Meetings & Minutes

Juneau (2), Dillingham (1)

• Will update Akneighbors.org website for 9/7 meeting
• Update Survey Results Tally to reflect latest survey responses

Juneau (2)

• Create new Shared Drive for all documents 
• Create folder to share copies of sample bylaws and start a skeleton document to draft bylaws

Juneau(2), Dillingham

Discussed Data for Progress survey results: https://www.filesforprogress.org/datasets/2025/7/dfp_alaska_summer_2025_peltola.pdf

Discussed HR3040 which could repeal RCV at the federal level and put the brakes on this effort to create a new party.

Reviewed the 3 test survey results for how data is looking and more edits:  

New First section for survey?

• Do you feel like Alaska needs another political party? 
• Current Party Affiliation
• What things do you like about your current party affiliation? 
• What ideas do you have to improve your current party?
• A new Alaska party would give me more options when voting (scale) 


Demographic: How many years in Alaska? 0-2, 2-5, 5-11, 11-20, 20+

Current residency: 

• Fulltime resident
• Seasonal worker 
• Out of state, intending to return 
• Residency tied to limited contractual/education term 
• Plan to leave Alaska 

Idea to do minutes as blog posts to make easy for people to read/catch up

Next meeting: 8/17 10am

Juneau (2), Dillingham, Gustavus

Facilitator Role

• Designation of facilitator role at beginning of meeting
• Acknowledge participants who have been silent and encouraging them to speak up
• Timekeeping to ensure that one person isn’t dominating the discussion
• De-escalate when conversation becomes 
• Recapping what has been going on 
• Help people understand each other. Repeat back. 

To Do: Reach out to First Alaskan Institute about use of meeting agreements structure and possibility for facilitator training.

Are there other Alaska appropriate facilitation methods out there?

Different types of facilitation: Brainstorming/Decisions 

Should facilitators engage in discussion?

Coming up with guidelines with the group. In dialogue. 

Discussed a collective notetakers role and the process of designating a note-taker. 

Visual Timeline of next steps:

BEFORE SURVEY GOES OUT: 

-Link to survey from Website

SURVEY GOES OUT (By end of the month) 

Pro-active outreach. How long does survey go out before we close it? (All of September) 

After survey goes out:

-October meeting to go over results 

-January/February: Start of session. 

Juneau, Dillingham, Gustavus 

Procedures for meeting: Sidebar/ Vibe Check

Check-in/Meeting/Debrief structure

Next Tasks: 

• Bylaws
• Structure
• Facilitator
• Board and facilitator training
• Website
• Survey 1 for Individuals
• Survey 2 for Community groups

Juneau (2), Dillingham, Soldotna 

Further review of updated survey.

Reviewed bylaws for major Alaska parties:

• Alaska Democratic Party bylaws
• Alaska republican bylaws

Juneau (2), Soldotna, Fairbanks, Petersburg, Denali, Kenai

• Talked more about the shape of the organization.
• Indivisible partnership? (More resources)
• Getting a chapter together
• Communities who are already doing this: write up how they do events, lessons learned
• Survey out to individuals. Aggregate out at state level. Push back down to community levels.
• Allow people to fund specific projects instead of party general fund.
• Not reliant on outside funding
• Ways to track in-kind or volunteer hours.

Reviewed Disposition Rubric – Developed by the Dispositions Task Force.

Reviewed meeting agreements from First Alaskans Institute

Proposed structural elements for statewide Gatherings (Frequency/Monthly)

• Alaska Neighbors Party allows anyone to participate in our community, social or work groups, and statewide gatherings. Participants in our statewide meetings will adhere to our norms for civil discussion.
• A group of at least 3 members may call a meeting.
• At least one of those members should be residing in a different city than the others. 
• Share the date, time, and link at least 5 days before the proposed meeting posted in Discord/Signal
• Group must keep notes on who attended and what was discussed
• Place to share what has been worked on in Work Groups/Social Groups/Community Groups
• Members who cannot make the specific date/time may send in items for consideration
• Any member may propose agenda items
• No hierarchical structure, but there should be a facilitator (rotating role)
• Statewide will work on surveys to push down to community/workgroups/social groups
• Statewide will aggregate information from community/workgroups/social groups and send back for feedback before publishing on website
• Website information will reflect the gradients in thinking. Areas where most members agree and areas of concern that some members have.

Work Groups/Social Groups
-At least 2 members meeting together in-person or online

• Best efforts to share date, time, and location before proposed work group
• Notes/Work Product to be shared at the Statewide Gatherings

Community Groups

• Group of at least 2 members (or if a small community: paired with another small community or neighboring community)
• Deeper discussion of local issues, discuss survey/small group questions
• Summarize important topics to share at Statewide Gathering
• Workgroups/Social Groups and Community groups may propose their own local structures

Potential Partner Organizations / Individuals:

• Standup Alaska
• Matsu United for Progress
• Local ANB/ANS
• Current independents in AKLEG

Stance

• Collaborating with partner organizations with things already in motion
• Inviting experts in field to share information
• Inviting dissenters

• Reviewed last few weeks of conversations, looked at draft timeline, finished first run through of that organizational DNA chart

As summer started to pick up with travel, subsistence, field work, and good weather, work stalled a little in June and July.

Articulated current roles people are playing, started working on organizational DNA, looked at potential subgroups for summer work.

• Identified need to update our “welcome” documents for new folks, which prompted group decisions on our tech use, resulting in a new Tech & Comms Plan and the transferring of docs over to a new Proton mail and drive account (now in progress)
• Met Savannah Fletcher and talked about her desire/work for new political party and discussed joining forces.