Willow assembly candidates have history of conflict

WILLOW — When voters here hit the polls Oct. 6, they could decide the latest round in a personal conflict stretching back years.

The two candidates for the Mat-Su Borough Assembly District 7 seat being vacated by term-limit constrained assemblyman Vern Halter, Randall Kowalke and Doyle Holmes, were on opposite sides of a landlord-tenant dispute that morphed into a 2012 slander lawsuit. The lawsuit involved elevated levels of arsenic, a temperamental toilet and numerous claims of mismanagement countered by accusations of mental illness, sexual deviancy, and damages totaling $420,000.

The slander suit eventually cost Willow Area Seniors’ insurance company $50,000.

The lawsuit

The Willow Area Seniors’ insurance company paid to resolve a lawsuit brought by Randall and Karen Kowalke against Willow Area Seniors, Inc. in February 2012. The lawsuit alleged Willow Area Seniors, Inc. (WASI), Doyle Holmes and BJ Eldred had caused the Kowalkes a loss of rental value due to a refusal by WASI to fill maintenance requests. Holmes is the treasurer for the board of directors and Eldred is the board’s secretary.

The issue started in 2009, when Randall and Karen Kowalke moved into Willow Parkway, one of two senior housing units managed by Willow Area Seniors. Construction on the unit had just completed, and the Kowalkes were looking for a temporary residence until they could buy a house, Randall Kowalke said in a phone interview Friday.

In a videotaped deposition, Randall Kowalke described several issues he and his wife alleged, including arsenic levels in the water that exceed maximum EPA levels by 20 percent. Holmes later obtained a letter from the EPA stating that the well was a Class “C” system, meaning federal regulations didn’t apply.

When residents — the Kowalkes were the only people named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit — met informally with Holmes to talk about the levels, Kowalke testified in his deposition that Holmes didn’t address their concerns.

“And he made a comment that the tenants were old and were going to die anyway?” the depositioner asked.

“Yes,” Kowalke answers.

“And those are as far as you can recall his exact words?”

“Yes,” Kowalke repeated.

Other issues included a toilet in the apartment’s commons area that would splash water on users, creating what one depositioner jokingly called “a bidet effect,” incorrect labels on electrical meters (resulting in incorrect bills), incorrectly installed heater elements in the Kowalkes’ bathroom, and mud in the unit’s water supply – which apparently made it into the couple’s coffee.

Among the other complaints in the lawsuit were that a convicted sex offender had signed up for the sex offender registry using the facility as his home address. Kowalke said in his deposition he’d never met the offender on the grounds, but had discovered the apartment complex had been used as the man’s registered address on the sex offender registry.

Perhaps the most startling allegation leveled in the Kowalkes’ lawsuit is a list of “oral or written false statements, made with the intention to impeach Plaintiffs’ honesty, integrity, virtue, and/or reputations, and has continued to publish such false statements despite requests to cease and desist,” according to the amended complaint. The list includes statements the Kowalkes say Holmes made that Mr. Kowalke was abusive toward Mrs. Kowalke, that Randall Kowalke suffered from and took medication for mental illness, that he had committed a crime, that the couple have marital problems, that Mr. Kowalke is a sexual deviant.

At one point in his deposition, Mr. Kowalke denied each of the accusations Holmes allegedly made.

Partial Dismissal and Settlement

In an affidavit answering the Kowalkes’ complaint, Holmes said that between 2009, when the coupule began living at the Willow Parkway address, and 2012, when the lawsuit was eventually settled, the Kowalkes generated a folder of complaints a foot thick, which compared with roughly 20 pages of complaints from other residents. Holmes also disputed that the Willow Area Seniors group was liable for defects in construction, and instead blamed contractor Howdie, Inc., of Wasilla.

The defendants also answered with a 35-page refutation of each of the claims and a request for partial summary judgment authored by attorney Jim Wilkson.

“This is a lawsuit with much bark and little bite,” he wrote. “Plaintiffs pretend to be victims of a maniacal landlord forced to live in a rundown senior housing facility due to the wily antics of Mr. Holmes. The truth is that the plaintiffs live in a well-maintained apartment unit, and the plaintiffs (particularly Mr. Kowalke) and Mr. Holmes simply don’t like each other. Plaintiffs are essentially chronic complainers who cannot be pleased.”

For example, Wilkson wrote, the sex offender was the stepson of a fellow resident who had stayed overnight in the apartment a few times.

The sex offender “does not live at the complex,” Wilkson wrote. “He is not on the lease.”

The offender’s current registered address is in Anchorage. The step-father has since died.

Neither Kowalke nor the man’s relative had told Willow Area Seniors about it until the lawsuit, Wilkson said.

“There is nothing illegal or in violation of the terms of the lease to allow another tenant to have an occasional house guest who is a sex offender,” he wrote.

Officials with Willow Area Seniors had also installed an Alaska DEC-permitted arsenic filtration system for each apartment and (eventually) the complex’s commons area, re-installed a bathroom heating element and changed the labels to ensure correct billing Wilkson wrote.

On July 24, 2012 presiding judge Gregory Heath called Wilkson’s legal brief “well-advised,” and dismissed all claims but the slander and defamation claims and a single claim related to the muddy coffee.

“There are either no genuine issues of material fact as to the claims addressed in the motion for partial summary judgment, there has been a complete failure of proof concerning an essential element of the nonmoving party’s (Kowalke’s) claims, and/or the plaintiffs’ claims for recovery of damages is merely speculative or conjectural,” he wrote.

Heath ordered the majority of the claims dismissed with prejudice, meaning they can’t be tried again in a court of law.

On Aug. 23, 2012, the parties settled out of court. Randall Kowalke later provided a copy of a check stub from Wasilla Area Seniors’ insurance company showing $50,000 had been paid for “bodily injury.”

Lingering Ire

The lawsuit has resurfaced on the campaign trail at least twice. Holmes mentioned it without prompting in a profile interview for the District 7 assembly campaign. Claims about the lawsuit also surfaced briefly during a forum for the candidates, when Holmes obliquely mentioned the lawsuit during his closing remarks. Kowalke had not mentioned the lawsuit until being asked about by a reporter shortly after the AARP candidate forum.

Asked how he viewed the lawsuit three years later, Holmes said it was frivolous, and that he didn’t believe any of Kowalke’s claims had merit. Holmes also denied he’d ever told elderly residents they were old and going to die soon, and denied several of the statements in the slander section of the Kowalkes’ lawsuit.

Holmes accused Kowalke of bringing up the lawsuit as a campaign tactic.

“These guys always tell half-truths, okay? Always,” he said. “He’s losing in the election and he’s now attacking us on a personal level, and that’s all this is about.”

The motivation for the original lawsuit was greed and ambition, Holmes said. Kowalke had wanted to be on the WASI board, Holmes said.

“They (the Kowalkes) were after our money,” he said. “We actually had money, and so the chairman that was supporting him, she resigned and then she asked us to reconsider that and we said no.”

The chairwoman at the time was trying to take over maintenance responsibility, Holmes said.

“They forget to tell you that their ultimate goal was to get at our money,” he said. “Nothing more. Greed. And so they got thwarted.”

Holmes admitted he’d accused Randall Kowalke of abusing Karen Kowalke, but denied saying that his opponent suffered from a mental illness, that he’d said Randall Kowalke took medication for a mental illness, or that he’d said Kowalke had committed a crime. Asked about subsequent allegations listed in the Kowalkes’ complaint, Holmes accused a Frontiersman reporter of supporting Kowalke, then abruptly ended the interview.

“You won’t put my comment in the paper, that I consider you right now from your comments nothing more than a shill for the candidate that’s losing,” he said. “You won’t put that in the paper, will you? No, you won’t. Conversation’s over.”

The lawsuit was inevitable, Kowalke said.

“I don’t know that there was anything we could have done to stop it,” he said.

Kowalke also repeated claims of inadequate maintenance at the facility. After the arsenic filter fight, Kowalke began to hear rumors that he was mentally ill.

“Other than running for office, I haven’t shown any signs of mental illness,” Kowalke quipped.

Holmes was the original target of the lawsuit, and the Willow Area Seniors were caught up in the crossfire, Kowalke said.

“We tried to get a class action, and everybody but one gal was afraid,” he said.

Despite the at-times intense nature of the personal conflict, the seniors ultimately paid. Kowalke blames Holmes.

“What it did to the seniors was, I’m sure increase their insurance rate,” he said. “Would I have gone back if I’d-a known we were going to get a settlement?”

Kowalke paused.

“I don’t know how else we could have got him to stop,” he said. “I mean, I guess if he would have swore that he would never talk bad about us again, and since he was a pathological liar, that wouldn’t have been too comforting. I thought maybe stinging him, and he was the one who had to take credit for it. I haven’t spent a lot of time considering how badly I wronged the seniors. I never did feel like it was the seniors, it was Doyle Holmes, it was his option. If he would have been innocent and forthright, he should have defended himself, but he hid behind the seniors.”

Taken alone, the issues in the complaint are small potatoes, Kowalke said. Taken together, the issues were serious, Kowalke said.

“It was a compendium of things,” he said.

Kowalke said he was asked to serve as a board member by another resident at the apartment, who told him Holmes wasn’t opposed. When Kowalke showed up at a meeting to see about it, Holmes told board members Alaska Housing and HUD forbade it, and then engineered Kowalke’s sponsor’s removal from the board.

“That was my only encounter with potential governance and I had no desire,” he said.

Kowalke hopes voters will take his side.

“I think they’re going to see that Mr. Holmes didn’t take very good care of the seniors, and we didn’t get our day in court, and an expensive insurance company law firm thought there was enough merit to this to give us $50,000, after our attorney told us on a couple occasions you can’t win a slander lawsuit in Alaska,” he said. “We certainly didn’t get all that money because we had a toilet overflow or because we had to mow the lawn or something else. The elements of this they were concerned about and eventually took over our focus was the slander.”

After the lawsuit was settled, the two became more amiable, Kowalke said.

“As time went on, the enmity from the lawsuit faded away,” he said.

Kowalke started regularly attending Fire Service Area board of supervisor meetings, where Holmes is the president. They worked together on a long-term plan for fire-house construction.

Then a fire chief in the borough was removed by Emergency Services officials, and Holmes was irate, Kowalke said. Later, he said Holmes became upset about the placement of new fire stations, and contacted political allies to oppose a heated storage facility construction at Four Mile Road as opposed to Nancy Lakes.

At a meeting in November, Holmes told the fire service board he was going to go to Palmer and reclaim the assembly, Kowalke said.

“He said, ‘Unless Randall here’s going to run,’” Kowalke said. “And I said, ‘As a matter of fact …’”

The local election is

Oct. 6.

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2270, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.