocate for Anchorage all my 13 years as an anchorage legislator and I have the voting record to prove it. I'm a fiscal conservative with a strong record of protecting the Permanent Fund reducing government spending and imposing new taxes. As mayor I work for excellent schools better roads better snow removal

and pay equity for women. I will cut spending and reduce property taxes and I will fix the traffic mess at Lake Otis and tooter for lots more. My vision for the future of Anchorage. Visit my Web site at Dave Donley dot net Right. Thanks Dave Donnelly. Jack Frost take a minute introduce yourself. Hi I'm Jack Frost. I've lived in Anchorage for 24 years. This is the first time I've ever run for any political office. There are three things that want you to remember about our campaign. Number one we need to lower the property tax. Property tax is too high. I have a plan to reduce the property taxes by two million a year for four years that would get us down to the 10 mil area. I think that's a better plan and a better idea than the precipitous loss of revenue that would occur that would occur under the 10 mil tax cap. Secondly I would oppose any new taxes sales tax or any of the kind of tax because we don't need the money. If we do the third thing that I want you to remember and that is to use competition as a lever to lower the cost of government. That's what happened all across the United States cities like

Indianapolis and Phoenix and San Diego and Fresno Chicago Cleveland cities all over the country have found that that's a very effective way using competition in a culture of competition to lower our costs. Remember those three things we'll talk about it tonight. All right thanks Jack. JACK FROST. Read the whole nextstep introductory introductory state around my wish for my campaign is based on a wish for the citizens of Anchorage and that wishes may the millennium bring the citizens of Anchorage peace compassion truth and a chance to work together towards achieving accountability responsibility and integrity in government. I have that wish because I've worked in government for over 20 years and I believe that we are lacking integrity in government and that we need to change that and get government back to the people that people need a choice in what goes on in their government and how that occurs and that has to be done by giving the voice back to the people where government listens to them. I believe that the mayor's office should be

administrative rather than political. And in the past it has been very politicized with public or private agendas going forth and the people not being listened to. As mayor I want to serve the people. Thank you. Thanks. Reed hall Grace Jones. We'll take a minute and introduce yourself to us. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Grace Jones. The reason I'm running for mayor here in Anchorage is basically we need to open the doors of government for too long the citizens of Anchorage have had a bad taste in their mouth in regard to how government gives them access to how their tax dollars are being spent where their bond funds are going and how they're being spent on these projects. Also education is a major problem that we have in the city of Anchorage along with economic economic development and our general infrastructure. As mayor I would start with my own administrative department and work down. I would spend my first 12 months working with every department here in the municipality finding ways to increase work

productivity open channels of communication and reduce costs in the city. After that we could look at public private competition. I feel it is important for the citizens of Anchorage to elevate the community spirit in the way that we can do that is by allowing you access to the information you deserve. Thank you. Thanks. John Kerr Jr. my friend you're right. Go ahead in. Thank you. Thank you Robert. Good evening to all who are viewing or listening to this broadcast I decided to run for mayor back at the end of January after a lot of prayerful consideration because I felt that the mayor should be a public servant rather than a politician. I feel that our founding fathers of this great country did not envision our career politicians nor the great financial expanse of our current political campaigns. That's why I'm funding this campaign on my own because I have become more fiscally frugal over the last 20 10 years of

my life and I think I can bring that first fiscal frugal to the city and make the necessary cuts in view of the possible passage of the tax gap initiative in November. I just wish that all of the voters in Anchorage would vote on Tuesday because I believe that's their civic responsibility. Thank you. Thanks. John Kerry Jr.. Pete got one minute over. Thank you. I'm Pete caught acreage does in fact have an exciting future ahead of us as your mayor. I have the experience the leadership and the ability to take us there experience leadership and ability some more than that. I've got a vision for anchorages future involves five different areas. Number one involves free market approach to the delivery of services through that's known as manage competition. It's allowing the private sector to bid for those services. The municipality currently provides for it also involves safe streets. I believe there's nothing more important that government can provide for in safe

streets that involves expansion of community policing and implementing a program in the domestic violence arena. I also believe that we should empower neighborhoods. C. Hall can't do everything. And I believe we need to empower city councils to do what they can. I believe also we need to establish a robust economy and accessible and open form of government. And as your mayor you can count on me. Thanks pecan trees Overmeyer. One minute please. Yes. Thank you so much for having me Mr. Hall. Teresa Overmeyer ladies and gentlemen. Why am I running for mayor of Anchorage. Well I've spent quite a bit of time now with the people that I am running against. And I thought a lot about it. Ladies and gentlemen and you see if I'm elected mayor I will be making a salary. That's all I want. Ladies and gentlemen I am not somebody that is really already bought and paid for because what

yourselves and the contributions of the people that are running for mayor you see it is so worrisome to me. I live in a small town and I would like for this to be a nice place to raise children. That is good for business it's good for all of us. I simply am positive that I can set a better example than exists currently in our municipal government. Okay thanks. Trees Overmeyer. George works you wrap up this round of opening statements. Ladies and gentlemen thank you for tuning into this program tonight you're going to hear a lot about promises and qualifications. Let me tell you about my my first career was in the Marines served 21 years and after two tours in Vietnam ran a construction organization of over 600 people doing jobs throughout the Atlantic. My second career was in business and I helped create the largest engineering company here in Alaska. And I've been an active volunteer and community and civic organizations throughout the city.

I'm well prepared to be your mayor. I believe in less government lower taxes holding the line on spending and living within our means. Ladies and gentlemen that means more money in your pockets and that of your neighbors It means better jobs a robust economy and better neighborhoods. Tonight is this this forum unfolds. Ask yourself one question. When you hear a promise. Look for the experience to carry it out. I have that experience. If you elect me Mayor by George I'll do the job. Thanks George works. That brings us to the next segment in our program with the candidate rounds of questions as we outlined earlier. You have an opportunity to ask one of your opponents a one question and we'll try to do three rounds of these. Limited to one subject please frame your question in 30 seconds. Report has one minute to answer and you have one minute rebuttal and a 30 second final response from your POV from your post from

yourself. So we'll begin with Bob Bell. It goes back to where I always say Bob Bell you get you've got the drift Bob Bell you're starting off on this round. Go ahead pick up an opponent and ask a question. Sure I've got a question for my friend Jack Frost here. He just stated that it's his intent as mayor to lower the mil rate to Mills a year. But the fact is that only the assembly can set the mill rate. The mayor can't. So my question is Jack is it that you don't understand the basic structure of municipal government or are you just engaging in political speak. Bob Bell Jack Frost going up. Well that's an interesting choice. I don't think either one of those things is what I'm doing but as a matter of fact I believe that the threat of the 10 mil tax cap is going to get the assembly and the mayor and the school board and everybody very interested in reducing the amount of money that they need to spend in reducing the cost of government. We're going to have to do that at the 10 mil tax camp passes. I think we need to do it anyway because I think we have. Our taxes are too high currently. And so I believe it's going to be very important to the

people in the assembly etc. It will definitely be looking for ways to lower our costs. And when they look at the story of competition and how it's worked across the United States to help you lower costs without losing services in fact actually increasing the quality of services. I think the assembly will be very interested. I believe we can do that the first year and when they see the results of the first year I believe the assembly which really in my opinion wants to do the right thing and wants to lower costs when they see how that works. I believe they'll be very cooperative indeed. Jack Frost Bob Bell rebuttal. You have to admire the straightforward way that Mr. Frost evaded that question. The question was did he understand that the mill rate is set by the assembly and not by the mayor because he's making a claim that as mayor he's going to lower the rate and that's the question I'd appreciate it if you'd answered Jack. Go ahead it now I think I answered a question Bob I think you have to work with the assembly.

Obviously the assembly has the right to say whatever they want to say about the right to do whatever they want to do. But it is the job of the mayor to lead. And I believe that I that I can lead the assembly to understand the power of competition and what it will do and I believe that working together we will reduce the Mildred. I'm telling you what I stand for Bob I stand for lowering the mill rate and I believe we can do that. OK thanks Jack Frost. And we will move along. Dave Donnelly your next up on truth. Mr. Benguet when asked about your record you have accused other candidates of negative campaigning. But your last campaign for mayor was one of the most negative campaigns in Anchorage history. He even called Mayor my from a liar. But there are important issues. The 18 to sail photo radar you personally proposing new taxes increased city spending. How can it possibly be unfair to discuss these huge inconsistencies in what you say now versus your public record. Donnelly Mark mega-chain one minute response. Dave thinks that tonight is probably the first time that people will be able to discuss the records of each person

including yourself. I have no problem in discussing and standing on the record that I have. I have a record of helping young people in this community. I have a record of dealing with city budgets not one year but nine years running have a record of helping turnaround the student loan corporation that led basically the legislature drove it into bankruptcy. I have a long record of issues. I'm more than happy discuss and I'm proud of my record. The people who support me are proud of where I stand. A lot of issues so I'm looking forward to a day. Mark Megahed Steve Dowling a rebuttal. Mark during your time on the assembly the people of Anchorage look to you for leadership but you failed them. Let me recap. You ran the most dirty negative name calling campaign in Anchorage history. You continue to dodge responsibility for the fiasco when the truth is voters followed your plan to create an authority that the city lost hundreds and millions of dollars off. You claim to now oppose new taxes but you actually sponsored a new sales tax proposal while you were on the assembly's city spending went up 18 percent. But now you promise you'll cut spending. He also fought for your photo

radar program to the bitter end. You claim to be a Rhodes supporter but you opposed solving the problem that Lakotas in tutor. It's no wonder you don't want to talk about your record. You're not running on your record. You're running from it. Dave Donnelly Mark Begich a finalist. Dave it's amazing because you have been in politics so long you like to weave all these things there. Let me be very clear on several of those. First off you the public decided 56 percent of the people decided to put that into authority it the job of this and that to run it. We did it. It returned $130 million back to the taxpayers through dividends. It also produced over $40 billion in rate savings through its residential rate. A variety of things. I'm not running from my record. I'd be happy to discuss every single one of those photo radar was one the community did not appreciate it did not like but it was the right thing at that time the community wanted it. In neighborhoods that protected children but it did not get implemented the proper way. I think Mark Begich will be long. Jack Frost your turn for the candidate questions. Major Robert I want to ask Pete got a question. Pete you and I agree on many aspects of what our city

needs in the new century. We both agree we need to reduce property taxes. But you believe the 10 mil tax gap should pass. So tell us why you support the federal tax gap and how you would meet the loss of the 73 million dollars the tax gap would cost us. We got one minute. Thank you Jack for the question. I think the first part of that is why I support it and that's because I've been out talking to the public. And basically what I'm hearing is the public is supportive and they're rallying around this. They're basically telling me that government has not listened to them. So this is a mechanism this initiative process is and is a mechanism for them to get government to listen to them now to mitigate the revenue loss. I believe if we implement managed competition across the board in those service areas in which the municipality certainly is clearly providing those service services to date with a few exceptions I believe we can save anywhere from 15 to 24 million dollars in those cases in which cities across America have implemented managed competition. We have found that the cost of that

delivery of service has gone down. And clearly the public has been more appreciative of service that they've received a one minute rebuttal. Jack Frost Well I would agree with my friend Pete the marriage competition will produce maybe 15 to 25 million dollars worth of savings. But the 10 mil tax cap would cost us somewhere around 73 million dollars if we include what we're giving to the school district now. I'm uncomfortable in just cutting out the school district and say we've only got a 40 million dollar problem. We really have a $73 billion problem. I don't see how we get better schools or we cut 33 million dollars out of education. I believe that we need a plan to get to the 10 mil level. I support the idea of the tax gap but I support doing it in an organized intelligent plan. I think we can do it over four years at two mills a year. I believe we can get the assembly to support that Bob and. And if he'll do it that way I think we have a much better opportunity to make that 10 mil tax gap happen without losing critical services and

without making real problems for our economy. Jack Frost Peacock final response. I think Jack certainly that's that's a viable goal. However I don't think we have that luxury. We are faced with a 10 mil tax cap. We have to adjust accordingly. I think the first thing that we need to do as the new mayor takes over office is to put on a hiring freeze and we can start the implementation of managed competition and obviously if that don't get us all the way there we have a generous amount of revenue from a municipal trust fund. I think we may have to draw upon those earnings are available and they will get us over the hump that first year things be cut. It takes us down the list Read-Along. They can run and ask a question Bob Well I'd like to ask you a question you probably know what it's going to be of when you are on the assembly. There was a golf course leasing Birdwood that came up and the heritage land bank based on a community input changed the original lease amount for seven thousand dollars an acre to sell land and hardwood to fair market value which was in accordance with

the law and after public testimony which was highly in favor of that being fair market value you changed it to seven thousand dollars an acre. Why and would you do it again. Bob Bell Absolutely. Actually the public testimony was more in favor of the seven thousand then it wasn't. The requirement was that whoever wanted to buy that land at seven thousand dollars an acre had to first invest $10 million in a golf course on city property. So that affected the price. Actually when they did an appraisal on the land earlier it came in I think forty seven hundred dollars an acre based on half and spent 10 million dollars. First before I could buy the first taker. So I thought $7000 was a pretty good deal. Still do. Thanks Paul. Well I'll read the whole rebuttal. Yes and he performed that appraised the appraisal at the municipality which was probably biased and you didn't abide by the law which said fair market value. It's unfair to the citizens to sell land just

because somebody puts up five million dollars pro-development Mr. Bell. That's ridiculous. I mean fair market value is fair market value and that's what the land should be sell sold for anywhere. Or maybe you'd like to sell me an acre for seven thousand dollars an acre. I'd like that. Reed hall Bob Bell final response. No problem really. You put up the first 10 million I'll sell you the first taker for seven thousand. The fact is that it was appraised by a professional appraiser. I'm an engineer not an appraiser. He said it was worth less than what we were asking for it. I thought it was a good deal for the city. It was a good deal for Girdwood and I still do believe that Bob Bell raised Jones up by choosing the phone. Thank you Mark. I'd like to ask you a question about fundraisers that you have with the certain unions here in the municipality to represent you and your campaign. And the question I have is do you feel that by having this type of representation through the unions in this community that the Anchorage citizens and their interests when negotiating with local unions

will have fair representation by you when negotiating with those unions. Raise that question. Absolutely. I think everyone's going to be at the table and you can rest assured I'm going to be very fair about it. The bottom line is I have over eighteen hundred contributors to my campaign from all over the city from business people to retired people to folks that are just housewives to everything you can imagine supports my campaign. I'm very proud of that fact. The reality is I don't question other people and how they raise money I don't question. Representative cotton how much money you receive from one company or my friend Dear Senator Dave Donlin how much money you receive from a lobbyist or even Jack and how much money he's personally put into his campaign. I don't think that's what we need to look at. What we need to look at is the broad support that someone has. I'm proud of the support that I have for my campaign. I'm excited about it when it comes down to negotiations. We will have hard negotiations. I've dealt with unions. I've been able to extract $3.1 billion from them through contract negotiation when Tom Frank was mayor. I also was able to help create the fire

department paramedics do cross-train which save this city 30 to 40 percent on their delivery of services. I also wrote the first Labor policy along with a few other assembly members to give guidance to how we now have a shorter lead time and other programs with their employees who work because race Jones for rebuttal. MALE That's great Marc. You know having a broad base campaign is a great idea but also opening the doors of government and speaking honestly to your constituents in regard to your platform and stating that these people everybody in this union supports your cause is not right. And I think that it's unfair for you to just go in and arbitrarily say that you know we're going to do this as far as you know your donations. I believe that when you're supported by unions and the majority the citizens don't understand the truth in regard to your fund raising that you're not being honest with the people that are supporting you Mark and what we need to do here is remove the bad taste that we have here and elevate the community spirit by being honest about where our money comes from. Go ahead and raise your own it's you know I take a little personal insult at you and

insult my integrity to be very frank with you. Everybody knows by the APRC reports we file. Everyone knows where we get our money. Less than 1 percent of my money comes from organized labor in the form of political action committees. I am amazed and somewhat shocked that you would impugn my integrity and the reality is I am happy to tell everybody out there where my support comes from because I'm proud of 8500 people that have looked in my campaign and said This is the future they're willing to invest in. They believe in what I have to say and I'm proud of that fact. Work begins to exist. John Kerry JR choose an opponent. Ask Mr. baggage mark. There are a number of Bond propositions on the ballot on Tuesday. Do you believe it does sound fiscal management to continue to mortgage anchorages future to pay for projects for which past assemblies and administrations did not set aside funds. Please explain your answer. John thank you very much for the question. I don't know if there is a meeting that someone had this before this tonight's meeting that is going to gang up on but that's OK. Right I got alligator skin and sense of humor.

I'm ready for the questions. First off the bond questions we retire between 40 and 50 million dollars for the bonds this year. Several projects were behind the fall and there's no question about it. That's not necessarily because of poor planning because we've had incredible growth in our community the last several years. Now the reality when I was on this Embley I was the one that brought forward a plan to do maintenance reserve for our buildings. It was supported by the assembly it passed by the Assembly. We put millions of dollars in making sure our buildings in fall down fall down because we didn't repair them. So I have done some actions to prepare for the future just like I do in my part of my business. We set money aside so we don't have to worry about those big capital expenses in the future. So I think the items that are on the agenda that you see on the bonds are because this city is growing and growing in the right direction and the people need the services and they need to supply them with the infrastructure necessary for its growth. They don't care for a rebuttal. Thank you for your answer Mark. But don't you believe that the city trust fund could be used for some of these projects rather than you know essentially mortgaging

our future. Go ahead. OK. Ashley not John I tell you why. Because a trust fund earns not 9 percent. I know Reverend katas talk about 13 percent this last quarter. A very aggressive interest earnings on our fund. We can borrow money between 4 and 6 percent. It's cheaper to borrow money and we'll save taxpayers when we develop that trust fund. I actually asked that question and our bond people said it would be foolish to do that because it would waste taxpayers money when we can earn a higher rate. Bring that money in that trust fund. And so the reality is we are making money for the taxpayers by doing it this way. Right. You're up to bat. Thank you Mark. This one is not for you. George the other night on Channel 2 You seem to indicate that any further reductions by the legislature in municipal assistance and revenue sharing would have a direct correlation to increased property taxes as mayor then would you support increasing property taxes if there were further cuts and municipal revenue sharing could be cut.

George wanted to go ahead. No Pete I promised to hold the line on taxes and will no matter what. And the issue of property taxes is the sensitive issue. Now let's talk about this correlation between the reduction in revenue sharing from the legislature and the increase in property tax because it's an exact mirror image city funding for 10 years has been flat. There have been no increases but everyone at home knows their taxes are going up. You plot the increase in your taxes against the decreases in revenue sharing and there are mirror image when revenue sharing goes down. Your taxes have gone up. City spending stays flat. I think that's a pretty simple equation. Pete. Peacock for rebuttal. Thank you. It's interesting to note as as legislature has cut municipal assistance and revenue sharing that we've also increased to school budget by fourfold. But in my mind there shouldn't be a correlation between the reduction in revenue sharing and

the increase in property taxes. On the one hand you have revenue on the other hand you have reductions. And I think the city and the assembly have failed in their leadership capacity to address the other side of the equation. I certainly believe that there are services that can be reduced rather than put all burden on the shoulders of property tax payers. I just think that is patently wrong and there needs to be some some corrections to that just because we cut municipal revenue sharing does not equate to property tax increases. That's just patently wrong. George worked where we continue to disagree. What we need to talk about holding the line on property taxes and that part we do agree. All right thanks. That brings to trees Oberammergau help desk. Mr. Haug I'm having a difficult time framing a question because I want the viewing audience to think about public office ladies and gentlemen and you see in my case I

look at all these people that are either currently holding public office or health held public office. My husband and I have been riding. Since 1991 60 copies all flights are all loving copies the assembly seven copies of school work. No one does anything but I have to say Mr. Hart I'm going to start by picking on more easily one more what it means to you. That's right. That's your version of that was your question. You took your 30 seconds didn't form a question. OK. Now that is the expression that people are investing their future in him by saying you know why have I not gotten any contributions. Mark thank you for the question Teresa. I don't know why you haven't got any contributions. I can't answer that question. I can only tell you that there is a lot of folks out there that believe in my

vision of where this city needs to go. Growing this economy in a new way building this city and making sure that we have a quality education that our young kids deserve. They also see that I want to make sure that we have a quality of life that we all enjoy. I can't answer the question for you about your campaign. I can only ask it answered about mine. I am proud to say of how many people have supported me and I'm excited that they want to be part of a city that has a future far beyond what we can ever imagine. I'm excited about this future. I'm excited about this city came following format through overwork. Yes of course Mark I simply want to go back with you and Bob to when that time you were cheering somewhat. Bob was laughing in my face. Bob Crystal was posting armed guards all over the building because I believe in the open meetings. And I asked him and the lawyers to vote. Why didn't you do anything as the chair of the assembly. Bob why did you laugh in my face.

Teresa you know when you came in front of the Assembly I always respected your views gave you the opportunity to talk which I always did what the school board did and does allowing you to talk in front of the school what I think was wrong. I've said this to you before. These are public forums. People have the opportunity to voice their opinion on anything. I can tell you as chair of the Assembly we had a lot of different ideas come in front of us. And I think that's the greatest part of our democracy that we live in. So Teresa I don't have a problem with you coming in front of assembly when I was chair to express your views and your concerns about school budget attorneys about anything. I was happy to have you have you there. Thanks Mark Megat George work here. Thank you Robert. I have a question from Mark Bache. Mark during this campaign and these various forums and whatnot we've heard you say on several occasions that you've promised not to cut public safety police fire and E-M as you promised not to cut funding for streets and snow removal and you promised not to cut education. How do you reconcile those promises with the voters concern for reducing taxes. Mark thank you.

I think there's a lot of things we can do and I agree with you that the voters have given us a signal in regards to the 10 percent or 10 mil cap and that is they want to see lower taxes but they also I believe want to make sure our basic services are protected. We need to do the business different of the city. I've told people that I want to impose a hiring freeze. I want to freeze all critical purchases or non-critical purchases for equipment. I want to look at the way we do the business the city that I've done in a variety of ways. When we did the mountain view community center we did the business different. It used to be a city run oper facility. Now it's a private company that runs it basically boys and girls club and they do an excellent job for what they do their youth court was another example of how we reduce the cost of our city. I go through the list of items that I can see how to do the business of the city different. That's where I want to be able to do. And in doing so we can reduce the property taxes in this town. We can also grow this economy. That's the one thing that we need to keep focus on growing this economy will help us build a tax base and a broader tax base. So all of us here do not have the burden that we are facing today.

George worked for rebuttal and Mark. It does sound good but let's run the numbers. If you take their budget amounts for police and fire and air mass for road maintenance for education that adds up to 235 million dollar under 10 mill cap. We only have 200 in total. Mark what are you going to do. Close down city hall have George we come from a different view and that is I look at the city and I see opportunities and things we can do. There will be things we have to look at in those departments is no question but I do believe that we can do and deal with this budget. The 10 mil tax gap. You have a vision that it will pass. I believe in the people of this city. I believe they sent us a message. They know it's too dramatic but we have to deal with property taxes. I intend to do that so you can keep doing what you're doing and be kind of negative about the future of this city. I'm not I believe in the people of this city. I'm focused on the future of this city. OK. That wraps up that brings it around to the end of this first round mark megatrends.

Not sure who to ask now because I've had so many people ask me questions I guess I'll ask my friend Bob Bell a very question and we've had this actually last night and kind of your views on the pros and cons of privatization. You and I've had discussions on there are things you can privatizing these things you can't. I'm interested in your ideas. But Bill go ahead. Well the fact is that the city government right now contracts out about 30 percent of many of the services such as snowplowing engineering animal control some of the health and human services things and it works. But you have to be very careful if you look at Indianapolis which several of our opponents here have talked about as their role model. They save $40 billion on their road maintenance by manage competition. But they've just been judged as having the fourth worst roads in the nation. So they might have saved 40 million dollars in their maintenance but now they're going to spend to get $300 billion. Repairing the damage. It's very important to have experience to know what you're dealing with

when you deal with these concepts to make sure it's done right. Even the mayor ex-mayor of Indianapolis says the same thing you have to be very cautious with these with these concepts. Bob Bellmark Megan toy head. Thank you Bob. I knew you would have some of those comments when we had him last night at that debate. We were at I think managed competition has its place. There's opportunities for privatization. You can do certain things but you have to remember one thing about the city. We provide services. We need to make sure we provide quality services. Sometimes you do witing that is low bid and you end up with the quali that goes with it sometimes you've got to be very careful. An item that we did we went out to the private sector work with them and I'll use it again the mountain view community center. Here's a project that the city had was running the center we did not do a very good job 120 $5000 a year it costs us to operate today. We have now boys and girls club operating this facility. It has only activities for young people but adults. What is it cost the city today. Hundred and twenty five thousand dollars. There are great opportunities out there that we can look at when we look at managed or manage

competition or privatization. We need to be careful because we want to ensure that we provide quality services when we do it. Bob Bell final response. Managed competition certainly needs to be part of the formula but the 10 mil cap the city government is looking into a $40 billion shortfall. I think we have to do several things but to put your whole all your eggs in that managed competition basket is ridiculous. There's no way you could possibly get there with just that one concept. I think it's a good concept needs to be part of the formula but it can't be the whole thing. Thanks Bob Bell. Well that was fun let's do it again. That brings if we rotate the list around alphabetically. That brings us to Dave Donald. OK. Question for Mark again Mark I've made education the number one issue in my campaign. At one of our other debates you've said that before we can afford good schools we have to attract new industry. And I believe the opposite is true. I think we must first have excellent schools before a new high quality employers are going to

come to Anchorage. Now why do you think we have to we can attract these jobs. You've been talking about before we can have excellent schools to offer them. Thank you very much. And actually that was at the time in high school. And that's not what I said. They go hand in hand when you want to develop a strong economy. You also have to have a great education system because as an economy it changes and develops like our airport which has incredible opportunities. We have a chance to grow our airport Internet an international hub. But while we do that we need to make sure we have the young people as well as the older folks that want to move into those jobs and have education attained. And I see them going hand-in-hand. I see those incredible opportunities. I talked about the university all the time and what we can do out there. Matter of fact last year a province was in the recruiting of over 200 nurses but yet we only graduate to 130 one of those problems because the legislature doesn't fund them to the maximum they need. For example this year they wanted to get 16 million dollars to add to their budget. A very small amount for investing in our nursing school. Logistics school. Incredible opportunity to build our economy. I agree with you Dave.

I agree that we need to put education right in there. So I look forward to seeing you vote 100 percent. The university budget plus their increases they need to do that investment. Right Dave Donnelly was a rebuttal. Well I believe the public schools are the foundation of our nation's greatness. I believe in anchorages needs better than just good schools. We need excellent schools to be competitive in a new world economy. The legislature has made a major commitment to education especially in the past several years. I was a co-sponsor of Senate bill 36 which brought something like an additional $9 billion to Anchorage schools. My amendment alone to that Bill brought an extra $2 billion. Anchorage schools I co-sponsored Senate Bill Levin which helped retire bond deadness for schools in Anchorage area and saved Anchorage taxpayers hundreds of dollars a year on an ordinary Anchorage home. Over the last several years and it's interesting to relate this to property tax and also the legislatures committed an extra fifty one million dollars to increase schools. And I've been

right there in the forefront pushing for additional funds and I'll continue to do that. OK thanks. Mark Begich final response. You know it's interesting I bring up the issue of the university budget in response to Senator Donnelly's question and he didn't really answer that either. But the $51 billion over 10 years you know that equates to Dave that equates to less than 1 percent over their budget that's less than inflation. They have lost ground based on the state allocation. So the fact that you continue to say that you have added money to the school budget is just not the facts. That brings us to Jack Frost. Well let this be done with the question. My friend Mr. Bill here says that he supports the tax cut for the treadmill tax gap he says the last of the 73 million dollars would force the state to fully fund education. I'm concerned that that might not be the way it works. So you were in the state legislature. Would the state quote step up to the plate and fully fund education to the 73 million dollars goes way into the tax code.

They don't. Well Mr. Bill's been very mistaken on his explanation of how the Caecilius cases affected school funding in Alaska. The judge in that case was only dealing with those types of school districts that had no tax base whatsoever. Had nothing to do with school districts even rural school districts that had their own tax base there is no obligation for the state to step in and pick up on schools where local communities have a local tax base. That doesn't happen anywhere in the United States and it's not going to happen here in Alaska. It's just a pipe dream to think that somehow we can do a property tax cap just ignore our local responsibility to fund your own children's education and expect the state to step in and pay for that. Remember the Anchorage legislators were still a minority among the total legislators. The rest of the state would just laugh at us if we said we're no longer going to pay anything locally for our own children's education. That's our responsibility just like Belges in Juneau and Fairbanks and North Slope. Thank you very much Dave. I've been concerned that that was indeed the case.

The state does have their own problems you have a lot of money that you're trying to cut on the budget as well and you're you're behind the power curve when it comes to being able to have enough money to do that. So have to think that Anchorage would get full funding from the legislature for our schools to replace the 33 million dollars that we would lose for the AG schools I think is I think this trying to fool people. That's simply in my opinion isn't going to happen and I don't think it ought to be considered as part of a plan to meet the 10 mil tax cut problems. The final response. It's also important to remember that anchorages does not make the maximum local commitment to our own schools. Juneau Valdez North Slope all put more in locally towards your schools than Anchorage currently does. Additionally to address one thing my friend Mark mentioned last night we made it. We reach an agreement to add an additional $8 million dollars to the school budgets this year through a special program to end to encourage quality and to prepare our students for the new testing that that's being required.

Thanks for your call. Let's have a friendly conversation. You live in Eagle River and I live in Girdwood there is somewhat different from the rest of Anchorage we have a board of supervisors in Girdwood that runs our service area and you have a board of supervisors and also community councils in East River. Say that you want to empower community councils. To what extent will you go for the community to empower the community counseling since by law they are only advisory to 11 people who control Anchorage at this time. Thank you for the question. As you are correct in your assessment the community councils right now are in fact only advisory. What needs to occur is the mayor needs to work with the assembly to ensure that there's a change to the charter that would empower these community councils. Now how much power you want to give them is all a matter of cooperation between the mayor's office and the assembly and the various councils to see how much power they would like to assume. It's not I think a forgiven given for occlusion conclusion that the councils want to absorb every aspect of city

government that is now provided by city government to the local neighborhoods and communities. So I think we have to work with the community councils to determine just exactly how much power they want to absorb. Reed hall I agree with you that we should check with them Have you ever thought about overturning the charter and going back to the way the government used to be before the municipality where we had a borough and we had communities that were in charge of their own tax bases or of empowering the assessment districts or service areas so that they could take care of their own tax bases and what occurs with those I think either of these would be a viable idea also also. Read I haven't gone that far I think we have developed our system over the years. The charter clearly specifies what councils of community councils can and what they cannot do. I think we need to build upon the existing system that allows for us to deal with the councils specifically and directly and if we want to empower them. Again we need to work with the assembly as a mayor and with the councils to determine exactly

what form of power empowerment they want. I believe we should devolve government down to the lowest level where the problems are there that are closer to the problems that are closer to the solutions. And obviously city and city hall cannot do everything they. Can do everything but it is time that Anchorage has a voice and this is something that the citizens need to be thinking about at this time you need to be looking at these candidates to decide who is going to give you a voice who is going to do something to change it so that the citizens of Anchorage have a voice in what happens with their taxes and their services and Anchorage pickup fine response. Thank you Rita you're right on track. I think the voters will make that determination. I think many of us have been talking about novel approaches to government novel approaches to delivery of services and novel approaches to empowering and devolving government down to the lowest level which in my mind is in the neighborhoods. Ideally the community councils shouldn't

take a larger role in providing for the services in resolving conflicts that occur within their individual neighborhoods. Tax cut rates Jones brings it back around to you. Thank you Mark. I want to go back to the issue of fund raising because you know opening the doors of government is about you know the people understanding how funds are raised and why those funds are raised. I'm not questioning your integrity Mark. And when you feel insulted about you know me talking to you about this you know as they said about your campaign last year you towards mayor mainstream you insulted him so don't feel insulted. What I want to say is you know that the majority of people here in the city do not research the Pawk information and so that the information I believe it's your responsibility to divorce divulge the fundraising information to the citizens of they know. Mark mayor's race I think I've answered this question. I don't have any problem. Someone wants to come to my campaign office ask me the question I'll be happy to do that. We submitted to

the state office of Alaska Public Offices commission I think it is important I believe in the disclosure of campaign finance financing. I think it's important to do that. I think the public needs to know where the support comes from. Again I don't question anyone else running in this race where they get money and at what proportions they get from certain special interest groups. That's their job in the public to investigate that. I personally will be happy if it's raised it sounds like you're interested in knowing more about my folks yes. I'm happy to give you that information it doesn't bother me at all. I'm very proud of the support I have. I'm excited about the support I have restaurant. Mark I respect you as a politician and I also respect the union members in this community who are some of the core employees of this community and I respect them and I respect the work they do here and it's important that they receive true representation. Now the question in regard to you know I agree with you on the campaign. I research they point you don't need to give me that information. I can get that myself OK. But again toward the

citizens who we're talking about we want to give them the information and come forth to them and reach out to them not amongst ourselves that's why we should discuss that amongst ourselves. But a question I do have for you is when you talked about the the local Mountainview rec center that was run by the city and you say that became private. How many municipal employees lost their jobs through that and how many municipal employees will lose their jobs when you need to privatize certain municipal positions here in the community if you do it right you can deal with employees and you know I got to tell you working people in this community I think it's important that for example in city folks what they want to know is that you can be honest you're going to tell them the truth and be fair with them. They don't expect any more than that. When we dealt with the Mountain View Community Center of those employees were shifted over to parks and rec and job vacancies that occurred there. So the reality is we were able to do it. We cut the costs eliminate those positions over there but the individuals were able to transfer in and jobs over Iraq. So we

were able to do it and still get an increased quality of service. So there are ways to do it and that's where my experience and understand is sitting the nuts and bolts are important. John Kerry it brings the all around you. Thank you Bob. My question for Pete caught page you've talked about privatization manage competition whatever you want to call it and you often cite Phoenix says as an example. Granted there may have been some savings and what I've been able to determine is that even though the city of Phoenix property tax rate has not increased for the last six years and hasn't gone down either would you address that. Well I think John actually the city that I've been most familiar with is Indianapolis although I haven't been somewhat familiar with Phoenix as well as you mentioned with Phoenix their property taxes have not gone up or they haven't gone down but they have stayed the same while the services have gone up. So I think in light of that there's been some savings and some property tax reductions just in the form that the

citizens of Phoenix are not seeing an increase while their services are being increased. Let me get back to Indianapolis a little bit. Mr. Bell mentioned that Indianapolis was rated fourth worst and so that size when it came to manage competition with in person to the roads. I just want to make it clear to the viewers out there that this evaluation was conducted that was conducted on the five federal highways that are in Indianapolis. Not only that but in the last three or four years five years we've seen two major enterprises establish their presence there with FedEx and U.P.S. so they like their religion and they're on a major road system. Endymion in Indianapolis. OK. Go ahead. Is very interesting. Concerning the property tax in Phoenix their current mil rate for the last six years has been eighteen point two which is even higher than that. No the mill rate for Anchorage also additionally with Phoenix and Indianapolis Indianapolis has a 5 percent sales tax and a 3 percent state income tax. The sales tax in

Phoenix ranges anywhere from a half a percent to over 10. Would you comment on those possibilities if this tax cap initiative is passed in November. I think John obviously it's hard. To comment on the sales tax or the income tax when other state. As to the reasons why they've implemented it in my mind I don't believe in Anchorage we need to pass a sales tax in another situation. That's different from us from Indianapolis or Phoenix as we require a 60 percent vote for the people before we can implement a sales tax. I just don't think the citizens of Anchorage are ready for a sales tax. I really don't know as to the reasons why Phoenix or Indianapolis decided to implement a sales tax. Cut as long as they're over there on the camera go ahead and choose an opponent and ask questions. It's your turn. Thank you. I guess this will be for Mr. Bill. Bob you. You and I both agree on the the tax cap however between Mr. Welch Mr.. Peggotty and yourself. There is a number of

years of experience on the assembly during that time. There was not any sizable reductions in the property tax. Can you comment as to the reason why since. Now we are faced with this 10 mill. We have Bio-Bill. You bet I'd be glad to. If you look at the minutes municipal budget the actual increase is less than inflation. The reason that taxes have gone up is twofold. One is the school district the school district budget has increased dramatically faster than the municipal budget. And the second thing is Bonds and bonds are voted on by the people. They decide to tax themselves essentially only makes the decision to put it on the ballot for them to vote for it. So those two things have caused the taxes to go up. The actual municipal budget has increased less than the rate of inflation. Rebuttal. Thank you Bob for that explanation. In my mind I think there could have been sizable reductions in addition in spite of the bonds being voted upon by the

residents of Anchorage. I think there's a number of services that could be could have been reviewed and perhaps either reduced or eliminated so that the tax burden wouldn't have been put upon the resins language. I think it's a lot to do with the lack of consensus building on the assembly lack of leadership that was just not there to get the required votes to make that property tax reduction happen. Final response actually I agree. I tried on several occasions to cause consolidation with the school district to bring the construction of schools back to the city. Consolidation within the city. I just couldn't get five other assembly members to go along with me because it was too controversial. That's why I'm running for mayor. I think I can make it happen as mayor. And we can save I think up to 40 million dollars just by doing some of those things. And that's that's an important concept here.

Much more important than manage competition write moving along towards Overmeyer you're. Take 30 seconds to ask a question. I want to ask Mr. Donley a question because he's spoken so glowingly about education. And Dave I think you said that you know that 51 million dollars has gone to the acreage school district. What is your reaction to the administration building employees getting up to 11 percent in salary increases the principals getting almost 6 percent and our teachers who are the essence of public education having been frozen in salary for almost seven years. They've don't we go ahead. Well I thought the raise for the administrators was very bad timing on the part of the school district when they were involved in negotiations with the teachers union. I think they should have settled the teacher's pay issue first before they gave the administrators their pay raise. But actually I did miss miss speak earlier Teresa. The Anchorage school district has gotten $51 million additional from the legislature. They've got fifty eight million additional from the legislature. I forgot

to count my amendment that increased pupil transportation to Anchorage pupils and students in Anchorage and also Alaska this morning in fact I voted for an amendment to the budget that would add 8.6 million to the University of Alaska. I've sponsored legislation that would bring pay for a new library that is needed to maintain the accreditation of our campus here in Anchorage. And I've been continue to work. We're trying to find other ways to fully fund the requested increase from the University of Alaska. Just ask you Have you asked for the 58 million that's why. And you keep talking about how much you care about public education K-12 education. Do you ever ask where's the 58 million and why has it gone to the henchmen of Bob Kristol and the essence of education. And that is the teaching class what they've done. Well this is eight point six eight million additional dollars. The legislature is

proving input is directed directly to the classrooms. It's a per capita allocation that's going to be per student and go directly to the classrooms without going through the administrative process. We've made no agreement with the Department of Education. So the legislature has been attempting to reduce the administrative costs and the overhead costs of our schools. We did that in Senate bill 36 very successfully we're reducing those overhead costs and make sure that more dollars gets right into the classroom. I agree with you about that. I should just take a moment here and remind our viewers this is running 2000 the Anchorage municipal election on Channel 7. And if you're listening on the radio it's KSK Anchorage FM ninety one point one. We're moving along. George works. Go ahead. Running right along Robert. We're going to have a question now for our Jack Frost please. Jack in your opening statement you said that you would propose a two male reduction per year for four years I believe. How does that equate to the 10 mil tax cap. Why should the public want to adopt that solution instead of voting for the 10 mil cap.

Well I think it's just plain mathematics if you drop eight mills over four years and then you end up with about 10 mil. We're at 18 currently. So you end up where the 10 mil tax cap would be no. The difference is it would take four years but it would be managed. It would be something that we would be planning on. We could use the managed competition approach at that point to phase it in keep it going to keep working. I think there are other things too that we are going to have to do. No question about it. I have said for a long time that I believe we need to sell those utilities that we have. The government really should not be trying to run them as businesses. They have one of the reasons we still have them as they return seven and a half million dollars to the general fund which is just fine. But if you're going to run public utilities you ought to run them at cost and not charge the taxpayers another seven and a half million dollars in higher rates. So I think we could sell those utilities as you have mentioned that we could get somewhere around 400 million is my guess and the money that we get there along with the Trust Fund we

currently have would return about 28 million. George words go ahead. Well thank you Jack. I appreciate your support and endorsement of my idea of selling utilities. But let's go back to the tax gap because I'm afraid you don't understand it. First of all bombs that are sold and issued by December 31st are exempt from the tax cap right now where the bonds already issued. We have about three Mills worth of bonds that are out there. If the bonds pass and Tuesday and we sell initially those by December 30 for us we could have perhaps four miles of bonds out there 10 million on top of that. We're talking about a reduction from 18 to 49 a reduction from 18 to 10. Jack I think you need do some more homework. Final response. Well thank you for your concern George I appreciate it. I believe we can reduce property taxes to a year. I think we can do it for four years and I think that puts us down to a level of the rate payers will really enjoy. Yeah I agree with you that you can exempt the bonds out of it but eventually you run out of it. You're not going to be

able to exempt the bonds forever. We're going to have to get down to the 10 mill area eventually and I think this is the way to do it. Right moving along Mark Beckett's back to you. You ask I guess I'm going to ask George a question. You talk a lot about leadership and your ability to lead and in all five years that you've served on the Anchorage assembly can you tell me one or two or if you can. Three issues that you took a leadership role on that changed the way we do the business of the city and cut the cost of city government toward work. Thank you Mark. My definition of leadership of course is be the invisible support system. And if you look at the accomplishments the the assembly and any other organization I've participated on my role has been to give the credit to those that make it happen. If something goes wrong and I'm responsible for that overall function I take the responsibility I take the hit I take the blame. But the greater role of leadership is to support encourage nurture lead and mentor.

And I've done everything I can to create the opportunities for my colleagues to step forward and take the bows. I don't need that. Bob Mark thank you for the question. Thank you very much. George and I agree with all those aspects of leadership. It is about bringing people together and as you know I served three times as the chair of the anchor assembly because I think my colleagues recognize the leadership skills I had. But I guess the question I'll try it a different way and form it in a different way. You talked about sharing and getting other people to take the lead on issues and sharing with them what were some of those three or two or one issue that you encouraged the assembly to take leadership on that you shared that leadership with. I'm trying to find in the five years you served on the assembly What were those issues that you stood out or helped out and make become a reality in helping to shape the fact that this new government that you're talking about. Thank you Mark. First of all I did some to help you a few times including become chairman one year but that's let's talk about the real issue of leadership and what we have

to do is as individuals that step forward to take on the responsibility of being mayor. I think I have that experience. I submit to you two successful careers. I ask for you to be equally candid about your successes and careers. And I look forward to being the mayor of this city. Thank you. OK Bob Bell. You have the last. The Red Lantern in this round. Senator done with you as an anchorage legislator seem willing to fund other school district to 100 percent but not ours. There's 53 school districts in this state. Forty percent of the kids are in one of them. All the rest of them are small inefficient high overhead costs. But you're willing to continue to fund that but not fund Anchorage at 100 percent. I'd like to know why. Bob thanks for that question. Gives me something I wanted to talk about for a long time. When we tried to do Senate bill 36 a couple of years ago which was a major rewrite of the foundation formula. People said it couldn't be done but I co-sponsored that and worked very hard. We made it a reality. The

original version the Senate passed a version of that bill required those school districts to pay something towards the local education of their children. But you know our anchorage assembly wouldn't even pass a resolution in support of our efforts. Now you voted right. Several other people here tonight did not. They watered down that resolution so that it no longer supported our efforts to make everybody in Alaska pay something towards the education of their own children. And we lost our own support from our own community. It was very demoralizing. We continue to fight and try to get that through the house but we lost that battle in the house. Maybe because we didn't even have the support of our own city government. Bob Bell a rebuttal Article 7 Section 1 of the last Constitution says the legislature by general law shall establish and maintain a school district. The school system for all the children of Alaska. It does not say the municipality shall do that or any municipality shall do that. You say that I'm mistaken in my belief that the state should step up and fund schools. The state constitution says

they should you're a lawyer. I'd like to have your interpretation of that article of the Constitution. Well Bob as we mentioned that is the case only dealt with those districts that don't have a tax base. And I've supported as I did in the original version of SB 36 and giving them the ability to pay and think they should pay it locally. And right now they can form their own boroughs and do that. That's the key. No court is going to say that local communities who do have a tax base and do have the ability to raise taxes are not going to be required to contribute some reasonable amount towards the education of their own children. Things were moving along looking good on the clock. Let's go ahead with the third round of candidate questions that puts Jack Frost up on the first step. Well I like to ask George a question George. And Mr. Begich have shared the assembly and the seat there. I'm curious as to what your differences are in style and function. How do you and Mr. baggage differ in the way you approach things going.

Thank you Jack. Certainly I believe in less government lower taxes living within our means. And trying to create an enterprise where we use the private sector to deliver services I clearly support the responsibility of the municipality to attend to the needy and those with special needs. But I believe the way to deliver that is not to create another bureaucracy and siphon off more money from the needy to the employees that administer it but to work with the churches and the organizations of our community that serve that sector. No youth in domestic violence is just a crisis problem in Alaska and there is an area where we can try to work with the delivery work with the ministers and the pastors and try to find a way to touch that need and take the leadership with the Office of the mayor to make that happen. Thanks DERKS. Jack Frost go ahead.

Well George you are indeed eloquent and I understand. I don't think it was really a question. But nonetheless you are very eloquent in answering it. My point I guess is that if you take a look at the three different people who have been on the assembly over the some for five some for nine years what you find is that their voting records are all disturbingly similar. And in all that period of time the costs of the municipality always rose not go down and they always. We have continually been on a scale where we spend more money we now have an ancestor who is really out there aggressively raising the tax base and the evaluation so we can give more money. I think it's time for new ideas and new leadership. I am really interested in creating in recreating a new government not recreating new taxes and new spending. George works fine. Well well thank you Jack. And of course there are some differences between Mr. Begich and I. In his term he voted to support spending of 135 million dollars over and above what two mayors administrations ask for.

I on the other hand have voted to reduce budgets. I've supported the mayor in his vetoes the budget line items including withstanding the scrutiny of the courts and the recent case that came before us on this year's budget. When you. Rita hall Your Honor. Mark since 1992 94 the municipality has received transportation efficiency Act fines for road construction and design. Could you tell me what you know about that and what do you think the application of these funds has been fair or whether it has detracted or caused problems with our bond funds and that our bond funds have supported projects that could have been funded by Stevens. I'm assuming this is a relationship a maths and other transportation dollars and the federal government from that ice tea. You know I believe that the money that we receive and we received a significant amount from the federal government for our roads and our enhancements to our roads have been a very helpful thing for our community. Does it displace money potentially for Bonnie. Absolutely. I think that's fine. I mean means less

burden on our on our local taxpayers here I think there's a variety of things that that money has been able to help us with in building our roads. There is an area here that maybe this is one area that we may disagree or agree on you. We now allocate in the city 15 percent of our money toward enhancements road safety bus pullouts transportation stations landscaping. I believe that's a very important addition to our road construction. So I think it's important if we have that money coming in it does displace our bond money because the bottom line is that means less taxes our community pay. So I'm I'm supportive of the return home. The point is Mark that our bond funds are paying for projects that fans could pay for. It's a proven fact. I mean I worked in the system and I now and there are projects that have been on the federal funding list that are now being supported by bond funds. So what is the problem and what will you as mayor do to solve this problem in getting the ice tea or the federal funds that should be coming to this

community applied properly to offset bond funding. I think I would continue to work on it to get some good ideas Rita and how we can do that. And I have no problem in working on that and focusing on that issue. And that is if there are Eistein my bond money being used for ice tea funds we should focus or ice tea funds or federal dollars doing those projects period so that we don't have a disagreement here. I am going to take a couple of seconds here to comment. Mr. wert said earlier and that is George if I raised this budget by a hundred thirty five million. You've said over and over again this budget over the last 10 years has not increased. So I don't know how I've been able to do that work. Grace Jones rings round Randy. Great mart I'm not you know it's just you know I'm not I really really am not. But what we have here is there there are issues and I could ask George or I could ask Bob Bill and if I get another chance I will ask the gentleman one of these questions.

But these are regard to bond issues and what I need to know is you talked about the firefighters negotiations and that merger to see medical techs how many firefighters quit those positions and how much more did it cost the city in the pay increase when they go on those ambulances. Are you talking about when I talk about the merger of the two the cross-training they were required to cross train and the firefighter had to be a medical tech. And he and their wage was increased. He became a medical tech. Yes. Yeah. And actually when you look at that there is an I'm not sure what the differential was but the bottom line is it increased efficiency by 30 to 40 percent. The fact is our fire department there's been a big issue in this community. If you live south of Anchorage you have ambulances but you don't have people drive. If you have one and a half ambulance service for the south of South Anchorage also we have what we call mandatory overtime because we do not have enough staffing to deal with our paramedic service. We have a severe problem over there. And I will tell you one of the people who are running for this office who currently serves on this committee has voted against supporting some of those needed services for our paramedics. So I understand what you're saying right there is a great need out there to ensure that we have the best public safety

especially in paramedics and firefighting. Good Mark. I'm glad you understand what I'm saying. But I need you to instead of running around the question please answer the question directly. My question was how many firefighters quit the fire department because of this particular merge with the firefighters becoming emergency medical medical tests and how much money did it cost the city. And you know there would have been other ways around the situation apart from Bulleen. The union members into doing something that they really didn't want to do. You know race I can tell you if there are specific people that left the work I can tell you it has saved and made the department more efficient and it wasn't bullying. You know it's working. Working together with people that we're going to solve these problems. Maybe you have some people that are disgruntled that have talked to you when we change the way the city government works you're going to have some people that don't like change but that's OK because we need to continue to push this city in a new direction of how we deliver services. There's nothing wrong with that. And you know so if there are some people who felt bullied I'm sorry but we do have to change and make our

city more efficient. But working together and solving the problems is what I did on the assembly and that's one example of what I did. Don't care. Jump back in there with a question. Senator Donnelly concerning the property tax and they should have this on the ballot in November which I believe is going to pass although it's probably going to pass very with a very small margin. I predicted that within five years of its passage that we will have a state income tax again and the state sales tax. What do you think the legislatures take would be on that. Well I would strongly oppose new taxes. I can't. It's been years that I've absolutely said we don't need new taxes we need to reduce state spending and we have been reducing state spending over $220 million in the past four years. During that same time city spending has been going up dramatically. I don't think legislatures going into intent entertain a new sales tax. I would strongly oppose it. I would also strongly oppose an income tax. I voted against the governor's income tax last year it

failed in the Senate and I would continue to oppose it. And I also strongly support maintaining the permanent fund and I've protected the permanent fund as one of your legislators consistently. They've always drawn beer. Oil prices are approximately $30 a barrel right now which has certainly increased the state's revenue flow. But I don't expect those prices to stay at that height. And it seems to me that as they decrease the legislature would have no choice but to enact the income tax and sales tax. Do you think that they really would do that within the next five years. Absolutely not. I do not foresee that. People I talked to realize that first we must continue to try to be more efficient. We need a smaller smarter state government. We've introduced missions and means directions to give specific objective criteria for our departments in ways to reduce those and to measure their performance. It's a new way of budgeting and I have a lot of faith that it's

going to be very successful. And a final response. Well I stand by my prediction that within five years we will have both. OK. People caught on camera. Come on you can read it. This one's for you. What would you do to expand our economic base in Anchorage. Thank you for that Pete. I think one of our biggest attributes here is our location and the fact that we are so close to all major air bases in Europe and Asia and that we should be looking at our airport to broaden the manufacturing base there are distribution base so that we can get more goods transported out of here and that the that bringing in technical vocational things that can utilize our airports and bases here Greta hall caught rebuttal.

I couldn't agree with you more Rita. Certainly the expansion of the airport is important in the end to the economic vitality of Anchorage. We we have a unique opportunity strategically and geographically as we can reach 90 percent of the major cities in the world within eight hours. So from a logistical standpoint we have an advantage over any other city. I also believe that the expansion of the port is important I think with one additional dock there that will create additional opportunities we may find the state ferry company and we may find different cruise ships coming into the city which will certainly add to the vitality and the economic base. Clearly tourism is important. Over 750000 visitors visited our city last year it's expected that there will be a 5 percent growth over the next several years and I think that a good convention center that can accommodate a larger number than what we currently have will add sizable amounts of dollars to our base. He could go ahead and read all of the final.

I disagree with you on the convention center I think we have a perfectly workable convention center and I think that the situation with the convention center is that we have built too many hotels in this town and that people now want to bring in more conventions to fill these hotels and I think those hotels can be felt differently and that we can use this for expanding our wilderness opportunities and bringing people in here to use what Anchorage Alaska is really about the wilderness and outdoor ecotourism adventures. Hey it's free to haul Cruise Overmeyer back to you. Yes. I want to go back to my dear friend Mr. Begich the gentleman that's dropping in money because it makes me think Mark can you imagine real winners sir. Yeah they have literally millions spent on Fords while being fabricated against me. I'm very proud of that. Mark. Why do you believe I have four toils fabricated against me. Mr. Bragg.

Or make it. Go ahead Chris. I don't know why they've been. If you believe they've been fabricated against you. I have told you we were at the airport community council I think you have been fairly and treat in a variety of areas. And I and when you came in from this assembly many times you presented yourself and gave you I gave you an opportunity to talk about your issues. I've always tried to be courteous to your issues and listen to your concerns. I'm not sure why they fabricated these if that's your belief but maybe you have that answer. I would just say well I'm more than fully and sincerely want to say to you sir for your 18:00 contributors. Tell me more. Those are all not leadership. Go ahead Mark make it five Teresa. Leadership is measured in a variety of ways. Again as when I was on a grid assembly I served three terms as the chair of the assembly more than any one in the history of the city. I chair the student loan corporation. I chaired the post-secondary education commission. My colleagues in all of these areas have chosen me as their leader because I believe they think I have the skills to bring

people together solve problems and listen to the different ideas of people have. That's where I believe leadership's about more. I must say that Congress only knows that he has 27 of them. That's it. My thanks George works. Thank you for having me here Peter. Peter in an earlier forum when we were all before the teachers union you and Mark Begich stood up and said you would walk the picket lines if the teachers go on strike this year. Would you share with us why you think that's appropriate for a mayor. First of all George said that during that discussion my time actually expired the red light came on so I didn't get a chance to finish the sentence. At least my thought my thought was this I would walk with them on the picket line on strike. But I would only do that after hours with him be during the evening not during the time that the public would perceive me as being

on duty if you will. And that's the bottom line. And I believe that in the to do that is responsible in the sense that he can walk the picket line you can discuss the issues with the people you don't have to be generally supportive of what they're doing. But certainly you can be supportive of the idea that you're trying to build a consensus you're trying to talk with the teachers to find out what their problems are and what assistance you may be able to provide them. Picot George works for rebuttal. Pete I know you are the uniform our country for over 20 years and realize that that that's a 24 hour day job don't you think the responsibility the mayre are encompassing of everything that you do. And then how are you going to represent the rest of the people if you're citing in advance with a few thousand because. Well clearly George I think even the population out there believes that you can't be on duty 24 hours a day. This is not a military that we're dealing with in city government. I think the city expects you to be there during an appropriate time if you're walking a picket line at midnight. I don't think the

public is going to be taking you to the extent that you're sitting the teachers. I just don't believe that would be in fact a case. OK thanks it brings random Mark Begich thank you very much and actually in that race I'm going to ask you your question if that's OK. And I know when we've been out in forums you've talked about some ideas you have on economic development and I'm curious kind of if you want to expand on that. You've talked about the fire island and some ideas you've had out there and I wonder if you want to expand on that a little bit. Sure. I don't believe it was Fire Island. I believe that's with the Sears corporation market they're talking about. I think the Fire Island idea and economic developments an important issue here in Anchorage and you know biote the doors of government first of all and rebuilding a trust consensus between the citizens is a good beginning because when you're looking for developers to come into community they look at the community they research the community.

They look at your infrastructure and they look your education. Those are the first things we fix. Secondly I think we need to eliminate our isolationist attitude and look toward the south central Alaska specifically over toward the wall Scilla area where they're building the new port over there. If we were able to channel have vision ladies and gentlemen and because we're running out of land here in this community we need to divert our land use we need to channel under the inlet and it wouldn't happen in my turn but we could begin looking at that and then open that area up for economic development cargo warehousing manufacturing housing development and it would increase federal funding and state funding. Mark Megatherium thank you very much. I know we've been on the trail for many weeks here and that was one of the issues I knew that you had on your mind. Economic development is important for our city. It will build and it will determine where it is going to go in the next 20 30 years. We have incredible opportunities where there Anchorage International Airport we also have incredible potential with our universities. If you look around cities around this country universities are the

economic engines of any city. When you look at unemployment rates of cities of 1.2 percent or less universities that drive that engine I think we have potential there with our finance industry or nursing. Russian Studies a variety of things and especially our logistics in connection with our airport. Economic development needs to be a priority and we need to focus on it but it's a combination of two things making sure we have a strong education system tied to our economic development. So I appreciate your ideas. I think we have some great ideas that we've all talked about about how we can grow this city in the right direction. GRACE JONES Final word for you. Thanks Mark. You know you and I do agree on one thing and that is education. But you know to have education we need integrity in our government. When we talk about economic development presentation is 75 percent of yourself Mark. And what we need to do is we need to return the government back to the people allow them access to the information elevate the community spirit and develop our education system and correct that problem. And then economic development can be approached.

All right. Bob Bell you're back up on deck. Pete. Let's go back to Indianapolis. Managed competition just because it works in outside cities doesn't mean it's going to work here in Anchorage. Now you're talking about 15 to 25 million dollars. Indianapolis contracted out about half of their budget and they realized about an 8 percent savings Anchorage budget is $260 million. So 130 is half of that. 30 percent of that's already contracted out. That leaves you about 70 to 80 million dollars at 8 percent that's 6.5 million. How are you getting to 15 to 25 million a pickup. Well one minute response. Thanks for the question. In fact I was just in Indianapolis last year but by your own admission a few nights ago you talked about consolidation consolidating various services in the city that is in fact part of the managed competition concept you've consolidated and put those services

out to a competitive bid by your own admission. That would save the city between 15 and 20 million dollars. So I'm adding on another 10 to 12 million dollars so it should give us about a 32 million dollar savings which was actually more than I expected but I believe that there are a number of services in this city that can go out to competitive bid. For instance if we decide to put out LMP I believe that would save the city anywheres between five and seven million dollars in and of itself. We also have a W.W.. Those are the big ticket items. If we opted to go out for competitive bid I believe there's some substantial savings there. That's what occurred in Indianapolis. That's where they got a majority of their four hundred twenty million dollars in savings over eight years. Bob Bell rebuttal. Pete I'm glad you finally got on board with me on consolidation. You guys have been talking about managed competition going out the private sector consolidation isn't necessarily doing that. That's taking to services within the city or between the school district in the city and put them together. That's where we saved the money.

That's what I've been saying all the way through this campaign. You and Mr. Frost have been talking about managed competition only That's a small part of what we need to do. So I'm really glad you're on board with us now because Thank you Bob I'm glad you're finally with me because as I mentioned way back three months ago consolidation is in fact part of managed competition. You consolidate like services and you put those services out to the bad and the private sector. That's what managed competition is all about. So I'm glad that everyone is finally talking about managed competition and consolidation and how it relates with managed competition. All right thanks Dave don't we get a final answer. Her final question in this round. This one's from my friend Jack Jack. We've heard these claims that city spending has not gone up gone up but we know it has. The budget trick that's being used by those who claim no spending increases adjusting total spending for inflation and population if the state used that system it could have increased spending by hundreds of millions of dollars. The last several years

and still claim no increase. Instead we've actually reduce spending by about $220 million. If you're mayor would you change this practice and show the actual budget numbers in your budget documents. Go ahead Jack Frost. Thank you very much David. There's no question that that's exactly what's been occurring. And you know to figure that out you only have to look at the sources of revenue. I mean we're always asking for more sources of revenue we want to now charge for calls from the the firefighters are we want to charge for calls from the police department we want to get our assessments up so that we can charge more on property taxes without raising the tax itself. Now if we're if our spending is flat as has been claimed why do we need all this extra money why do we why are we looking at a property tax and property. I mean a rental car tax and property. The fact is you're absolutely right. We've been doing smoke and mirrors on the budget so that the assembly can say Look at us we've kept this thing flat. They haven't kept it flat.

They've been in your pocket the entire time. Yes. We'll change the way that works and we will let you know exactly where we are. Jack Frost Dave Donnelly rebuttal. Well I agree with that. And I take it one step further. Currently the city's budget document is entirely independent of the school district's budget. But to get the big picture you have to look at them together. I would develop a budget document that Mayor that merged those two budgets. Education is the most important thing the city does. It's the biggest single ticket there is in that budget. They should be merged. So an average citizen can look at that budget report and understand it. I'd also like to take the moment just to respond to a couple things. And that's also Mark's been claiming his progress with the student loan program. I would just suggest that it was also the reforms the legislature made in the fundamental laws on the loan program that went a long way towards bringing solvency to that corporation and also the Youth Court that was actually created by a law that passed legislature that I voted for. Jack Frost final response.

OK well I want to say one final thing too Bob has been on this Indianapolis and the road situation when what they did with CNN did was put traffic counters on four state highways and when they got Indianapolis has the highest level of traffic east of the Mississippi. And so when they saw that traffic in Indianapolis got terrible roads they got terrible traffic problems. Well those are all federal highways. And the one they did the survey with in Minneapolis and asked people and truckers in particular how they like that. Guess what. They gave it thumbs up. They said it was one of the best road systems they'd ever had. Thanks Jack Frost. We're watching the clock here and we've got about 25 minutes left in the program so let's move on to some questions I have. I have the person who currently has this job you folks want on the radio and with last week this Wednesday Rick Meister money he says and this subject has come up this $150 million trust fund some of the money left over from selling you. The question I'd like to ask all of you is that if elected mayor what would you use that money to help balance the budget and how and we're going to start this round Jack Frost.

Well I've heard the mayor talk about this in the. He says that we ought to use 20 million dollars to get over the hump if the tax camp passes and we also used when that settlement first came in we said well you know €80 been returning money to the to the general fund so we're going to take part of that trust fund money before we put the trust fund and use that as well. I don't like the ideal idea of nibbling at that trust fund. I like the idea of selling utilities putting them all in a trust fund and instead of having reduced their produce seven and a half million dollars a year they ought to be able to produce 25 to 28 maybe even 30 million dollars a year. And I'm only figuring on a 5 percent return trying to be very conservative in these figures. So you know I don't like the idea of nibbling at the trust fund. I would prefer. Who knows we may have to eventually. But I would prefer that we work on a plan to reduce property taxes in a intelligent manner rather than the precipitous 10 mil tax again. I think Jack Frost read the same question and this is all kind of surrounded with

this notion of a 10 mil property tax cap to pass it to the mayor the current mayor says well he wants to leave the tools would you use that trust you know I don't believe we should use the trust fund that's like the Permanent Fund Dividend. I don't think we should use it for governmental purposes at this time. I think that trust fund is there as a basis and that should be invested wisely and the money from that the interest earned from that should be used for the investment money return from that should be used in government but that the funds should remain an asset think that the fund should be built on. I think there is some funds from the HL be that could be challenged in there and used as a basis for more funding to acquire more revenue. And as far as the tax cap I believe that that's a good thing to force the government to look at other issues in government as to the waste that's going on and what else can be done to cut back in government rather than continue spending as we have been very strong.

How would you or would you use that money in any way currently. Absolutely not. What we need to do first again as I said is open the doors of government and start with my own administration. I would work within my administration reducing the cost of the current executive administration and then work down through the various departments of this community so that we can find where we need to make the cuts where we need to increase worker productivity and eliminate waste in the city. You do that first and show the people by that leadership that you're willing to take the cuts and you know the issues that they're asking to be hit that they've been asking to be eliminated for many many years. Then I take it a step further. I'd like to look at investing what money if we have a utility cell or if we save money from reducing some of our cuts and put that into that hundred and fifty million trust fund. But then let's take it a step further and allow people to vote when the Assembly wants to use money from that trust fund specifically on

what items where we spend that money on. All right thanks John Kerry during your question. No not at the present time what I would advocate doing would be getting the assembly and the citizens of anchorages approval to sell him on P and Solid Waste Services putting the proceeds of that those two sales into the trust fund using the earnings from the trust fund then to assist with the yearly budget. Thanks Pete. Thank you. I think first of all you have to recognize that selling any utility will take some time. Look how long it took us to sell to you. This is not going to happen overnight. We have a 34 million dollar deficit. We have to deal with it straight up upfront and in the near term I think you also have to recognize as I've been touting managed competition that that will take some time to implement across the board. We can also talk about implementing e-government which cities have shave 75 percent off their administrative costs but that will take time. The technology will have to be developed and installed on

the various city computers. Everything takes time. I think in order for us to meet the 10 mil tax cap we're going to have to go to the voters hold public hearings determine what services they want to pay for and what services they do not want to pay for if there's still a gap we have available. The municipal trust fund earnings earnings only that we can fill that void. And I think we should use those if there a gap you can't operate in the red. Thanks pecan trees Overmeyer. That's a tough one. Mr. Hart thanks for asking the question would you forgive me though sir. I'm a little tired of these scare tactics. What I'm positive all is there are about five day to turn. They control everything that goes on in this state. They have 27 billion dollars and they want us all to think we're on the edge of a cliff and we're not going to have enough money to pay salaries. I'm I'm not. I mean I see no leadership in any of

this discussion. And I think that my dear friend the man running for governor since 1994 he's been making law firms you know since day one but especially in the last three years. And so can we stop being played for fools. Can we start realizing that Warner's control 27 billion dollars. There's no accountability. And that's your money Mr. HALL. All right I take it that's a no to the question. No I'm not talking about that kind of stuff. OK 27 billion. Why don't we talk about probably we may do it later. George works hard. Next up the city trust fund. Thank you. First of all let's make it very clear what Mayor Nystrom is talking about is spending their earnings not the capital. He knows very well that that capital cannot be spent except with a vote of the people. But he is forecasting where we might be at the time the 10 mil tax

cap kicks in. And let's look at the numbers. We've got 120 million in there from the sale of eight. You have got another 40 million that's a settlement from the surplus of the firefighters and police retirement plan. And that 160 million. With today's market could possibly grow to 200 million by next year 10 percent after inflation proofing is possible. It's optimistic but it's possible. But that's the key point. He's only talking about spending the earnings after inflation proof because ladies and gentlemen that is a requirement of the Muni trust fund just as it is with the state permanent fund. Thanks George. Mark message and I do have a quick two corrections to my friend Dave Donnelly the youth court Bill he passed was only to allow youth courts in one and one youth court per jurisdiction because youth court last was a hit. It was around a long time before he took credit for this piece of legislation student loan corporation. We're the ones that brought that legislation forward to help make those reforms. But specifically on the trust fund. First off it has to be inflation approved and the first

thing that comes out of the out of the trust fund is roughly about nine point two million that goes to replace the division that occurred. The second must only be used to lower taxes and anything else has to be reinvested into the corpus because the voters when they voted to sell it to you and deal with this trust fund issue again. We eliminated the clause that said you can just go spend it into the black hole of government because we wanted to make sure the money was right back into the corpus and build a future trust fund for our city. So that's the facts and the reality is I do not support taking money out of there to fund the budget. What I want to do is build that fund up and I will use one time monies that we get from any source and we'll go right into that trust fund to build for our future here. Bell City trust fund accounts first of all I have to say that I'm just astounded at the lack of knowledge of local government here. Mr. Donnelly you cannot combine the school district in a manageable budget it's not allowed by state law or by municipal charter. You just can't do it. And Jack the operating budget of the city has not gone up as fast as inflation. That's a hard cold fact.

Dollar for dollar it has not done that as far as the trust fund. The earnings from the trust fund can be used for one of three things to replace the dividend that we got from 82 and I believe it was $70 to inflation proof to fund or to lower taxes. That's the wrong thing it can be done or it goes back into the into the end to fund itself. Nobody can spend that money without a vote of the people. That's the way the trust fund works. All right. David always on this. Bob I didn't advocate combining school district in the city budget. I advocate combining the budget reporting so the public can understand the relationship between the two budgets so that no longer could the city play that game where they're holding the school budget hostage. I think it's very important the public get the total picture in one complete complete document. That's what I think needs to be done. Not combining the budgets as mayor. I would not spend the capital of the trust fund. I do agree that the earnings after inflation are an appropriate tool for the operating budget to help reduce

property taxes. Now on my web site Dave Donnelly dot net I outline my plan to deal with the profit the passage of the property tax cap. But I think first we need to develop contingency plans for reduction scenarios. And I've also sponsored legislation help mitigate the impact of the property tax cap and to continue to work with other legislators to do that. Thanks Dave Donnelly we've got time for just one more of those rounds. I'm thinking about the future here and have one of you folks is going to be mayor RIDO hall and for all of you here what new ordinances policies or laws would you put into place if you become mayor. What new ordinances ordinances laws policies with major ordinance that I would put in place and it may take two or three is the ones that will be needed and necessary to get government back to the people. And right now I'm not exactly sure how many that's going to take. It may take quite a few before we're done with it but the people of Anchorage deserve their voice and they deserve their right to say how their taxes should be spent and

this is going to take ordinates changes when it's going to be probably to the community council. And then there may be have to be others into the service areas as to how taxes are spent and etc.. Bridget Jones same question would you bring any new laws on the books. I certainly would. You know one of the first ones and one of the reasons I'm running is as I said to open the doors of government and I would like to work with our local attorneys and assembly members and the citizens of Anchorage to be able to change the charter in regard to our closed door meeting laws. I would like to eliminate closed door meetings from this city. When you want to open the doors of government you need to eliminate those type of meetings so that we can have open information to the citizens in regard to whatever it may be union negotiations Assembly meetings behind closed doors not that they're going to participate but we're telling the citizens

and the union members. Ladies and gentlemen we don't have anything to hide. And what you want to know you deserve to know because it's your tax dollars. Thanks John Kerry Jr. How do you read the new proposals. One in particular is one of my pet peeves. This would be a prohibition against using a handheld cell phone while driving a vehicle. That's one thing that I would like to see happen. Registration of lobbyists anybody that has business dealings with us with the city would have to register and make those interests known. Those are two that I can think of right off the top of my head. OK thanks Pete got. Thanks for the question. As I mentioned earlier I'd like to see the community councils empowered so I believe the change in the charter would be one of the first ideas that would certainly purport to support and try to get the assembly to go along with. I believe we also need to change make some changes to our zoning

ordinances to ensure that the buildings downtown reflect accurate northern environment. Clearly what was mentioned with the lobbyists changing the ordinance to make sure that the lobbyist conformed to primarily what occurs in state law I think is ultimately important. And finally I believe that we need to have an open door policy. And I'm one of the sponsors of the initiative that is calling for open door no closed door meetings open meetings act. I'm clearly supportive of that and I have been supportive that in the past but in light of me wanting less government. That's all I'm looking for. Peacock trees Overmeyer new policies Well I'm not interested at this. What I'm interested in this talk is common courtesy and respect. Now ladies and gentlemen the thing that has gotten me as someone that is an honest person and boy is that the law in the most trouble is I believe and will not break the

open means all these legislators in the subway people they break in every day of the week. I will not write the open meaningful what start what the open means. For example the school board voted last June 28. I know I have to speak for a year. I wasn't even at the meeting and I wasn't invited. And yet they haven't for me after meeting after me. They break the law every time they meet. I have to be present when they're going to talk about me. Specially when it involves free speech. I mean these people break the law every day and no one cares. So what I'm really tired gentlemen Bob Bell talking about you know. Well what about the man. Well Mr. Bill. What about all your sweet deals. Hey you know what John you hang on. That's right. George works here in the mayor's office. What new policies laws would you put into effect.

Thank you Robert. In case anybody's tuned in late my opening statement says I want less government not more government. So it's not going to be many new things I'll propose one way of adding to government but there is a big responsibility that the new mayor will have and that is implementing the new comprehensive plan. I'm very hopeful hopeful that this year will end with the completion of that plan. I know Mayor Mr. Holmes had pledged his administration to do that. I'm hopeful that the assembly will accept it. That leaves for one of us in this room the huge task of changing the codes and the ordinances to implement the plan and that should be top priority. Beyond that I'd like to be known for the mayor that put together the necessary mechanisms to sell the rest of our utilities. Thanks Mark. Getting any new proposals on the horizon. That's a great question actually Robert. When I served on the assembly one of the wardens I brought forward was to require and request each department to look at their ordinances and the laws they are governed by and see which ones we can eliminate. It was amazing to have two full books of codes that came back with two ideas.

I believe there is a lot of ordinances and codes on the books. We don't need. So the first thing I'm going to do is ask each department to list those codes the ones they don't enforce the ones they don't spend the time in implementing anymore because they're outdated or they're just not obsolete. What we're doing. So that's the first thing. The second piece is we need to deal with Title 21. That will be the core of our comprehensive plan. But along with that. I want to make sure in the first 120 days we have an economic development plan to go hand-in-hand with our comprehensive plan so we can determine what our city will be like 30 and 40 and 50 years out. What kind of economy we want to have. That's where I want to be. But the first thing we're gonna do is ask each department to tell me what laws what things are on the books and what policies are useless and a waste of people's time. Thanks Bob Bill. Any policies laws change or new things you put on the books. Sure. Got three things. One a the last things I did on the assembly was draft an ordinance to register lobbyists and I would make sure that that follows through. Second thing is I'd put together an ordinance to develop architectural standards for our city. So we don't end up with any more square

block buildings in downtown Anchorage or anywhere else in our town. The last thing I do I put together a consolidation and manage competition task force and I put my friend Jack Frost in charge of it. X. And that takes us to Dave Donnelly what would you do if you were elected. I do an ordinance that we had eight developed a city voters guide similar to what the state voters guide is now. So each candidate could have an equal share of that. So the public could have that information available to him for elections. I do a charter amendment that protected local service district concept. And so I'm going to hold down property taxes and protect our neighborhoods and also make sure that our citizens have the right to self-determination and not have services imposed on them that they don't want to pay for. I agree with registering lobbyists also. And you know I've offered over 50 laws in my tenure in the legislature but the first one ever passed was to strengthen our anchorage community councils and I'd continue that as a mayor and I try to give our community councils more local authority

over liquor licensing and enforcement issues. And finally I'd modify our road ranking system to better coordinate school construction and road construction by increasing the priority of needed roads and trails around new schools and those that are needed in existing schools. Thanks. And Jack Frost final word on this. Thank you. There's three things I'd like to do. The first is I agree that we need new lobbying standards. I don't think this is a small thing. We really need to shine a bright light on what the lobbyists in the city are doing. Currently they operate with almost no rules at all and we need to pass a law that will shine that light. The second thing is that I've been talking about the design standards for a long time. And I would like to start the design standards and I would put the firm of Robert bill in charge of making what he calls architectural standards and equal design standards because we do need to make sure that our downtown grows in the right way and we don't have any more of those cement block buildings downtown.

And finally the third one is really something that the mayor can do by setting an attitude and that is I want to see public comment that is actually useful. That means that when people have ideas they can present them to an assembly or to the bureaucrats who have not already made up their minds. Well we asked for public comment we wanted to help build the situation not to just be public approval or thinks we have just time for just a round of quick closing comments we're going to reverse the order of the opening comments from our program where we began. And let's try to keep these about half a minute and begin with George worked. Go ahead. Gentlemen thank you for your attention tonight. It's hard in a campaign like this to get our issues out to everyone. This program has been a big help and I would like to make it clear that it in this campaign I offer the experience and the leadership and the education to do the job as mayor. I've heard the message of the taxpayers and you want to reductions and I can provide money that can live within those means less government lower taxes live within our

means. Leave the money in your pocket. Greater economy. Thanks George. Teresa Overmeyer final comment. Yes and thank you Mr. Hall. Ladies and gentlemen I would like to find out in this election whether Anchorage has come a day or are we only interested in the candidate that it cut deals among their friends and exchange money or do we want leadership. Humble leadership that's working for you. I pledge to you and a very humble way that I will work for only you and no one else. All right. Thanks. Pete got final comment here. Thank you. Well ladies and gentlemen you've heard it all this evening. W w w Pete caught com is what you haven't heard. That's where you can find the rest of my story. That's where you can find my vision and I can assure you that my vision will not include photo radar.

It won't include taxing you to do the cap. It will not include reestablishing the parking Gestapo's nor will it include selling our assets are at Minnis assets for less than what they're worth. So please go to my Web site. You'll find out all about Pete and I wish you a very good night. Thank you. Thanks. John Carroll Jr.. I would like the citizens of Anchorage to ask this question before they go to the polls on Tuesday. Do I want a mayor who will tell it like it is or do I want a mayor who will continue to lead Anchorage down the primrose path with pie in the sky rhetoric. If your answer is the former then I would certainly appreciate your vote on Tuesday. Thank you. Thanks John Kerry race Joe. Thank you ladies and gentlemen. Thank you cascade. Channel 7 for allowing us to come here this evening. W w w dot race Jenns dot com. I'd like to say ladies and gentlemen we currently have on April 4th a window of opportunity to change the direction that our current government is taking the city of Anchorage.

As mayor I would like to improve the leadership and improve education so parents don't have to raise funds for their children's art classes at school and also improve our road services and look at our economic development as your mayor. I'll guarantee these things to you. They can read all quick closing cover. Well Anchorage you certainly have a choice in this election. You have a bunch politicians who you know well. You've seen them work before. You have four people here who have no political prior political experience you have three with little or no name recognition and you have two that are registered nonpartisan and you have one with over 20 years of experience in government. I've got all those categories except the politician. Why don't you make a choice this time and show these guys that you're tired of what they've been doing that for somebody else. Thank you. Thanks Rita hall Jack Frost. Three things I want you to remember. We need to lower property taxes. We want to prevent the imposition of any new taxes and we need to use the lever of competition to reduce the costs of our government.

But the question to me really is this. Who is going to do the best job of lowering your taxes. The people who have been on the assembly already from five to nine years and who helped get us to the situation we're in today. Or someone who has new ideas new leadership. I think you know the answer to that question. Thanks Jack Frost they've done a one quick closing comment. Anchorage is facing some big challenges challenges senses reducing property taxes. Excellence in Education better roads and pay equity for women. I bring 13 years of experience in making tough public policy choices and consensus building. I'm a fiscal conservative with a proven record of opposing new taxes and cutting government spending. I will make excellent schools and better roads priorities and I will fix the mess at Lake Otis and tutor. I'm excited about what Anchorage can become and I will bring to the office a mayor a progressive vision of our town's future firmly rooted in our community

just past WW died. Dave Donnelly got to go on there. Thanks. Bob Bell FEIBEL company. Thanks for watching good night. And remember Mayor Bob dot org. I want you to ask yourself as you watch tonight. Who gave you the straightforward answers and who didn't. We need honesty in government. We need good moral leadership and we need a citizen mayor. It's my intent to return to my engineering business after serving as mayor. I'm not looking for a political career. That's my definition of a citizen mayor. If that's what you want Bob Bell on April 4th. Thank you. Thanks Mark baggage. Baggage. Dot com thank you very much Robert. What a night. Over the past several months I've been out talking to folks all across the city and listening to folks in their living room and lunch rooms and board rooms and hearing some great ideas and their hopes and dreams for our city. I'm excited about the future. You know it's not going to be an easy road. We're not always going to agree but if we listen to each other respect each other's view and trust one another we can build a great

city. I'm excited about the future. I would hope and I would appreciate your vote April 4th Tuesday. Thank you very much for this evening. Thanks. There you have the candidates for mayor of Anchorage. The elections next Tuesday the candidates are working Vegas Bob Bell Dave Donnelly Jack Frost Rita hall Grace Jones John Kerry Jr. Pete got Teresa Ohlmeyer and George work. The polls open at 7:00 in the morning if I'm not mistaken and they close at 8:00 o'clock at night. That's next Tuesday April 4th. Our thanks tonight to the League of Women Voters for helping organize reform. And we have tapes available as of this program if you're interested in obtaining one call CAD CAM during weekdays. Just a reminder KSK will provide live election coverage on Tuesday night for running 2000. I'm Robert