Waterbiking

Regulars here know that there will be a bit more than just Waterbiking. 

Our kids gathered on Bainbridge Island last week for a family celebration.  We had a good time in pleasant weather, all the nicer knowing we were missing a week of rain in Anchorage.  The views from my window seat weren't spectacular on the way back yesterday.  As we got to Prince William Sound, we were already told to prep for landing early - trays up, electronics unplugged, etc.  Then the next 20 minutes or so were variations of gray clouds with one brief opening where I could see land below.  That darker stretch is Fire Island, but even parts of it are clouded over.  We did have a smooth landing.  

So I'd been wondering whether I would have decent biking weather to get to my dermatologist appointment today.  The weather app wasn't hopeful last night, but this morning when I opened the shades, there was even sunshine!  My doctor has moved since my last appointment.  He was in the Providence medical high rises.  Now he's in midtown - the modern glassy building on C St. between Northern Lights and Benson.  I noticed the sign in the elevator - Self Cleaning Buttons.  Never noticed a sign like that before.

So here, from Elevator Consultants Solutions:

"Key Highlights

• In today's world, nanoseptic self-cleaning buttons are changing the game for places lots of people touch.
• These innovative buttons clean themselves using nanoseptic technology, so there's no need to use regular cleaners on them.
• The magic behind their cleaning power is a powerful oxidation reaction from mineral crystals that get energy from light you can see.
• This process breaks down nasty stuff like organic contaminants into harmless things such as CO2, making everything safer and cleaner.
• Not only do they work well, but these buttons also last a long time. They're a solid choice for keeping germs at bay.
• With nanoseptic button covers, upgrading those high-touch spots becomes easy and does wonders for public health."

The office takes up the whole 8th floor.  My exam room was on the northeast corner.  I've reserved the room for all future visits.  

And then I was done, with the sun still shining.  So I headed off along C Street to Dowling to pick up the Campbell Creek south trail. 

The water was muddy and  high as it passed under C Street.  I was concerned about what the Arctic underpass would look like. With good reason. A biker and his dog came the other way.  Okay, let's do it.  

I came out the other side with wet feet - I'm guessing it was six or seven inches deep at the deepest point.   So, how is the Minnesota underpass going to be?  

Not as bad as Arctic, but it does go on a bit further on the other side.  

So where the trail ends I decided to go back on Dimond and get back to the trail at C Street. Dimond's
not the nicest biking environment, so I went exploring on Vernye Place, which quickly becomes Della and that connects with Runamuck Place.  

It's only a short block long and Wakefield is a dead end, between Dimond and Campbell Creek.

So back up to Dimond.  The sidewalk deadended near the Minnesota overpass, but a path went down to the bike trail on the other side of the bridge (so I didn't have to go through the puddles again.)  

At Arctic, to avoid the deep water, I went back up to Dimond where I saw this assortment of political signs:

This is why a lot of folks were upset when Matt Shultz pulled out of the US House race.  Here's Independent Bill Hill's sign up with a Sullivan (the Senator, I assume, not Daniel J.)  The Bronson and Church (for Governor) and McGuire and Rasmussen (for Governor}.  All the others are Republicans.  What is he telling Republicans that he's not telling Democrats?  Or does this mean the Republicans really don't like Rep. Nick Begich?

Because I also see Bill Hill signs next to Mary Peltola signs.  If he pulls it off, there will be some upset voters when he picks a side to caucus with.

At C Street, back down to the bike trail and home.  Well one more detour.  I'm sure the underpass at Old Seward Highway will be flooded, so I get off at the new bridge over Campbell Creek - which is 50th and cross Old Seward and get back on the trail on the other side of the bridge.  Sure enough, it's also got lots of water.  Plus it has lots of bumps.  

This is across the creek from the Arctic Road Runner.  

July has only gotten about three inches of rain so far.  While that's three times the normal rainfall, it's not really a lot of rain over three weeks, though much of it probably came this last week.  And I suspect there was more rain in the mountains where the creek originates.  

But I hope these flood zones are on the Municipalities fix list.  

It's dark and cloudy again as I finish this post at 3pm.  

The Anchorage Bike Trails Restore Me

 Writing on politics these days can get one down.  But riding on Anchorage bike trails can restore one's sense of well  being.  Here are some pictures from the last couple of weeks.  

Campbell Creek reflecting the afternoon sun. 

 

A grebe in Westchester Lagoon

A moose off in the distance.  We're about 1/4 mile from a major road in Anchorage.  But on the bike trail, at times like this I feel like I'm in the middle of the wilderness

New goslings huddle  (in the lower right} at the Alaska Native Medical Center (ANMC) campus

The path through the University of Alaska Anchorage

Headed home near Valley of the Moon park about 10 pm.  

For most people dandelions are weeds, but close up, they are amazing.  

On the Campbell Creek trail just west of the Seward Highway.  This is the kind of traffic blockage I don't mind.  

This spot at Goose Lake is always changing and most always spectacular.  

Fresh Greens In Anchorage

 An acquaintance told me about Anchorage Greens.  It's sort of near the Campbell Creek south bike trail, so on my way back, after the moose, and after the Taku Lake, I took the exit to Taku Elementary and on to Old Seward.

Getting across Old Seward on the bike took a while.  It's between Old and New Seward.  This unique food store is on 1207 E. 73rd (but it doesn't go through to Old Seward, so you have to take 72nd.)

(The sun made a few brief appearances yesterday.  You can see the bit of blue sky.  Windy too.)

Inside is a green paradise.  

Here's the hydroponic growing room

And here's Aiden, who also grows mushrooms.  

The link to their site gives more info.

Lake Otis Elementary School Wake

 Back in April I wrote about the School Board meeting when the Board voted to close  Lake Otis, Fire Lake, and Campbell Stem schools.

Tuesday afternoon, Lake Otis Elementary, where I've been volunteering in a third grade class for the last three years, held a wake.  They called it a tribute.  

Lots of folks showed up - alumni, former LO teachers, parents, current students, and folks from the neighborhood.  

 

More people were inside.

And the hallways were lined with boxes teachers and staff have already packed to go to Tudor and Rogers Park schools that seem to be taking most of the Lake Otis students next fall.

There was plenty of pizza.

Sweets

And there was a little bit of healthy food.

Below is Steve Waldron who went to Lake Otis when it opened in 1955!

Here's a picture of all the School Board Members who came.  To be fair, they were at a special school board meeting.  The school didn't have a lot of options though.  It's the last week of school

The musicians had moved into the cafeteria and a lot of the kids were dancing to the music.  

Here's a future student, but probably not at Lake Otis.  I say 'probably' because when enrollments eventually go back up, maybe it will reopen as a local neighborhood school

There were a couple of tables with old yearbooks

I didn't get to find out why this young man was at the event.  I assumed he was an alumnus or the older sibling of a kid at Lake Otis now.  But the opportunity to get the picture happened quickly and I took it.

Anchorage Municipal Election This Week And School Board Decision To Close Schools [Updated]

[UPDATE:  Added two photos just below, and screenshots of voting results for props 1, 9, and 4 at the bottom.]

Basically, the votes counted so far have put candidates for Assembly and School Board who are considered the more liberal candidates ahead.  

Except for Assembly District 4.  

On election night (April 7, 2026), Janice Park was trailing Dave Donley by 89 votes.  But tonight she's moved ahead. 

[UPDATE April 11, 2026:  I remembered that I had pictures of these two candidates.  Donley at the School Board where he argued against closing the schools.  Park at a campaign event for Bill Hill. ]

Dave Donley

Janice Park

The next night (April 8, 2026) Park was trailing Donley by 79 votes

On April 9, 2026. Park was trailing by only 21 votes.  

And tonight, April 10, 2026, Park moved ahead by 21 votes.  There are 60 unresolved votes - presumably these are questioned ballots and I'm sure both candidates will be watching those closely.   

Meanwhile the two school bonds continue to have more no votes than yes votes.  

Proposition 1 is behind by 747 votes.

Proposition 9 is behind by 566 votes.  

I can't help but think that voters, especially parents at schools scheduled to be closed or given to charter schools, were not going to vote for funding for Lake Otis Elementary (to be taken over by the charter German immersion school) or for funding for the Campbell STEM school which is now planned for closure. 

The Board had a financial shortfall to work out.  If these numbers continue, they're going to have a larger shortfall.  They really are out of touch if they didn't see this coming. 

And as I mentioned in the previous post, since all the left leaning candidates beat right leaning candidates, under normal circumstances, the school bonds should have passed.  Bonds for parks and for the performing arts center and the library passed.  

I'd also note that the Police bond looks to be going down to defeat as well.  I don't know what happened there.  Police used to always get their bonds passed.  Is there a new public wariness about the police due to ICE or other issues?  I really have no sense of what is happening there. 

Announced today, the parents of Campbell STEM school have filed suit to keep their school open.  And I heard something about Rilke Schule (the German school) parents not happy about the change.  I don't know how many, but let's see how that plays out.  

And an ironic note - Dave Donley is  one of the two School Board members to vote against closing the schools.  

[UPDATED April 11, 2026:  Here are the April 10 updates for Props 1, 9 (Schools) and 4 (Police)

You can see all the results at the Muni Elections page.

The propositions have a much larger vote count because they are voted on by all Anchorage voters while the Assembly candidates are chosen only by people in their districts.  School Board candidates, while technically in districts, are voted on by all Anchorage voters. ]

School Board: Listening, But Not Hearing the Public [UPDATE 1]

 The Anchorage School Board met last night and in the public hearing time, there were parents there from two schools - Campbell STEM and Hanshew Middle School. 

Campbell Stem parents were complaining one more time about how their school - the only nationally accredited STEM school in Alaska - is scheduled for closure next fall because of budget shortfalls.  But parents raised issues that the numbers weren't really accurate.  They didn't count the five or six preschool classes Campbell has.  And the loss of sixth graders was a problem the Board caused when they moved sixth graders to middle school.  Parents (and one board member) questioned why they had almost no notice about the closure.  It was only announced on Friday of a three day weekend and the meeting was Tuesday.  That is the technical three day notice, but looks more like trying to sneak it past the public.  And there was no time to pass it by the Community Council.  I'm not sure that the Superintendent, who is relatively young and fairly new to Anchorage even understands the importance of Community Councils.  They are in the Anchorage Charter and are intended to keep politicians from doing things behind the local community's back.  

The Hanshew parents were complaining about a school administration that they characterized as secretive, uncooperative, vindictive.  One student (and his mother) complained that the son was suspended as retribution against the mother speaking out against the administration.  Another said the principal thwarted the PTA's efforts to organize parents, raise money for the school, and to help the school in general.  

So we had one school that really likes the school and teachers and program and another that really does not like their school and administration.  Neither felt heard by this board.  

Many years ago, for a TV production class, I made a movie about the closing of the Grandview Gardens Library.  The first half is about how the administration gathered a bunch of numbers which clearly showed it made sense to close the library.  It was too close to Mt. View Library and a new library was opening on Muldoon and the Loussac was opening.  So Grandview clearly should be closed.  

The second half was interviews with the public who used the library and they told with lots of emotion what the library meant to them and how they gathered signatures for a petition and took it to the Assembly after 4th of July weekend and the Assembly agreed to keep it open.  

I used this film as a case study in my graduate public administration classes.  After the first half, I asked students if closing the library was a good decision.  Most students agreed it was.  But then I asked the students the same question at the end of the second half, and many of them changed their minds.  

But there was a sort of appendix in which the head librarian said that after the fact, it turned out that the new Muldoon library attendance numbers were good, Mt. View library numbers were good, and that Grandview Garden library numbers even increased.  So everyone was happy and the planners' predictions didn't pan out.  

I tell this story because I think this is what happened with the School Board.  They got bad news from the State - their budget would continue to get cut.  They tried to figure out how to manage the cuts, and closing three schools was their answer.  It would allow the continuation of some sports.  Two of the closed schools would be taken over by Charter Schools.  

I volunteer in one of the schools that will be taken over by a charter school - Lake Otis.  Lake Otis is a Title 1 school.  It's very diverse and most of the kids get free lunch and breakfast because they come from low income families.  I'm guessing the parents were not at the school board last night because the parents aren't as politically savvy, and because many of them could be targets of ICE if they showed up in protest.  And if ICE isn't paying attention that closely in Anchorage, it's still a reasonable fear.  

I also suspect that members of the School Board had private meetings with the Charter Schools that will take over Lake Otis and Fire Lake.  How else could they know that the parents of those charter schools would want to move to the closed schools?  Why didn't that happen in public.  It's been publicly stated that the Rilke Schule, the German immersion school, had previously been paying about $600,000 in rent for the building they used to be in.  These are NOT parents with serious financial problems.  And they are not diverse.  Who negotiated and why was that not public?  Or at least publicly disclosed after the fact?

There are a lot of unhappy parents.  Both Lake Otis and Campbell Stem had been named in bond packages recently.  Voters approved the bonds because they wanted the improvements to those schools (and others.)  But now the Board is going to divert those funds to other projects than what people voted for.  

I'm rushing this post, because I want to post it before the Anchorage election results tonight.  I believe that the Board has grossly not listened to the public, to its students and their parents.  They've made decisions based on purely 'rational' number crunching (and probably on some side dealing with the two charter schools) and ignored the heart and spirit of the community.  

And I suspect that Bond proposal #! - for school bonds - is going to fail, in part because of the behavior of the Board in closing these schools.  There's a second bond for funding teachers.  It's a one time payment.  Will that go down too?  I don't know.  

School Board - Carl Jacobs in particular.  If the bonds fail, it's on you.  You shoved these closures through.  Your numbers - many of which the public has heard about in general, but not specifically, seem packaged to get what you decided was best for the public. And, I understand, how you could reason yourselves into this.  But a bizarre side effect of our seriously disturbed president's war on Iran, is that Alaska's income this year is going to go up, because of the increase in the price of oil.  And there will probably be money to keep Lake Otis and Campbell Stem and Fire Lake going for one more year.  And after that we will have a new governor.  

And there are sources of money other than the State that School Board members could have pursued.  We didn't hear about those efforts.  Extraordinary times call for extraordinary imagination and effort, not tired number crunching.  

OK,  I'm done before the first of tonight's  election numbers are in.  

UPDATE 8:40pm - I was wrong.  The first vote count was already in when I posted this.  With 17% of the vote counted and posted at 8:12, the school bonds were both losing.  It's close.  

Bond Prop 1 is yes 49.17% to no 49.49% (yes - 20,708; no 20,831).  

Bond Prop 9 is yes 48.94% to no 49.84% (yes - 20,600; no 20,978)

All the other bonds are passing, with only one - the special police area Bond - even close.  49.79% yes and 47.76% no. 

I'd note that 17% of thte vote, this early in the evening, is a pretty high turnout.  We've had many Municipal elections where the turnout wasn't much higher.  But turnout has been up significantly since the Municipality went to (mostly) mail in elections.  Last year (2025) the final turnout was only 25%.  Mostly because the regular polling places are not open, just a few places, lie City Hall, Loussac Library, and one in Eagle River.  There are drop boxes throughout the Municipality.  And I suspect the early reporting is due to early voting.  

I'd also note that that most of the more liberal candidates are leading, so the school bonds, in normal times, should be ahead.  One exception is in my district.  At this point relatively conservative Dave Donley is slightly ahead of more liberal  Janice Park (47.03% to 45.72% - 3,196 votes to 3,017 votes).  Donley has signs up all over while I have yet to see a sign for Park.  And Donley was one of two School Board members (he's termed out  this year) who voted against the school closures.  

But that doesn't mean these early numbers will hold.  We'll see.  

Government At Work (No Irony Here)

Break up has arrived in Anchorage.  It waited until almost April this year, but finally, the messy harbinger of warmer weather, of white replaced by green, is with us. 

Below is a picture of the small lake at the end of my street.  (The Municipality had already sent in plows to scrape the ice off the roads in our subdivision.  They even (for the first time) posted No Parking signs every hundred feet or so in the ice berms the day before.  

So the streets were in good shape on April 1.  It was just at the last 100 feet  to the main road where things were bad.  I had to walk through this obstacle course on my way to and from my volunteer gig at my local elementary school. 

 

Looking from the other side of the lake and ice field.

On Tuesday, March 31, when I got back home,  I called the Street Maintenance Department and explained the problem.

On Thursday, April 2, when I was walking to school, there was a big truck with hoses at the corner, and on my way home, the water was mostly gone, but not the ice.

But by later in the day, the ice was gone too and the sewer drain had been cleared so newly melting snow had a place to go.  If you look closely at the photo below you can see the drain on the left just below the middle - the black rectangle.  

This is a kind of responsiveness we haven't seen in Anchorage for a while.  

People tend to notice government when it doesn't work.  When it's working fine, we take it for granted and don't notice the mostly invisible work being done to keep things running smoothly.  

So I just want to thank Mayor Suzanne LaFrance's administration for being responsive and clearing the streets.  

I'd also note that during the winter, the sidewalk snow plows along Lake Otis - at least between Tudor and Northern Lights - were out early after every snow storm and making a walkable space for pedestrians.