A controversial – and what some called confusing – ordinance was narrowly voted down at the November 20 Ketchikan Gateway borough assembly meeting. The ordinance sought to bar assembly members from voting on outside committees. Some assembly members said the ordinance was really part of Ketchikan’s ongoing debate about banning books at the local library.
Ordinance 2029 first came up at a borough assembly meeting on November 6.
Mayor Rodney Dial brought the ordinance to the table. It proposed to limit assembly members from voting on outside committees – committees that the mayor appoints them to.
Mayor Rodney Dial said the ordinance would serve to make the appointments non-political and clear up confusion about the roles of assembly members in these outside committees.
“In the standing committees that we have that you have been assigned to tonight, you work with a group, you produce a work product, you bring that back to the elected body, the body debates it and approves it or doesn’t approve it. So, us mayors will not be making appointments to these advisory committees based upon who they think agrees with them or not. And that’s really what I saw as the benefit of this,” Dial said.
Members of the borough assembly serve on four outside boards in agencies that aren’t directly part of the borough. This includes the University of Alaska Southeast, Ketchikan Visitors Bureau, the Ketchikan Public Library, and Ketchikan Museums. As assembly member Sharli Arntzen put it, we wear many hats in Alaska.
At the second meeting in November on the ordinance, the issue took up the bulk of the three-hour meeting. Dial said having assembly representation on these boards is important. But his position wasn’t that cut and dry.
“Go advise. Go participate. Bring that information back,” he said. But he also said his original intention with the ordinance was to increase assembly oversight in operations of the library, specifically. “When this initiative initially came forward, I was looking for a stronger solution that would have been that since we provide funding to the library, we should look for a way to secure a say in the actions in the administration of that library,” Dial explained to the assembly.
The library gets 40 percent of its funding from the borough. The rest comes from the city, which manages the department.
The discussion on the ordinance, at both November meetings, seemed to center on the Ketchikan Public Library. According to the mayor, a community member complained about the appointments to the board. According to Borough Attorney Glenn Brown, “there was some concern about assembly members serving on these advisory committees outside and there was uncertainty whether they were there advancing a borough position, or they’re on their own behalf, expressing their own opinions. That’s my understanding.”
Mayor Dial said he reviewed library advisory board minutes going back years and found the complaint valid.
Three members of the library advisory board spoke to the assembly.
“Given all this confusion, I think it’s time to make this issue clear,” Deborah Simon, a local teacher, told the dais. She supported the ordinance. She said there is no way for assembly members to separate themselves from their roles on the outside committees.
“To some students and parents, I will always be a teacher. And to some constituents, you will always be assembly members. You need to make your actions match your role. Serve on the outside agency board or committee when you’re not on the assembly. Consult the assembly before commenting, or before voting or serve without voting as this ordinance says,” Simon said.
Earlier this year, Simon spoke in favor of removing a sex education book from the library’s teen section. She said it was obscene and pornographic. The town erupted in controversy over the location of the book, but ultimately, after a series of votes at the city council, it was moved from the teen to the adult section. At an advisory board meeting on April 12, about a dozen people pushed to have Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being Human by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan removed from the teen section or from the library completely. They said it was inappropriate for teens.
Assembly member Grant Echohawk was outspoken against moving the book. He’s the assembly member appointed to the library advisory board. He argued that information and knowledge about consent and respect helps young people make good decisions.
In the last meeting, Echohawk said the assembly was dancing around what this issue was – and he said it wasn’t a public service.
“But the other piece of this is I keep hearing that, that we don’t want to make this a political issue. But, you know, I personally feel that if we can have somebody go to a member of government to then start the machinery of government to make these types of changes without public outcry – So by the very fact that it was brought forward in this manner, means it already has become political,” said Echohawk. “And I think that the exclamation point on that fact is when we have someone at this table imply that if this doesn’t go the way that they like, then they’re going to keep that in mind the next time they make a committee assignment.”
In the end, the ordinance was voted down by slim margin.
The borough vote follows a recent letter by Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor sent to schools and libraries across the state about sex- and gender-related regulations. In these letters, Taylor said that “Gender identity coursework necessarily involves topics related to reproductive organs” and that minors shouldn’t have access to “books that have graphic depictions of sexual content.”
Assembly members Arntzen, Bynum, and Palmer voted in favor of relinquishing their ability to vote in other committees. They were in the minority by one vote.
The proposed ordinance that failed comes ahead of another pending book challenge facing the Ketchikan Public Library. The challenge, which concerns the book Red Hood by Elana Arnold, is not yet at the point of public hearing. Thus, it is not expected to be on the agenda for the upcoming library advisory board meeting in January.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story stated that a Borough Assembly member was actively serving on the Southeast Alaska Subsistence Regional Advisory Council (SEARAC) – an outside board. This was based on outdated source material. At the time of this writing, there are no voting Ketchikan Gateway Borough assembly members serving on SEARAC.
