Thoughts on the Kotzebue City Council Meeting from October 24, 2025

 

I want to start off by echoing the citizen comments from Friday’s city council meeting and thanking the administration and employees for their work during the storms earlier in the month. While it’s worrying that these events are happening more frequently thanks to climate devastation, I’m grateful for The City of Kotzebue for their work in fulfilling our need for safety. Several people mentioned the need for shelter at higher ground, and it just happens that I’m working on an article for The Green Party of Alaska’s newsletter on leadership needing to make their communities antifragile.

 

I want to congratulate Saima Chase and Johnson Greene on their electoral victories. We get to welcome back Cory Jackson onto the council as well, who has been chosen to fill the vacancy we had. I’d like to congratulate Saima Chase om being chosen as our new mayor of Kotzebue and Ernest Norton on becoming our new vice mayor. Before we move on with the new, I’d like to thank former mayor Derek Haviland-Lie for not just his leadership during the three storms but throughout his term as mayor. He is a man that continues to put the community first and does what he can to improve The City of Kotzebue.

 

I’m grateful that with the turbulent year we’ve had that Ron Johnson has stepped up to the plate to be the city’s acting city manager. I appreciate that the entire city is working together as they work to fill voids in the team. If you’re looking for work be sure to check out open positions at City Hall. It seems like everyone has several jobs to do with how many open positions there are. As Johnson Greene has been pointing out it’s worrisome how much of the work to be done is being outsourced.

 

While climate devastation, an economic downturn, and political polarization keeps the federal government shutdown is all quite worrying we shouldn’t fall into nihilism over it. We must remember our most important resource is people, and we people right now in the administration working on building a great team. And it’s good as well that we have a full city council filled with leaders who care about this community and where it’s going. The City of Kotzebue is a listening government and will work on the feedback it gets from its citizenry.

We need to celebrate Earth Day

I’ve told many about my existential crisis, as I try to escape nihilism and embrace life. Studying philosophy, I wonder what am I sacrificing my time and energy for? Thanks to my upbringing I’ve always been an environmentalist, being taught to respect the land, animals and plants. Reading Friedrich Nietzsche, I’ve come to realize that we need to do more than simply conserve what we have now but improve this world for the Overman and the future generations of this planet. Even if you don’t subscribe to Eternal Return, perhaps you are a Christian, I don’t see how someone can be satisfied with humanity receiving such a great gift from a god and trashing it.

 

It hit me that more needed to be done in Kotzebue’s City Council meeting on February 6^th, where we approved a holiday schedule. You could probably guess that Earth Day was missing from the agenda. I voted to pass the resolution without Earth Day because I know we haven’t done enough work to make it a big deal to the people of Kotzebue. Culture requires investment, and I’ve done plenty for days like Independence Day and Christmas but unfortunately leaving Earth Day out in the cold. Sure, I should have done more in the past, but the second-best time to do something is right now!

 

The Alliance for Knowledge and Reason (ARK) is hosting their 7^th Annual Regenerative Summit, coordinating a full week of events from April 20^th to the 26^th. The summit is driven by the principles of Permaculture, where ARK will present examples of how we can adopt to climate devastation through economic solutions, getting to the core issues of energy independence, zero waste, and food sovereignty. It’s exciting that this summit is sponsored by organizations like The Green Party of Alaska and The Alaska Forward Party. This year Kotzebue will be involved, with viewing parties being set up, along with other events for Earth Day itself.

 

We are in a climate crisis, with humans driving this ongoing sixth extinction event. The question is will humanity rise to occasion and make Earth a great home for the Overman; or will we parish to let another species have a go at this in the next few million years? There is reason to be optimistic, looking in the past when we almost wiped out the whales, but we were able to slow down our hunts for them when we discovered oil in the ground and innovated ways of extracting it. We have stopped ecological disasters before, and we can do it again!

 

Earth is our home, and we should celebrate it. Often when talking about our solar system it seems like people forget that the coolest planet is The Earth. When we look out at the stars where else do we see green patches of life? Philosophy has taught me to ask myself what my sacrifice is, as the fact is none of us are immortal. Why else should you be given money for your time, as we understand we don’t have an unlimited supply. The Earth, like any home, is worth that sacrifice. If we can’t come to terms with that, we can make the path for the next species to give it a go.