Reshaping Education and Renewing Society: Dennis Prager and Mayor Dave Bronson on STAND

In this episode, we unlock the secrets to molding the minds of the next generation with Dennis Prager, the pioneering founder of PragerU. Paired with an exclusive look into how one city leader, Mayor Dave Bronson of Anchorage, is navigating the tumultuous waters of housing and law enforcement, this episode promises a wealth of knowledge that's sure to ignite passion and inspire action.

Our charged dialogue with Dennis Prager probes into how his innovative conservative education platform is remarkably reshaping the narratives of both young individuals and state educational systems. With a staggering reach of over a billion yearly views, PragerU's concise, historical videos delve into complex ideals, flipping the script on societal misconceptions and redefining the moral compass.

You can feel the pulse of today's most contentious debates as we confront the twisted narratives surrounding Israel's history, the war on Hamas, and the role of Palestinians in global terrorism with Dennis Prager. We dissect these historical inaccuracies, equipping you with strategies to combat miseducation and offering a lighthouse of truth in the stormy sea of misinformation.

Witness the transformation of a city administration from its early struggles to a bastion of proficiency as Mayor Bronson shares the trials and triumphs of assembling a team poised for progress. The episode peels back the curtain on the political chessboard, revealing the strategic shifts in approach that could alter the landscape of executive authority in Anchorage.

Our in-depth discussion with Mayor Bronson also paints a vivid picture of Anchorage's journey through civic challenges, highlighting the bold steps and innovative partnerships that are rewriting the city's future – a narrative of resilience and unwavering resolve.

As we wrap up, you'll be left with a reinforced understanding of the importance of a solid team, competent leadership, and the shared pursuit of community betterment that transcends political divides. This episode is more than just a conversation; it's a guide to affecting change and a testament to the power of informed engagement.

You can continue to empower yourself through informed engagement by exploring prageru.com.

You can learn more about and support Mayor Dave Bronson in his mayoral campaign over at bronsonformayor.com.

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Transcript

Kelly Tshibaka: 0:04

Welcome to Stand. This is the show where we help make courage contagious by building a movement of Americans who stand for truth and freedom and government by the people. I'm your host, Kelly Tshibaka, former government watchdog and candidate for US Senate, and I'm joined by my very special co-host, Josiah Tshibaka, my son, who is a senior in high school. You can catch all of our episodes and subscribe on our website, standshow. org. Today we have a really exciting lineup. In the last half of our episode we will have the mayor of Anchorage, Alaska's largest city, who's facing a challenging reelection campaign, mayor Dave Bronson. So stay tuned for that. But in the first part of our episode we have Dennis Prager. Dennis is a nationally syndicated radio host, he is bestselling author, he's the founder of PragerU and he is a Renaissance man who's conducted symphonies, traveled to 130 countries and is a lifelong religion scholar. So, Dennis, we are so happy to have you with us. Thank you for being on the show.

Dennis Prager: 1:10

Thank you, Kelly.

Kelly Tshibaka: 1:11

We're also excited that you'll be coming to Fairbanks, so we want to talk to you about that because you'll be here this month. But at the beginning of the show I just want to start out by asking you can you tell us a little bit about what PragerU is and why you started it, for those who might not know what this whole story is about.

Dennis Prager: 1:28

Well, we are the largest conservative education site in the world. To the best of my knowledge, we have over a billion views a year and the happy news Most of them are under the age of 35. We have an entire kids' section now PragerU kids. We've been adopted by the states of Florida and Oklahoma and Arizona and Montana, among others. Officially and unofficially. Teachers use our materials in schools and, of course, parents should show this to their children. It's wholesome history and stories and we take God seriously. It's really special stuff. It's at PragerU. com and we also have about 700 five-minute videos for people, high school through 100 years of age, which are extremely professionally done, from the Civil War to modern American life. We have a series on every president. The best way to learn history is through biography and we have biographies of every president, or nearly everyone up. Anyway, people should go to PragerU. com and they'll sort of get addicted.

Dennis Prager: 2:47

It was founded by really Alan Estrin. Then I co-founded it with him, but it was his idea. On a ship we were both on in the Indian Ocean walks over to me and says, Dennis, let's start Prager University. And he wasn't joking, because he never jokes, that's not his personality. And I go well, what do you mean? He said we got to get your ideas to more people and that's all I care about is getting my ideas to more people.

Dennis Prager: 3:14

I wrote that, in fact, in my high school journal. I actually wrote I know what I want to do with my life influence people to the good. That's what I wrote when I was a junior in high school. I have never wavered on that. I am preoccupied with good and evil. I hate evil and when I learned the famous statement in Psalms, those of you who love God must hate evil, I realized that was my favorite verse in the Bible. If you don't hate evil, you don't love God. It's a really, really important point. I wish every priest, rabbi and minister would emphasize that every time they meet their congregants. You don't love God if you don't hate evil. It's a tremendous. I hate evil and I love goodness, and that permeates all of what we do.

Kelly Tshibaka: 4:07

Hmm, I love that. Well, speaking of that dichotomy between evil and good, it seems like there's a flip in our culture where people will say good is evil and evil is good, and then there's this. We used to be kind of this marketplace of ideas where you could debate such a concept, but now instead there's this cancel culture that rides high and things are squashed and you really are on the front lines of crusading that I wanted to ask you what's the cause of this? How society is now promoting cancel culture and indoctrination, what caused that and how do we fight it?

Dennis Prager: 4:44

It's a very it's actually a tough question to answer, but I realize how deep it is that Isaiah, thousands of years ago, said woe unto those who call good evil and those who call evil good. And you have a living example right now those who think Hamas are the good guys and Israel are the bad guys. That is a perfect, perfect example. It shows, among other things, how unreliable the conscience is, that if it's not informed by something higher than the conscience, it's usually worthless by and large, for most people, the conscience is what they want it to be. They feel something and then they live with their conscience. The amount of horrible things that people have done, or horrible things that people have supported which is even a larger group and then slept well at night it proves how malleable the conscience is. People say well, I listen to my conscience. Well, that doesn't reassure me. Every Nazi, every communist, Hamas and all their supporters also listen to their conscience. So your conscience has to be informed by something higher. My choice is the Bible. So I'm writing the fifth volume of my commentary, the rational Bible, and I call it the rational Bible because I use reason to bring people to the brilliance of the Bible rather than faith alone. Anyway, why do people do this? Well, first one is that it's uncomfortable to confront evil. It takes what you, you, wanted to make, what is to say, courage, contagious. I love you for that. That's great, that's exactly right. It takes courage to confront evil, and the entire left not liberals, but left they they confront good rather than evil. America is the enemy and Israel is the enemy. I mean two of the finest countries ever, ever made they're. They're the bad guys, it's it. I'll give you an example of how, how a fear of Confronting real evil permeates the left.

Dennis Prager: 7:14

There's a very famous quote-unquote art piece called piss Christ. It's a crucifix in the so-called artist's urine. It has gone through some of the biggest museums in the United States, the Andres Serrano, the guy who made this. He doesn't fear any Christians gonna kill him, but if you paint one picture of Muhammad, you may have your, your throat slit, and many have, just for painting a picture. No urine, just painting a picture. So there's no such thing and there shouldn't be. By the way, Quran in the urine. In urine, there's no such thing but a crucifix. Because they know Christians won't hurt them, so they take Christians on and I'm a Jew saying this, so which gives it an credibility, because obviously you know I don't have an axe to grind here, but I the only axe I have is truth. Another thing you mentioned in the beginning that I loved your the commitment to truth. The truth is, people are. People know Christians Don't pose a threat of what many Muslims do not all by any means, but many do.

Josiah Tshibaka: 8:34

You know, Mr. Prager, I really want to follow up on what you just said about truth, and especially in the confrontation of evil. Lot of my peers currently actually support Palestine and oppose Israel, and they say that it's because Israel is occupying or colonizing Palestine. So what is the best way that someone my age can effectively communicate those ideas to my peers that Hamas is indeed evil and Israel is right?

Dennis Prager: 9:00

Well. So there are two quick answers, and well stated by you, by the way. So two quick answers. First, there was no country on earth that is not quote-unquote colonizing somebody else. In In Canada they say that they've colonized native, native Canadian lands and here we've colonized native American lands. It's endless. And and, by the way, they colonize somebody else's land. It's so the. It's an absurdity. Secondly, the only countries that ever existed in the history of that part of the world were two Jewish Countries, both called Israel prior to the third Israel. This is the third Israel to be a sovereign country. There. There was never a Palestinian state. There was never a Muslim state. It was never an Arab state. It was just an area. It was last controlled by the British, prior to that, for many years, controlled by the Ottomans, who aren't even Arabs, their Turks.

Dennis Prager: 10:05

So they don't know anything. The people who say this. They know nothing history. They know as much about history as they do about botany. This is the tragedy of your generation. It's not your fault, your generation's fault. A fools taught you, and therefore People believe it, like they believe, that lockdowns for kids was good in school. Almost everything they're taught that without a boy can become a girl that is here, a boy, can become a girl, is as true as Israel is the villain and and the Palestinians are the good guys. The Palo, the Palestinians, brought modern terrorism into the world as we know it. They slaughtered the entire Israeli Olympic team in the 1972 Olympics in Germany. Does one kid in your grade know that? I'm sure zero do. They should all watch the movie Munich to get an idea. The Palestinian contribution to modern life is terror.

Dennis Prager: 11:05

That's good, Dennis the Israeli contribution is half of the medicines you use.

Kelly Tshibaka: 11:13

We're coming up on a break, so stay with us. After with Dennis Prager, he's coming to Fairbanks February 24th with Alaska Family Council 11 30 am At the Wedgwood Resort. We'll talk about that in just a minute, stay tuned. Weka tactical specializes in combat effective weapons systems and prides themselves on the best prices in the state of Alaska. Weka tactical sells firearms, ammunition, gear, body armor, night vision and much more. They offer a price match guarantee as well as a discount to all first responders. Visit Weka tactical at 56 30 B Street in Anchorage. Weka tactical, Alaska's premier store for combat effective weapons systems. Welcome back to stand. We're here with Dennis Prager. We're so excited you'll be coming to Fairbanks February 24th with Alaska Family Council. Can you share with us what will you be talking to Alaska about? A?

Dennis Prager: 12:18

Lot of things, including the, the Civil War in the United States and the war in the Middle East. They're very much related. The. The left in America supports Hamas. The left in America is anti-American. They, they almost go together.

Dennis Prager: 12:33

I wrote an essay, I write a column every week. They're literally a thousand of them on the internet for those interested. And it was. If you say men give birth, everyone, everyone knows what your stance is on Hamas versus Israel. How do we know that? Why are they in any possible way related? Yet we know it's not. We assume we know. If you say men give birth, your pro, Hamas and anti-Israel. Because that is the way the conscience, the mind work when you're, when you're colossally wrong. Now, everybody could be wrong on any one subject, but when you're colossally wrong, you tend to be colossally wrong in everything. It's sort of like an arrestor on dive. Noticed if, if the opening course isn't good, the odds are the entree won't be good and vice versa. Restaurants tend to have constantly delicious or constantly mediocre dishes. That is the way it works in the moral sphere. The people who believe lies will believe lies about everything. If you believe a boy can become a girl, then you believe Hamas is the good guy.

Dennis Prager: 13:58

Anyway so that's why I'm speaking about both.

Kelly Tshibaka: 14:01

I think it's good.

Dennis Prager: 14:02

In Fairbanks.

Kelly Tshibaka: 14:03

Yeah, again, February 24th 1130. You can get your tickets at Alaska Family Council's website. Just say it. What was your follow-up question on Hamas for Mr. Prager?

Josiah Tshibaka: 14:15

Well, I guess my main follow-up would be you were talking about how my generation has been educated by fools and that's why we say foolish things. So what is the best way that I can change my peers minds and, as you said earlier, get my ideas out to other people and successfully change their stances?

Dennis Prager: 14:35

One of the most effective ways is to is to give them good articles and and good videos. You don't even have to be the source of the argument. That's why people you know put things up on their Twitter account. They want others to see that the problem is. The brainwash is so deep that they assume if you show the other side Excuse me they assume if you, if you show the other side, you are, you are showing the bad guy and they won't be open to hearing it.

Dennis Prager: 15:14

This is that's the Orwellian use of the word misinformation, so that people who said don't lock down schools were accused of Not following science. The people who ruined a generation of kids not going to school for nearly two years, they said they were following science. And those of us like me who said you are ruining children's lives I said it in April 2020. I said that lockdowns were the greatest international mistake in history. It's on the internet and, of course, the entire left said oh, this is misinformation and therefore A google and others actually suppressed it because, as as I do, a fireside chat every week for a prayer, you from my home and, uh, I get questions from all over the world, from mostly young people. So one asked about three months ago how do I know who's telling the truth? And I came up with an immediate response that I thought was really good. I had not thought about it before I was put on the spot to answer it.

Dennis Prager: 16:23

Decide that sensors is usually the liar Wow, we are. We conservatives are very happy for you to read other opinions. They are not. There is no example since the Russian revolution in 1917 of the left allowing dissent. It doesn't it from from Lenin, Vladimir Lenin, to your local university. They never allow dissent. The. The uproar against the teacher showing a five minute prayer you video is the perfect example of the left, the teacher's unions, coming out against anyone who shows a prayer you video. You can't handle a five minute video. Of course they can, because truth wallops lies in five minutes.

Kelly Tshibaka: 17:11

It's a really good response. I know that we only have you for a short time. What is the most important thing you think Americans need to know in this time, like you said, a time of civil war? Most important thing they need to know to take a stand.

Dennis Prager: 17:25

That the left destroys everything it touches, from music to art, to elementary schools, high schools, universities, the American Medical Association. There is nothing. The National Football League, which is gonna play two national anthems so as to further divide the country. If people have courage, I'll tell you what. It's too hard, I know, not to watch the Super Bowl, but if the ratings went down, it would be a magnificent day in American life.

Kelly Tshibaka: 17:52

Hmm, that's really good. Thank you so much, Mr. Prager, for being with us. We appreciate it. Dennis Prager everybody coming to Alaska February 24th 11.30 am. He's gonna be at the Wedgwood Resort in Fairbanks. If you wanna be there, you can get your tickets online at Alaska Family Council. We're so glad they're sponsoring you and we're so glad you're coming back. Thank you for being with us today. We appreciate you. Thank you.

Dennis Prager: 18:18

Have a great day.

Kelly Tshibaka: 18:18

You too, yeah. So, Josiah, I wanna pivot over to you because this was a fantastic opportunity to chat with Dennis Prager. What did you think about his responses to your question?

Josiah Tshibaka: 18:30

You know. I think it was really insightful, especially when he said that the brainwash is so deep that people my age are unable or unwilling to even look at a differing perspective or the other side, because we have such a dichotomy between good and evil aligned in our heads with our political ideologies. If you don't agree with me politically, you are the bad guy. You're not just someone who thinks differently, you're the enemy.

Kelly Tshibaka: 19:00

That's a really interesting thing. What I'm hearing you say is a different idea. Now makes you the evil person.

Josiah Tshibaka: 19:07

Exactly.

Kelly Tshibaka: 19:08

So I like the way he was sharing about how the way to change minds and I think that this is probably what inspired PragerU is to provide them with information that we don't have to be the experts or know everything, but that they've created and curated all this content. I understand social media for people in my generation, in your generation. Is it effective to share these short videos that have truth compacted? How do people respond to stuff like that?

Josiah Tshibaka: 19:36

Well, I know I'm absolutely ashamed of the amount of screen time on my phone scrolling through YouTube shorts and the majority of it is.

Josiah Tshibaka: 19:45

It's a podcast, just like this political feed, scrolling through, seeing ideas debate out, and the algorithm is fed to kind of align more with my political ideology. But I think I definitely see people in my generation posting on their social media, reposting reels, things that they think, ideas they want to spread out. I think a really easy way for people my age to take a stand for truth and goodness is to just counter that propaganda flow from the left with your own reels that are true, accurate and supporting your political ideas. Even if it's just to share your different opinion, that's totally fine. This is America.

Kelly Tshibaka: 20:23

Something that changes the way you think or captures your attention or taught you something new will probably have an impact on the people around you. I remember going through school at your age and stage and then going through college and then going through law school and being surprised at how people really changed their opinion or their lifestyle or even their identity in those different stages. And this is a really unique opportunity in this season of life high school, these college years, early 20s to be able to have a really significant influence on people around you. And I think social media even broadens that influence, because you're able to influence people you've never even met your social media buddies. Covid really even changed that. We become close friends with people we don't even know or see, because our world of influence is on the internet now instead of just in your classrooms or your communities. So there's a really great opportunity there. What did you think about what he said about Hamas and Israel?

Josiah Tshibaka: 21:25

You know, he made a really really really good point with the alignment between if you believe that a man can give birth, you probably are in support of Hamas.

Josiah Tshibaka: 21:37

I think. As far as we didn't really delve much into the conflict or the solution, it's obvious where he currently stands on the conflict. He obviously is pro-Israel, but what really fascinated me especially was his comments about you know you would never find a even painting of Mohammed because Hamas will not allow it, whereas you can disrespect any sort of Christian symbol or ideology and just kind of showing. I think it's interesting. Just as we see the parallel between if you believe a man can give birth, you probably support Hamas. We can also see if you are intolerant of someone disrespecting your religious leader at all, you're probably in alignment with the people who are intolerant of respecting any differing idea as well. So, just as the left is aligned with Hamas.

Josiah Tshibaka: 22:32

The Hamas is also aligned with the left in terms of their intolerance.

Kelly Tshibaka: 22:36

It's a really good observation. There's no openness to the other, if you will, right, yeah, and then always couching it in victim ideology. So I'm not open to the other because I'm the victim, and that's another parallel I saw. So this I remember you sharing kind of this notion of, well, we're the oppressed and we're the victims here because this is our land and we're being possessed and oppressed by Israel without any actual understanding of the history of the land. And that's the same narrative we get from the left, without any understanding that it's actually the left and the parties of the left that brought in slavery and brought in oppression, brought in the welfare state that has held people down and not lifted people up, and all these things that have oppressed people for so long. Really interesting, this has been another great opening segment of stand. Stay tuned after the break.

Kelly Tshibaka: 23:34

We'll be back in just a moment with the mayor of Anchorage, mayor Dave Bronson, who is facing a tough election battle this April. First week of April is elections in Anchorage. Anchorage is about 40% of the state of Alaska and it'll be interesting to see what happens. We wanna talk to him about this reelection, what he has done, why he is running and all of the attacks that he has been facing. Stay with us. We'll see you in a minute. Did?

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Kelly Tshibaka: 24:37

Welcome back to Stand. We just had a fantastic interview with Dennis Prager and now we're so excited to have the Mayor of Anchorage, Alaska, join us, Dave Bronson, who's been serving for several years. Dave, thank you so much for being with us. Welcome to Stand.

Mayor Bronson: 24:53

Happy to be here, Kelly, thank you very much, and to your clan that is supporting you.

Kelly Tshibaka: 24:58

Thank you. We already teed up for the audience that you were in the middle of a ferocious reelection battle, and Anchorage is a huge part of the state, as goes Anchorage, so goes the state. So we wanted to start off and ask you you ran an election campaign, kind of a. No one thought you could do it, but you did and you won. Why did you first run several years ago and then? Why are you running again now?

Mayor Bronson: 25:24

Well, much for the same reasons. Last time, three years ago, we ran because it was crystal clear to me anyways that the city was not going in a direction that it needed to be going in. In fact, it was going in the wrong direction, that direction being Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco. We saw that and, of course, we were still in the convulsions generated by COVID and the shutdowns for COVID, and I thought I could. If I got into office, I could make some difference, and we did. I came in and I stopped the notion of mandatory vaccines we worked hard at. I didn't mandate any masks or anything like that. However, I did. You know, throughout my health department, we did provide for vaccines and masks if you wanted them. I took a libertarian approach, not unlike what Governor Dunleavy did is, if you want to mask you, I'll get you one. If you want a vaccine, you can go to the health department and get them, but at the end of the day, I'm not going to compel someone to get a vaccine that was, by and large, untested. Normal vaccine testing cycle is seven to 10 years, and this one was done in a matter of weeks and months. We don't do that kind of thing in America, and so I was immediately, instantly hesitant on that and I just thought people should have the chance.

Mayor Bronson: 26:58

And then the shutdowns came in our city. That was done by the assembly and the previous mayor and we were shutting down businesses left and right. I think well over 100 went out of business and we're still trying to recover from that. And it's funny, the big box stores, which I have nothing against I'm a Costco member and I go to Fred Meyer and I go to Walmart, and nothing against them, but they seem to prosper If you track their stock prices off and they did. Well, the small businessmen and women were going out of business because the cards were stacked against them, I think, and we had nonsensical COVID rules. They were so convoluted and complex back then it was actually ridiculous. So you can stand but you can't dance, or if you sit, you can't sing, and there was plexiglass everywhere. I should have got into the plexiglass business because there seemed to be. There was plexiglass shield somehow would stop a virus from spreading. I guess someone thought so we did that and then we came in and then, because of the shutdowns which didn't need to happen, business suffered. So now we spent the first two and a half years trying to restart a city, especially on the economic side.

Mayor Bronson: 28:17

And then we came in and there were some projects. You get into office and you learn, holy cow, it's not just COVID and things like that. We've had some major construction projects, especially downtown, that were stuck in the bureaucrat political realm that is Anchorage government. We unstuck them. One is Block 41. That's the old Key Bank building downtown and that entire city block and to include, fortunately or unfortunately, the old 4th Avenue Theater. I had to make the decision to allow them to tear that down. The building was in terrible shape, with lead elevator issues, lead paint elevator issues, asbestos issues. It was just a mess. But we did get the builders to agree and it didn't take much prompting to save the icons from the building, the front lighting, all the neon lighting, a lot of the artwork inside which will be recaptured as being stored in Anchorage and it'll be. It'll populate like the lobby of the library. That was a big thing. And then Block 96 was a large apartment complex in a west end of downtown that we freed up and those were big wins, kind of out of the chute.

Mayor Bronson: 29:31

And then within a couple of months of coming into office, I saw that the Port of Alaska modernization program now the Don Young Port of Alaska, the modernization program was hitting some roadblocks and the answer was the right people weren't running it. We had Port Manager's team and municipal employees running a $2 billion, $1.8 billion construction project. And that just didn't seem right to me because when I came in, well, how many ports have you built? And the answer was, well, none of course. But these people are absolutely some of the best, I think, in the country at running ports. But I says I'm not in the Port Running Business right now, I'm in the Port Building Business. So I assigned a team. I went to Jacobs Engineering and I says would you like this project, control of this construction project? And they were the contractor of record at the point at that time. And they said, yeah, we've been asking for this for 10 years. So they brought in their senior executives from the East Coast and I says all right, this is now your project, you're in charge of it, we'll check on you. I'm hiring another engineering firm to monitor your work, which we did. And I says if you don't make the timelines is, what I'm going to do is I'm going to fire you and find another engineering firm and I'm just telling you, Jacobs has done a fantastic job. He's the one that brought in staff from around the world to supervise this project and that is the lifeline of this state, certainly of the city.

Mayor Bronson: 31:02

95% of the people in the state are fed by that port and that port is in dire need of repair and you can go to our website. We've got a video that shows. We got a drone flew underneath the port and we took video at extremely low tides last August and we captured, we think, the essence of the, of the failure of that thing that one bad docking ship bumps, that dock too hard or or an earthquake, and that that port will fail once it fails. No food and I'm not, I'm not and there's no Berlin airlift kind of thing going to get us out of this mess. It is, it's that port or it's nothing. So we've got to get it built up and the project now is back on track. First quarter of 2028 the terminal number one should be up and operational. That's the plan and once it is, then we have what I think is food security and that will that will satisfy for until terminal number two is built and then we'll have what about?

Mayor Bronson: 32:02

What we have right now, and so that was probably the biggest thing of importance to the whole state was was the port plan. We did some other things. We funded a lot of police Academy, fire Academy, academies that that was. That was essential to me because we public safety is the first order of business for any politician and having a well funded police department and a well equipped fire department was a priority of mine and I moved on that and and we're doing I got two fantastic chiefs in the police and my curl and Doug Schragi, absolute fine gentleman, great, great chiefs, and those, those departments give me no trouble whatsoever and even as we try to support them financially, something else you know, and it is we deal face to face with the assembly, or what my staff calls the nine mini mayors. I've got some challenges there where I've got nine assembly members that who seem to think they're also the mayor, which is fine. That's politics. And we have some areas of conflict normally in spending, therefore budgeting, and also in in the way we deal with homelessness, in this on the streets, bank rich.

Mayor Bronson: 33:22

I take it a bit of a different approach. Housing is very critical. We understand that, we really do, but also to. There needs to be a law enforcement component of that. We were weak on that, but that wasn't my fault to the assembly's fault is what that was really was the Ninth Circuit. Ninth Circuit Court made some decisions called Martin versus Boise, which really limited our ability to enforce our own municipal code as it comes to things, concepts called vagrancy, and so I filed an amicus brief several months ago, which now we anticipate Supreme Court relief from the Ninth Circuit decision, probably June or July, and that will get us back to where we can now enforce municipal code as far as vagrancy and behavior on the street. That's a big thing, and when we found out here about a month and a half ago that the Supreme Court was going to take that, there was high fives going around the eighth floor and certainly in the Department of Law and they're very excited about it. I think something else we did that's really big.

Mayor Bronson: 34:29

Housing is probably number one or two after the port on the threats to our city, the importance we need to build more homes. We need to free up the land for that, which we've done. I signed a modified methane gas agreement with Eklutna Corporation out in Eagle River that allows us to allow our partner, Eklutna Corporation, to step in and build about 1170 homes in Eagle River on the Impala Reserve West. That was a huge win because we need to help. Government needs to help much by getting out of the way but bringing land and money together. Capital needs to finance these projects. Building of homes solves so many of our problems and I have supported every building project I can come across. Holden Hills that was stalled a year ago. That got installed in cooperation with the Assembly am I right, ed.

Mayor Bronson: 35:29

That's a great project, not a huge one, but a significant one, especially for Eagle River, the Holden Hills thing. We're working on another project in West Anchorage which should free up 160 lots if we can get to that success. There's other projects that we can't mention, that are coming online yet we can't mention them yet and that will help free up. But at the end of the day I have a responsibility to make sure government gets out of the way of the development of homes and we do have some restructuring coming forward that's going to have to make that easier and more cost effective, because at the end of the day in our system capital has to come in and it won't come in and develop the homes that we need If the profit isn't there. And we can't forget that To build homes our builders have to make money. We want them to make money. Thank you, mayor Gives. Let's take a break real quick.

Kelly Tshibaka: 36:26

We'll come back after the break on Stand with Mayor Dave Bronson of Anchorage. We'll talk about some of the challenges you faced and what you would change going forward. We're on Stand with Mayor Dave Bronson. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Stand. We are with Mayor Dave Bronson of Anchorage. Mayor Bronson is facing reelection for his seat. Mayor Dave, what is your website for your reelection?

Mayor Bronson: 36:58

Bronson for mayor. com.

Kelly Tshibaka: 37:00

Bronson for mayor. com. Now, Josiah is with me today. He is my high school senior and he's got several leadership positions in student organizations across the city. Josiah, what were some of the questions you have for Mayor Bronson?

Josiah Tshibaka: 37:15

Well, I guess one of the things that I'm wondering most about is what have been some of the biggest challenges in your mayoral administration so far.

Mayor Bronson: 37:26

Certainly like any political executive governor, president, whatever there's always challenges, I think, with the legislative branch. But that's the natural conflict designed into the system. So I'm not going to belabor that too much. I think it's a little extreme here now. Again, we mentioned in the first segment that I've got some real challenges in the area of executive authority with the assembly. They're often taking executive authority away from me legislatively. I think we're going to see a correction in that the Department of Law is making some decisions in that regard and then we'll get a lot of that cleared up. We do want the legislature to have a voice in setting policy. That's what they're there for and I'm not begrudging them that. But in the pure administration of government they're not supposed to be doing much of that. So we'll get that. That's a big challenge.

Mayor Bronson: 38:25

Early on. It took a while to build a team. There was maybe some people I wouldn't have If I had to do it over. I wouldn't hire again, obviously. But as in any new administration corporately, militarily or certainly in politics there's some change that needs to go on. We went through, but we're finally at a team right now. I think that I would put up against any team of any administration governor or mayor in this state.

Mayor Bronson: 38:54

I've got municipal manager Kent Cole Hayes. I've got one of my key directors is Lance Wilbur. I've got Paul Van Landing him probably 27, 28 years of snow plowing experience. He's directing that. I've got Sharon Lekner and OMB. I've got Alden Thern as CFO.

Mayor Bronson: 39:17

If you add up the time of service and public service of those kinds of people that we have now all over the administration, this is a highly competent, highly professional administration and I'm actually very pleased. I know there's this notion out there and I love the signs. Bronson's incompetent or incompetence has a price or something like that, and from this what's called the 907 group, all right, where is the incompetence? Because you're measured and executive mostly by how you accomplish goals with the team that you have and you have to build the team. I built the team. It took a while, it did.

Mayor Bronson: 40:03

We had some real challenges and the political pressure from the outside was, quite frankly, overwhelming at times. We had and we did make mistakes. I did, you know, but that's long past, that's more than a year ago. So we're moving forward and I'm quite pleased with the folks that we have on board right now, but we're still facing the political challenges from the assembly. I think they need to stay in their lane a little bit more. They propose things that I think are not productive or sometimes foolish. We try to explain to them calmly that you probably don't want to be doing that, and they do it. Their spending, their budgeting, is quite different than mine. I haven't. My budget in the mayor's office has actually shrunk a little bit since I came into office, and I'll just say one of my opponents major opponents came into office on the assembly in 2017. The assembly's budget at that time was $3.7 million and today it's $8.9.

Kelly Tshibaka: 41:10

Wow.

Mayor Bronson: 41:10

So, yeah, wow is probably the word I'd use, and if that's what you want for the city, then that that's a good person to vote for that person. They went from 26 to 37 employees in that same timeframe, and so we have a very clear choice in this election. There's four people primarily in the race. There's only one conservative. That's me. I'm not a hair on fire radical conservative we don't really deal with social issues, but I am a fiscal conservative.

Mayor Bronson: 41:48

I propose budgets under the tax cap. That's how property taxes go down. That's the only way property taxes go down. It has little to do with your assessed value, it has to do with spending and until spending goes down, your property taxes will keep going up. And I'm in this envelope where I'm trying to function, trying to run a government, especially in the areas of public safety and other very important things where money is. We do everything by money and you know we've got roughly a $600 million budget and but it's all falls. Much of it falls on the taxpayer and the assembly is quite focused on finding new ways to create new spending and to find ways around our tax cap. And we've got great people in this city old folks or not older folks that are like Larry Baker, who's a great citizen who came up with in with others in this notion of a tax cap and it's a rather complex calculation but that tax cap controls spending statutorily and that's a good thing.

Kelly Tshibaka: 42:56

Yeah.

Mayor Bronson: 42:57

But the assembly is looking for ways to get around that.

Kelly Tshibaka: 42:59

Josiah, what was another question you had for Mayor Bronson?

Josiah Tshibaka: 43:03

Something that I think would be good to circle back to. As you mentioned, you know you've learned more now that you've been mayor for three, coming on four, years. What's something you would do different in your second administration than you did in your first administration?

Mayor Bronson: 43:17

Two coming on three years, so it'll be three years, July 1st, I think. You know I made a decision a couple years ago. On the spring of a couple years ago we were, I think, my administration, you know we were fighting too much with the assembly. I made a conscious decision in April of of of 22, to just calm things down. You know, just when you're on the dais you just say of a Tuesday night of assembly meeting or anywhere, you just calm it down.

Mayor Bronson: 43:52

I found some great intermediaries to work with the assembly to kind of communicate back channel, because I would excite them to, I think, bad decisions. For example, here last year I had an assembly person go to my chief of staff and say you know, Adam, I really support Holton Hills, I've always supported Holton Hills. But tomorrow when we vote on the land transfer, which was a critical which moved that project forward, I'm going to vote no because I'm not going to give this mayor a win on anything. That's the kind of world we live in and it's not good for the city. And so I've found ways to work.

Mayor Bronson: 44:29

I brought on Mia Costello, former state senator. Absolutely brilliant she. She's very diplomatic and she's found ways to help. I'm trying to find ways to work with the assembly. That doesn't mean I'm going to give them everything they want, certainly because we have disagreements. We probably disagree on 30% of the stuff. That we, which means we agree on 70% of the stuff. Let's keep that in mind. And we, I think we're functioning a lot better working with the assembly, especially in the areas of housing and for the homeless. So that's, that's a good thing. We've made progress and I'm proud of that.

Kelly Tshibaka: 45:09

That's really good.

Mayor Bronson: 45:10

What's one thing you want Anchorage to hear you say I think the focus has got to be whether we're on one side of the political divide or the other. We certainly have to work together. We control the executive side, so how we execute things is our business. You know that may be up for debate over in the assembly side of things, but they fund things, they appropriate and we simply have to. We do have to work together without compromising our principle. But again, we have to have balanced government, the worst thing that can happen right now, I think, in any city.

Mayor Bronson: 45:55

You, you don't want one party rule, and if either of my three opponents win, it will be one party rule in this city. And if you want to see what that looks like, look at Port again Portland, Seattle, L. A., San Francisco, that's just the West coast and this is how it happens, it seems to me these radical leftists come in and take over the assemblies, they get majorities, then they get the mayor's seat and then it's it's kind of over. And I'll be honest with you, I don't want. I don't want government run by hardcore conservatives completely either. And you know I would like about a two thirds, one third mix there, because it's good for us and I'll be, I'll be political here.

Mayor Bronson: 46:41

It's good for us to keep hearing the radicalness of the left. You want them to have a voice because you want to see what they're thinking and you want them in public places saying what they're thinking, because that's the warning. You don't want them silence, because then things stew in silence and then it also stimulates these public debates that we have to have on on things like homelessness or economic development or funding or budgeting and taxes and and all that stuff. So you don't want single party governance from from the far right either, but you definitely want a center right balance in government. I think that's the best form of government we have. We don't want to silence one side or the other.

Kelly Tshibaka: 47:26

Thank you, Mayor Bronson. Give us your website one more time.

Mayor Bronson: 47:30

Bronsonformayor. com.

Kelly Tshibaka: 47:32

Bronsonformayor. com. The elections the first week of April. Ballots go out in March. There will not be a polling place for Anchorage residents to go to. It is ballot by mail correct? It says mail and ballot only. This is not ranked. This is not ranked choice, it's not ranked choice and it's also not in person. So you must remember to vote by mail, and the best thing we can do is vote, and so you will lose every election that you do not vote in.

Kelly Tshibaka: 47:58

So remember to vote remember to submit your ballot, and you can learn more about Mayor Dave Bronson on his website bronsonformayor. com. Thank you for being with us. This has been another great episode of stand. We appreciate it. Make sure to check out all of our episodes, find our social media and watch and subscribe at standshow. org. We will see you next week and, in the meantime, stand firm and stand strong.