Frontiersman top stories of 2020: January-June

MAT-SU — The 2020 calendar year brought highs, lows, a global pandemic and a renewed desire for accurate, timely local news coverage from Frontiersman readers spread all across the country.

The residents of the Valley had more than enough practice in dealing with disasters by the time COVID-19 arrived in Alaska in March. Throughout the year, the editorial staff at the Frontiersman continued working from home, conducting interviews over the phone and grinding through hours of audio to be able to safely produce coverage of local issues from our home grown reporters. Here is a short summary of the top story that the Frontiersman reported on during each month of the 2020 year. Thank you for reading, and we will continue to work to print the best stories about Valley issues headed into 2021.

January

While seemingly all humans experienced some sort of disaster in 2020, January began with a literal declaration of disaster from Mat-Su Borough Vern Halter. On Dec. 21, 2019, ice began to jam up at the Deneki Creek Bridge in Willow. Over the following weeks, water rescue and emergency crews would run the gamut of community assistance. In responding to the needs of the community cut off from their only egress by flooding that iced over the entire subdivision, water rescue personnel took as many as 20 trips per day between homes, delivering human food, supplies, clothing, and even yak food. A temperature change of 50 degrees in the span of days changed problems but did not solve them, turning ice into flowing water through homes in the area. During the following months, Mayor Halter has placed priority on reconstructing the Shirley Towne Bridge, which was destroyed in previous flooding and would have provided a second exit for residents during the Deneki Creek Bridge ice jam and flooding last winter.

February

Hundreds of second amendment supporters showed up at the Mat-Su Borough Building early this year in a protest of ordinance 20-025 that eventually passed in November, regulating educational and non-profit shooting ranges. The ending of the public comment period for the legislation brought hundreds of gun owners, many carrying one or more firearms on their person, to the Dorothy Swanda Jones Borough building parking lot for a rally. Later in February, over 50 people spoke on the ordinance with more than 40 in opposition.

“We are the militia. We the people are the militia,” said Scott Vukich.

The ordinance sprung from a resolution passed the the Fishhook Community Council and was forwarded to the Mat-Su Borough Assembly after a neighbor dispute concerning discharge of firearms in a residential area.

“We are not in any way shape or form trying to take away any rights granted to us by the second amendment or by state laws,” said MSB Development Services Manager Alex Strawn in February.

Following the November elections, Assemblyman George McKee voted in favor of Ordinance 20-025, only to move to reconsider his vote with newly elected members on the Assembly. Reconsideration passed, but Mayor Vern Halter’s Veto withstood the four votes on the Assembly opposed to Ordinance 20-025.

March

In the same week that Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy announced the first positive case of COVID-19 in Alaska and on the same day that the Mat-Su Borough announced they were declaring a disaster due to COVID-19, Alaska’s lone Congressman spoke to a gathered mass of about 50 people for a joint event between the Palmer and Wasilla Chambers of Commerce at the Mat-Su Senior Services Building.

“This beer virus I call it, they call it a coronavirus I call it a beer virus how do you like that. It attacks our senior citizens. Now I’m one of you. I still say we have to as a nation, as a state to go forth with our everyday activities,” said Congressman Don Young.

Young later denied that he ever made those comments during a press conference with Dunleavy before admitting that he was unaware of the severity of COVID-19 at the time. Young, 87, won reelection against Independent candidate Alyse Galvin in November. Since receiving national backlash for his comments in March made to a crowd of seniors, those oftentimes most vulnerable to severe symptoms during infection with the coronavirus, Young announced in November that he had tested positive for COVID-19. Young suffered severe symptoms resulting in a stay in a hospital in Anchorage due to his infection and later recovered.

April

The Mat-Su Borough School District School Board made five books more popular among Mat-Su Borough School District Students than they had ever planned with a 5-2 vote in April. The School Board voted to remove Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings during an April meeting. Following the vote and subsequent community backlash that extended each of their meetings in the spring with marathon public comment sections, the School Board later delayed their decision until the spring of 2021 on English curriculum materials. The Mat-Su Valley rallied around providing the books to students who wanted to be able to read them outside of the classroom, including Fireside Books, Portugal The Man, and a local book club dedicated to reading the five books that were not banned from classrooms, but removed from curriculum by the school board, if only temporarily.

We’re not talking about something that’s mind expanding or something that’s going to help anybody learn any better, we’re talking about things that frankly would not be something that would be acceptable in a professional environment which is what the parents expect out of the schools,” said School Board Member Jim Hart at the April 22 meeting.

The school board had also voted to remove ‘The Learning Network’ as a teacher resource provided from the New York Times. See more about the MSBSD in October.

May

After Mat-Su Borough School District students were released for Spring Break, some of them never went back to their school buildings. The COVID-19 pandemic changed education in countless ways, including changing the way students and education supporters in the community get to celebrate the accomplishments of students at the end of their time in public schools.

“Wow, this isn’t the graduation we anticipated is it? But nonetheless, we did it,” Houston High School Valedictorian Eli Knapp said.

MSBSD educators Brian Mead and John Notestine helped to organize and produce 13 individual graduation ceremonies that were broadcast at the time graduations would have normally occurred for the 13 MSBSD High Schools. Despite being unable to pack into dark, damp rooms to physically celebrate MSBSD grads, each and every name of each and every graduate was still called over the livestream.

June

In the wake of the death of 46-year-old George Floyd under the knee of Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, national outcry for police reform and acknowledgement of systemic racist injustices reached the streets of Palmer. On June 6, 18-year-old 2020 Palmer High School Graduate Aurora Till marched with nearly 2,000 people of all shape, size and color in remembrance of those lost to racist police injustice.

“We’re here so that every person regardless of race is treated the same, is looked at the same, because of what I wear because of the skin color because of my hair, I should not be looked at different,” said Reggie Drummond, a 2020 CTHS graduate.

Prior to the afternoon of June 6 where nearly 2,000 people marched through the streets of Palmer asking for change, numerous events sparked online outrage. Palmer Police Chief Dwayne Shelton was placed on administrative leave earlier that week due to comments made online and a second amendment advocacy group confused those planning to attend the rally by taking statements from Palmer Mayor Edna DeVries out of context and posting them to Facebook. Despite concerns about safety during the event, no direct acts of physical violence from any of the protesters was witnessed. Later that month, city of Palmer Manager John Moosey announced that all city of Palmer staff including Police Officers would receive training in implicit bias, discrimination and sexual harassment.