GBOS Co-Chair shares his outlook for Girdwood (Re-elected)
Mike Edgington shares his future vision for the community
By Jon Scudder
Turnagain News
The Girdwood Board of Supervisors Co-Chair Mike Edgington won the challenged race by overcoming Kellie Okonek to win Girdwood Valley Service Area, Seat D in the general election April 4 election that featured strident electioneering--yard signs, door-door canvassing, and sign waving at the local post office.
Edgington received 61 percent of the votes to Okonek’s 39 percent, with a voter turnout of 44 percent.
In the Girdwood Valley Service Area, Seat E, Briana Sullivan defeated Brooke Lavender. Sullivan garnering 59 percent of the votes to 41 percent for Lavender.
The turnout had the highest number of voters for a Girdwood special election going back more than 40 years, according to a municipal database, not including those elections with mayoral, state or federal candidates.
The Turnagain News asked both winning candidates to participate in a Q&A. In this issue, Edgington was interviewed, which will subsequently be followed in the next edition with Sullivan’s new vision.
The British born native was previously elected to two 3-year terms, and now embarks on his third term. In the interview, he talked about his re-election, housing and insight into the years ahead co-chairing the GBOS.
Can you introduce yourself to our readers? I grew up in East Anglia on the North Sea coast of England. Afterwards, I moved to Yorkshire and Edinburgh for college and post-graduate study where I trained as a research engineer and data scientist. In the late 1990's I joined Stanford Research Institute at their Cambridge, UK office before transferring to their Silicon Valley headquarters. After a time in California, I relocated to the East Coast to work at several technology start-ups in the Boston area. I now hold more than a dozen patents in the field of speech recognition. I became a full-time resident in Girdwood in 2015, with my spouse Kalie. My experience in our community includes researching local policing solutions after the Alaska State Troopers announced their withdrawal. As a result, I was appointed to the first Public Safety Committee where I helped draft the initial contract with Whitter Police. I was elected to serve on the Girdwood Board of Supervisors in 2017 and 2020.
Why did you run for a third term? We’ve got a lot of pressing problems, and I found it took me a very long while, probably most of my first term or even longer to really understand how the municipality worked and how even our local Girdwood government worked. It’s not like my previous experience in private business, start-ups or industry—government is nothing like that.
It’s taking quite a long while to get the hang of where we can or can’t be effective, and where effort and pressure is valuable to apply or not to apply. Given in general the board is relatively new, it seemed my experience was valuable to the board. I’ve got the opportunity to give something to the community. Yes, I’d be a better skier if I didn’t spend so much time working for Girdwood, but this is an important time in our community.
How do you see this GBOS? This is the same people we have had in the past year, so I think we have a good relationship. We know each other’s strengths. There is debate and we disagree on some things, which I think is fine and good. This is a good group of people that can get things done.
Do you see yourself running for future elected positions? I don’t expect so. I think I will have made my contributions, and, after this term, I’ll see if there are other ways to contribute and see where my efforts can be most useful. I don’t view the GBOS as a political role. There are elements of politics involved but being part of the GBOS is about representing Girdwood.
What is the problem with housing availability? There are a lot of people who have a very strong attachment to Girdwood. It’s really kind of heartwarming how much affection people have for the community in general, both in the natural beauty and in the strong sense of community here. Girdwood like many other outdoor recreational communities, is a very nice place to be. The problem is there isn’t enough housing which is available. It’s not just low income housing, it’s middle and mid-upper income housing too. It’s a lack of supply and an almost inexhaustible demand. And most of that demand is from those who live outside the community and don’t plan to reside in the community. Those who are buying a second-or-third home are much more affluent than the general population resulting in upward price pressure and purchasers who see high costs as less of deterrent driving up prices beyond the point where our local economy provides jobs and income that match the cost of housing. It ends up with a structural mismatch. When the demand is so high from outside the community, building more housing will address demand for second homes but it does not help with the community housing for those who live and work in Girdwood.
How do you plan on helping to resolve the housing problem? There are lots of solutions which have been tried and been successful in other similar outdoor recreation communities. Granted, we are not identical to cities in Colorado or Washington, we have different tools and challenges, so we have to adapt what’s been shown to work and apply some of our own ideas as well. One key solution is to set targets on any development on new housing that is tied to a community needs. So, a percentage of new development is available to those and property who meet a certain set of criteria, such as local employment and income. This is easiest to achieve with new development on public land, but there are incentives we can provide to developers to encourage setting aside some of the property for community housing. For example, by providing a density bonus. You can set these incentives, so it becomes a win-win situation. There are five or six incentive policies that could work in Girdwood, but it involves a lot of details which is not easy. The think the community must be a part of this, building together a long-term plan and we have much of this planning activity going on with the revision of the Girdwood Comprehensive Plan.
Turnagain News will discuss in an upcoming article more on housing and Holtan Hills. Anything you want to say now about the subject? There are two things in front of us right now. The Holton Hills project is not going ahead in its original proposal when the Assembly stopped the land disposal. But the development agreement is still in place and. I haven’t heard
there’s any real proposal in play. But if a new proposal does address our housing needs, we should consider it as a community. Maybe it won’t be the right solution, but we still have a responsibility to look at it.
What was your most memorable experience in your past term? When Girdwood turned up-- more than a hundred of us, to provide testimony to the Assembly about Holtan Housing during a snowstorm. It was quite an emotional experience. It made me proud to say I was from the town. There was a wide range of different perspectives, although they had very similar underlying
themes. We made our case, and it was very powerful.
What would you tell people who didn’t vote for you to persuade them to support you? First, thank you for voting. I think it’s good to have more people involved in the local affairs and it shows the strength in democracy. But I am obviously pleased the majority voted for me. At the end of the day, I represent everyone in Girdwood whether you voted for me or not.
What are a couple of your goals for this term? I am going to spend my time over the next few months doing outreach into the community. I want to find out their interests and thoughts on different topics. Generally, there’s not one single source of great ideas. The COVID pandemic also showed how dependent we are on childcare, basically Little Bears, as there is very limited private childcare here. I want to help increase my involvement in the next couple years. Lastly, public transportation, not within Girdwood where GVT runs an excellent shuttle, but between Girdwood and Anchorage. It’s a huge problem which I plan on working on with the state and municipality.
How do you view the GBOS role with Pomeroy Lodging, the owners of Alyeska Resort? We have a very different kind of ownership that we previously had with the previous owner, John Byrne. It’s more complex working with a larger organization. This ties into Girdwood not being an independent city. Many municipalities have their own asset, their own economic driver, or they own resources around that asset. We don’t have that situation here. Girdwood’s main economic asset is the environment and access to outdoor recreation but much of that is through a private company. This creates challenges. Pomeroy Lodging wants to make money and they will make more money if the resort is working in a successful community. Whatever happens with the ownership of the resort, in the next 5, 10 or 20 years. We must keep moving forward on what’s best for the community.
How will Proposition 7 passing expanding the Girdwood Valley Service Area’s power to include local housing and economic stabilities influence the GBOS? Passing Proposition 7 will give us a far stronger role as a community and GBOS will be looking at exploring these opportunities over the next couple years. It gives us additional options such as holding and managing municipal land; applying and accepting grant money from outside the community; and the ability to get bonds as well. It opens an entire set of foundational tools we never had before.
What are your preliminary thoughts on the plans for an interchange at Alyeska and Seward highways? As the intersection currently stands, it has problems and is accident prone. With I learned is that accident severity isn’t just from the speed of vehicles and the configuration of the roadway but how quickly emergency services can respond. If that intersection was elsewhere in the Kenai Peninsula where the Seward and Sterling highways adjoin, there could be more fatalities. We have the Girdwood Fire Department and Rescue just a couple of miles away with skilled emergency medical personnel, who save lives, making the intersection appear less dangerous than it actually is. But the proposal Alaska Department of Transportation has put forward is completely out of scale with the problem—it’s overkill. It’s not a design which balances improved safety with minimal environmental impact or efficient cost and maintenance. Unfortunately, often sees maintaining the high traffic speed as their primary goal, ignoring the community concerns and those who brought forth suggestions which were less impactful, smaller, and less expensive. However, the formal environmental study has not been completed and I think the report will bring more items to consider.
What is your current relationship with the staff of the Municipality of Anchorage? I have only met the mayor a few times, but we meet often with the directors of the various departments and the municipal manager. We had a good working relationship with the previous and current municipal manager and are starting to develop that with the new manager. The most challenging issue is so many changes, vacancies, and acting department directors. It is often difficult to get clear answers to questions.
