Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading.
We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription.
Your current subscription does not provide access to this content. Please use the button below to manage your account.
Sunny. High -14F. Winds light and variable..
Clear skies. Low -19F. Winds light and variable.
Updated: December 29, 2024 @ 8:47 am
Mayoral candidates Grier Hopkins, left, and John Coghill Jr. review the final Fairbanks North Star Borough election results after the election counting board finished counting absentee and question ballots on Tuesday, Oct. 8. Hopkins won in a narrow lead over Coghill.
Coldfoot Environmental Services heavy equipment are posed during a Polaris Building demolition ceremony in downtown Fairbanks on April 5.
North Pole Mayor Mike Welch talks to the Interior delegation Nov. 7, 2023.
Assemblymember Barbara Haney discusses an ordinance she sponsored during the Assembly meeting on Thursday, July 25, 2024. Haney was censured and fined a dollar later in the night over an technical ethics code violation after resident Kristen Schupp filed a complaint over a Feb. 20 letter to the editor Haney wrote.
Mayoral candidates Grier Hopkins, left, and John Coghill Jr. review the final Fairbanks North Star Borough election results after the election counting board finished counting absentee and question ballots on Tuesday, Oct. 8. Hopkins won in a narrow lead over Coghill.
Coldfoot Environmental Services heavy equipment are posed during a Polaris Building demolition ceremony in downtown Fairbanks on April 5.
North Pole Mayor Mike Welch talks to the Interior delegation Nov. 7, 2023.
Assemblymember Barbara Haney discusses an ordinance she sponsored during the Assembly meeting on Thursday, July 25, 2024. Haney was censured and fined a dollar later in the night over an technical ethics code violation after resident Kristen Schupp filed a complaint over a Feb. 20 letter to the editor Haney wrote.
“All politics are local,” Fairbanks North Star Borough Assemblymember David Guttenberg told the News-Miner after he filed for re-election earlier this year.
Local politics and issues have had some local impacts for 2024, including a tight borough mayoral race between two former Interior legislators, an Assemblymember ethics code ruling over a minor technical violation, and the removal of North Pole’s mayor following a candy cane light pole debacle and questions of mental cogency.
This year also laid the foundation for Fairbanks’ future — and transformation of the downtown skyline — as the 71-year-old Polaris Building finally started to be torn down after years of planning, fund-seeking and delays.
Tight borough mayor’s race
As 2024 got underway, the borough mayor’s race gained a life of its own as Bryce Ward ended his last year and was due to be termed out. At first, it was a field of five candidates, including Savannah Fletcher, Aaron Lojewski, Robert Shields and former legislators Grier Hopkins and John Coghill Jr.
Education, the borough budget, economic development and other issues were front and center throughout the race.
Fletcher, then the Assembly presiding officer, dropped out in May to run for Senate District R after Sen. Click Bishop announced his retirement. Lojewski, a former Assemblymember, bowed out in July after a joint poll between him and Coghill strongly favored the seasoned former legislator.
This left Coghill and Hopkins as the top candidates, each of whom had amassed a sizable war chest. Shields, a nonprofit and green energy entrepreneur, was a distant choice after three past failed attempts for borough mayor.
Forums between the candidates showed shared interests and concerns over education, the borough’s housing, business, energy, budget and outmigration concerns but had different approaches. Coghill acknowledged he was more conservative than Hopkins, who had ambitious goals tempered by realistic budget challenges. They ran cordial campaign against one another.
The Oct. 1 municipal election day results were too narrow, with Hopkins having a narrow 43-vote lead over Coghill. The final question and absentee ballot count the following week decided the election in Hopkins’ favor, but only by a 154-vote lead.
Hopkins’s message the night of the final tally: “Let’s get to work, get ready to build up our town and unite it. Let’s bring it together and find ways to solve problems.”
Going into 2025, Hopkins has acknowledged a tough budget awaits him, including local education funding and hard choices over services.
North Pole mayor removed from office
City politics in North Pole soured in June, ending with Mayor Michael Welch’s removal by the city council over concerns about his mental capacity. Welch was four months from being termed out and had filed to run for the House District 33 seat against incumbent Mike Prax.
Concerns about Welch’s mental acuity started with a bitter sticker shock over the cost of repainting the small town’s iconic candy cane street lights, which is done perhaps once every 12 years. The contractor was provided with the wrong measurements for the light poles after a city staff member failed to consider the light poles’ curved features. The cost of the two-phase project skyrocketed from $102,000 to $146,000 and required two change orders.
As a strong mayor city, Welch was North Pole’s chief executive officer and was responsible for its administration.
Welch signed off on the first change order in September 2023 as it hit his mayoral approval limit. The second change order required city council approval — something that was never brought to them.
However, during the entire process, Welch was recovering from a series of concussions he’d suffered in August 2023. He was cleared for limited duty — a few hours a week — in September and didn’t return to full-time until April.
When the North Pole City Council was asked to approve a $50,000 transfer to cover the street light project’s remaining costs, some city councilmembers balked at the price. During questioning by Councilmembers Anton Keller and Larry Terch, Welch admitted there were some gaps in his memory when he signed the change orders. That triggered an independent human resources investigation and a June 17 executive session that concluded with Welch’s removal from office pending proof that any disability or inability ceased or until the municipal election. The vote was unanimous, which included Welch.
Councilmember Chanrda Clack took over as mayor for Welch’s remaining term. Welch, meanwhile, withdrew from the House District 33 race and immediately disconnected his cell phone. Attempts by reporters to reach him failed.
Terch told the News-Miner that week that Welch’s removal “was the best decision for the city and all its residents.” In October, voters tapped Terch to be the new mayor.
Assembly ethics woes
Assemblymember Babara Haney faced an ethics violation charge after Fairbanks resident Kristen Schupp filed a complaint with the Assembly Ethics Board in February over a letter to the editor Haney penned questioning certain statements made by another Assemblymember at an Assembly meeting.
Schupp charged that Haney failed to declare her letter her statement and not that of the entire Assembly. The ethics code requires Assemblymembers to clearly state that public statements or letters are their personal opinions.
Following a months-long deliberation, the Ethics Board concluded Haney had committed a technical “gotcha” violation. However, the board recommended that no penalty be levied against Haney; instead, they recommended additional ethics training.
Once the board determines a violation, the Assembly must hold a hearing to consider findings and hear testimony from all sides. However, the borough code requires the Assembly to issue a penalty relevant to the severity of the violation.
Before the hearing, Assemblymembers each announced potential conflicts of interest, with the primary one coming from Savannah Fletcher, the presiding officer. Fletcher acknowledged Schupp was one of the largest donors in her campaign for Senate District R. Haney was asked if she opposed Fletcher participating in the ruling; Haney declined to challenge but stated that Fletcher could face political backlash.
Haney defended her letter as her right under the First Amendment and challenged any penalty that would infringe on that right. However, she also acknowledged during questioning that she hadn’t attended certain training for new Assemblymembers.
Schupp called for Haney to be removed from office, one of the harshest punishments available. She accused Haney of spreading misinformation and being hostile to members of the public, among other things.
Haney was ultimately censured and fined a dollar for her violation following a divided vote. The decision caused a snowball effect, including a resignation by Brett Rotermund over the punishment; Rotermund rescinded his resignation days later and vowed to overhaul the ethics code.
Haney appealed the ruling to the Alaska Superior Court, where it remains pending a hearing or resolution.
Rotermund later introduced an ordinance proposing an ethics code overhaul, which was replaced by a substitute. It was sent to the Ethics Board for further review, which came away with several suggestions. The primary recommendation was to give the Assembly flexibility in whether or not to issue a penalty.
Three Assemblymembers opposed that recommended revision, noting that Assemblymembers must be held to a higher standard as elected officials. Four agreed with the revision, including Rotermund and Haney, citing that it would avoid future issues and that a rational Assembly would still consider serious violations.
The ordinance failed to pass, despite four Assemblymembers supporting it. Borough code requires a minimum of five votes for an ordinance to pass; two members were not present. A motion for immediate reconsideration failed, effectively killing the ordinance.
Polaris Building’s end nears
In April, Fairbanks, state, and federal officials broke the champagne glass on the once iconic building, now a blighted eyesore, heralding the beginning of its end. The building had once been a residential and business hub since it opened in 1952, but by the late 1980s, its heyday had passed. Its fate was sealed in 2001 when 800,000 gallons of water flooded its basement.
By the end of October, the 72-year-old Polaris Building was four floors shorter and no longer the tallest structure in Fairbanks city limits. Saw-wielding contractors effectively dismantled the building floor by floor, one concrete slab at a time.
Efforts by an Anchorage developer to revitalize the building never gained traction and the city condemned the building in 2012. David Pruhs formed the Polaris Working Group to determine the building’s fate.
The city ultimately secured $10 million in federal funding through Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s office in 2022. In 2023, Pruhs, now Fairbanks mayor, secured an additional $3 million from the state of Alaska to cover additional costs.
Demolishing the building required precise planning; environmental studies determined it contained hazardous contaminations and chemicals that prevented the debris from being dumped in Alaska landfills. Most of the concrete and excised materials need to be shipped to a specialized landfill in the Lower 48.
It’s being dismantled from the top down due to the contaminants and its immediate proximity to other downtown Fairbanks businesses and the Rabinowitz Courthouse.
“If you blew the building up, how would you contain the dust?” City Engineer Pristash said in October. “Maybe it sounded like a good idea 50 years ago, but with the instrumentation and knowledge of contaminants we have today, it’s not an option.”
Coldfoot Environmental Services demolished the annex in 2023 and soon after began gutting the 11-story tower’s insides. By June 2024, it was a hollowed-out shell and Coldfood crews soon started removing sections from the top down.
By mid-October, it was four floors shorter. Meanwhile, Pruhs had tasked a consultant to do a deep dive analysis on the potential uses for the site, along with a market and economic analysis. The Fairbanks City Council has the final say, including the sale of the property; however, Pruhs and many councilmembers see the site as a ripe location for mixed-use commercial and housing.
“Whatever we do here is going to be ground zero of Fairbanks redevelopment,” Pruhs said in April. “This has to be of such a style and quality with an intermix of uses that grabs people.”
Contact reporter Jack Barnwell at 907-459-7587 or jbarnwell@newsminer.com.
Your browser is out of date and potentially vulnerable to security risks.
We recommend switching to one of the following browsers:
