Thursday 6/19/25 | Muni's Bully, Unconsitutional Capital, David Yragui

Welcome to the party, pal. The Michael Dukes Show. The greed and the entitlement is astounding to me. What more could you want from a low-budget radio program? This is a dumpster fire. That was just BS. It is time to get a new perspective. We know just what you need, and we've got just the cure. Open wide and prepare for a steaming hot cup of freedom. I just don't fathom it.

The Michael Dukes Show, streaming live across the world. Yep, live around the world on the internet at michaeldukeshow.com and across the great state of Alaska on this, your favorite radio station, and or... FM translator. Hello, my friends. It's Thursday. And how you doing today? You ready to go? You ready to rock and roll? I mean, the sun's out. Sun's out, guns out, right? I mean, but are you ready to face it? I'll be honest. This morning, I was definitely not ready to face the world.

I'll be the first to admit that to you. Was not ready to face the world, but here we are. We still did it. We got it here. Congratulate yourself. You made it to the 6 o'clock club. That, of course, is what we call the... when the crew of you all come out here super early to listen to me yammer on about whatever I'm going to yammer on about. And it's just kind of a badge of honor for making it up out of bed.

And taking that extra Advil and saying, I'm ready to face the day. So are you ready to face the day? Oh, man. All right. Well, we've got a. We got a good show here lined up for you today. I mean, I think. I am biased, but I still believe it's true. We're going to be talking here this morning about some of the headlines that are around the state. Man, I've got some commentary, which is probably not going to surprise any of you.

on some of these actions. We're going to get to that here in just a minute. But in hour two, we're going to be talking with Kenai resident David Uragi. who's a local businessman and property owner. And he's got a tale that is, it's very interesting. It's very compelling. And...

Well, it's long and convoluted, but we're going to try and make our way through it here in Hour 2 to talk about some of the... in action and and and i guess it's a tale almost of how government bureaucracy can stand in the way of people trying to take care of themselves you know self-determination a little bit and it's kind of a it's kind of a modern day cautionary tale

on some of these things. But we're going to go over all that with David in hour two. He's going to be joining us to discuss that. And I don't think you're going to want to miss that. So even if you have to go to work or whatever, make sure that you... Sign up for the podcast wherever you find podcasts. The easiest one for me is always Spotify. But wherever you find podcasts, you know.

sign up so that you can go back and listen to David's discussion with me in hour two today. It should be, I'm predicting that it should be a good one. So we'll see. We'll see what it looks like here. But in. Wow. I heard myself. Swallow my own spit there. In hour one, we're going to cover some of the stories that are around the state. And some of these are just... Kind of mind blowing in some ways. And I guess what I mean by that is. Behaviorally. Mind blowing.

We know that some politicians can act really weird.

right uh i mean i hate to say it but the the anchorage assembly kind of takes the cake on this one we had who i think It was Karen Bronga, right? Karen Bronga. She was the one that showed up at the assembly meeting in the handmaiden's tail outfit. Right. And there's been a lot of kind of. back and forth from the podium and from the dais between assembly members and, and, uh, and, and members of the public who are testifying and all kinds of crazy stuff. But I have just this.

Last night's meeting of the Anchorage Assembly was, I guess, next level. Kind of next level here. Suzanne Downing writes about it in Must Read Alaska. Apparently, Assemblymember Chris Constant. This is some... This is some junior high school kind of craziness going on here. I guess I don't know why I'm surprised because we've seen some of the same behavior in the legislature.

kind of the hurt feelings and the, you know, everything else. But here's the, here's, here's the thing. Apparently Chris Constant. So before an Anchorage resident got up to testify, Amber Brophy King, who is kind of known, you may recognize her name if you follow some of the things that are going on in Anchorage. She's a very vocal critic.

of the city's homeless policies and some of the other actions that have happened, you know, during the Bronson administration, I saw her name several times as a, again, just kind of a critic of. a lot of the more progressive policies that are going on in Anchorage, which is her right as a citizen and as a resident of the city. So she is about to get up and testify.

And there's actually a video of this and you can go watch it for yourself. Definitely don't take my word for it. Definitely don't take Suzanne Downing's word for it. But right before she gets up to testify. Chris Constant can be seeing, mouthing the words F you at her, looking right at her and mouthing the words. I mean, just, and then as she gets up to approach the podium, he leaves the room. He's on the assembly and he just gets up and leaves the room. Now I served on a borough assembly.

And so I always fall back to that. People are like, why do you care? I'm just trying to give you some perspective. When I served on a borough assembly, I can remember. I mean, just maybe once or twice where a member had to get up during public testimony to go use the bathroom or go do something. I mean, it was very rare that that would happen. And so he starts off with the whole, you know, daggers in the eyes and then the epitaph. And then he gets up and leaves.

Well, she gets up and she testifies about everything that's going on with the city homelessness issue and goes off. And then at the end, she said... She tells the story of what just happened. You know, she testified first about the city's approach to homelessness, highlighting personal experiences and systemic failures. She just she had to intervene in a drug dose.

Drug overdose in Anchorage about a month before. She called 911 and the dispatchers told her to leave the woman and not administer any Narcan to her. She had Narcan and she went ahead and administered it. and the woman was recovered and survived, she said the ambulance never came. She also referenced a break-in in her home that took the Anchorage police three hours to respond to.

three hours to respond to a break-in in her home. You know, citing as, you know, those are examples of how the city is falling down, basically, in their job to do those things. Like I said, she's a... she's a you know a known critic of the of this thing but that kind of juvenile behavior um is it it's i guess it's typical I have interviewed Chris Constance several times on the program before he got on the assembly. He was the president of a local community council. And.

You know, he's a smart guy, but I also found him to be a little vindictive. And so this, to me, does not shock me. But at the same time, this is so juvenile, man. So juvenile. This is what you, you know, you basically give the finger to somebody and walk up and, you know. where's your non-biased impassivity where you're just supposed to, even if you don't like what they have to say, everybody should have a chance to say it kind of thing.

It's like they're starting to fray around the edges on the assembly. there in Anchorage. I mean, between the caterwauling over the whole, we're not going to have to ID everyone anymore for drinking, especially when they look like, you know, old gray-haired beard, bearded old gray-haired men. or or you know elderly women and all the catering over that about how that was the sky is falling and children were going to die and now this kind of behavior i just i want what is what is going on

What is going on? There was no response to this, by the way, from the assembly when she called him out for it at the end of her testimony. But it's just again. What is this junior high school? I mean, does that even get into the junior? I mean, I don't even know. But it is. It's disheartening, you know, I mean, it's.

At one point, I started to chuckle thinking maybe it's funny, but the more I think about it, the sadder I get. I mean, aren't these, you know, shouldn't we be able to at least look at these people to be professionals and, you know. Even if we disagree with them, I just, I don't, I don't, I don't understand it. What else we got here? We're down to the last couple of minutes here. There was another story that I wanted to get to.

Oh, the governor has now vetoed everything, but we do have four new bills that have become law. One from, in fact, this was the it was the first bill that the House Republican minority was actually able to put into law this year because they couldn't possibly let the minority have a win at all. No, no wins for the minority. They get like one bill. And that bill was a bill to expand the exemptions for people. who are absent from the state to receive the permanent fund. Now, I feel like that...

The majority must be like, yeah, why not? It's the last year of the permanent fund. I mean, let them change whatever they want. It's not like it's going to be a win for them, right? I mean, you know, come on. Next year, there really won't be a permanent fund. So, you know, go ahead.

Make them feel good about themselves. It'll be fine. That's kind of what I feel like, right? That they're like, yeah, it's okay. Just let them, pat them on the back. Make them feel like they're doing something. Because it won't matter. It won't matter. No more PFD anyway. Right? I don't know why they talk like that, but that's in my mind. That's the stuff that I hear. Jeremy Bynum, who was the sponsor of the bill, was pleased. Basically, it would...

It would expand the exemption so people who were U.S. merchant marines would still be eligible because when they're out and they're deployed, they live in Alaska, but they're on a deployment for 15 weeks or whatever. That doesn't count against them. Also, college students who take holiday breaks away from Alaska will not have absences count. And then members of the federal government's NOAA and Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.

will not lose PFD eligibility when they're deployed out of state. So I guess that's, I mean, does it really matter? Because good luck, man. It's not going to happen next year. Don't worry about it. And then there was two other bills, three other bills that that became law to without her signature.

One, renewing some of the state's professional licensing boards, that's SB 80, and then the state parole board, SB 137. Those became law without a signature, according to James Brooks over there at the Alaska Beacon. And then he also signed. SB-152, which renames the airport in Ruby after Harold Ismalka. But that's it. That's the one. I mean, the one. Go ahead and make them feel good. It'll be fine. The three. Great. Great.

I mean, I'm so glad we got all this work done for these four bills that were all the one bill that, you know, they said it's the the first bill. from the House Republicans Minority Caucus to become law this year. Talk about an exercise in frustration. All right, we're going to continue on here in just a moment. Don't go anywhere.

We're also going to talk about Kevin McCabe. He finally, I think, I don't know, maybe my caterwauling about this finally got to him. He wrote an article about... what i've been bitching about for the last few weeks which is who's going to point out that the constitution says that one-third of our state spending must be put on capital projects and nobody has made a fuss about it

publicly, I guess, except me. Well, Kevin McCabe actually wrote about it. Good and good for him. And that's a good piece. We'll talk a little bit about that. Plus, on the Kenai... Jesse Bjorkman may have some explaining to do. We'll be back. The Michael Luke Show, Common Sense Radio. If you missed the show, you can listen to it on your time with Duke's On Demand. Oh, and it's free. Like America used to be. Streaming live every weekday morning on Facebook Live and MichaelDukesShow.com. Okay.

Good morning. Good morning. Let's see. Let's see what's going on. Oh, you guys are crazy. Bill says, David has a tail. I knew there were swamp people. That kind of tail, Bill. Anthony said, you guys hear that the dude who owned those restaurants and got deported was released yesterday? He's still in custody. He's not released. He's still in custody. But they did drop some of the things against him.

I think mostly to get the federal judge Sharon Gleason out of the picture. He's still in custody, though. That's the that's the that's part of the deal. I mean, you guys can't make this kind of stuff up. Where is it? They're still trying to deport him. But they have dropped a bunch of the charges. The criminal charges have been dropped. but not the other ones. So we'll get into that here in a little bit. Good morning, good morning, good morning.

Uh, three hours. Um, at that point, you'd never be able to find it. What was it? Uh, orange man, bad syndrome. Um, How about, says Richie, they just do what we hired them to do and quit with the subpar failed Academy Award performances. All of them need to be told to kick rocks and walk out the door.

Well, I mean, you know, the thing is they won the election guys. I mean, I know that's how you and I feel, but I also understand that these guys won the election and there's a cadre of people out there. that to support this kind of juvenile behavior. I mean, that's, that's where we're at. Like, that's where we're at. Oh, it's, uh, it's crazy.

Yeah, a Brooklyn MD this morning. That's the thing. I don't know why that's the voice that I hear in my head when I'm thinking about these guys. Yeah, talking to each other. Yeah, let them have it. It don't matter. There'll be no more PFD tomorrow anyway, so it doesn't just forget about it. Right? I mean, it doesn't matter. Oh, man.

At least give it was a good beans and breads. Whatever happened to the grand jury issue anyway, said Rick. That's something that Ben Carpenter and I talked about this last week. He is still. He's still diving into that. And it is, it's not done yet. Let's just put it that way. It's not done yet, but I don't think he's going to, I don't think he wants to lay his cards.

down on the table quite yet so anthony just said well in response to my talk about the guy being held by ice well crap man i guess 20 plus years of being a productive tax-paying member of society doesn't count for anything

Crime it is then. Right? I mean, my daughter, we were actually talking about this the other day around the table, and my daughter said, well, if he's here illegally, how did he... start these businesses and do all this how did he how did he to which i said good question good question how do you start two businesses That obviously have got to have revenue in the, I mean, there's hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in revenue in a restaurant, right? Especially.

A couple of the ones that I was in, I don't know about, I mean, Sol Agave was a really nice place. How do you do that? How do you start and get all that as a non-citizen? I just want to, I got to wonder how many hoops do you have to jump through to, uh, to make that work? I don't know. I don't know. But, uh, you're right, Anthony. It basically makes you question, why am I doing this all legally and upright if they're going to get away with all that?

The Michael Duke Show. Seriously humorous with a pinch of intellect. Pinch of intellect. Sorry. That is humorous. Here's Michael Dukes.

Jesse, you got some explaining to do. That's right. I had to laugh this morning when I saw this. The... The chairs of the Alaska Republican parties from Districts 7 and 8 informed Jesse Bjorkman. That their respective committees have voted unanimously to advance formal complaints filed by registered Republicans in his district. That's a Kenai senator from the north part of the peninsula. He's facing a formal censure proceedings.

in his district over his decision to join the democratically-led coalition. There are six signers, three from each district. They accuse him of violating Article 7 of the Alaska Republican Party rules, which prohibits from forming or joining a majority caucus in which non-Republicans make up one-third or more of the membership. And which is exactly what's happened in the Senate, because, again, the Democrats really are running the show. There was a majority.

This is the thing that most people don't understand. It's a 20-member body, and they had a majority of Republicans. And instead of forming a... coalition with other Republicans, some of the people in there who are big time butthurt, you know, formed a caucus with the Democrats.

that made up the majority they they took and had like 13 republicans and instead of they took five of them and they went in and and jumped into the in bed with the democrats on the other side and uh so yeah there's a question here What's, what's, you know, what's going to happen? Um, so they.

So they notified him, due to your joining and thereby enabling the Senate Democrat-led Majority Caucus, both district committees have now voted unanimously to censure you for failing to adhere to our written rules. Now, remember, you guys up in the Kenai, up north of me, you guys get what you vote for, man. You guys swallowed this whole thing hook, line, and sinker. You had an opportunity. You had an opportunity to vote Ben Carpenter into that seat.

But instead, you bought into the Bjorkman lie that it was all about taxes and that Ben was a, you know, whatever. And then this is what you get. This is what you get. Now, the documents are basically that were sent to him. Basically said that there's a formal disciplinary process and they're providing them with 15 days notice to respond and appear before the committees and et cetera, et cetera. They will. But again, what is sense you're going to do?

But what is censure going? His current term ends in 2029. So we're 2020. What is going to happen? 2029. And so what good is censuring going to do to him? Nothing. I mean, I applaud them for attempting it, but there is no real ramifications for this. You know what would fix a lot of this? if they just wouldn't elect these people in the first place. That would fix a lot of these problems. But obviously they're not the only other ones. who have done this i mean

Kelly Merrick, Gary Stevens, Bert Stedman, Kathy Giesel. On the House side, you know, you've got Chuck Kopp and Luis Stutes. And I mean, this happens all the time. Where are the party members there? telling them you guys are breaking all the rules. We're supposed to be a team. And you go join the other team when you get the chance. And, uh, yeah.

I mean, it's pretty crazy. I don't think that Jesse is quaking in his boots. I don't think that he's too worried about it. He's got another five years, four years to make his way. you know, make his mark on what's going on. And then he may or may not decide to run again, but he's fine for right now. He's fine for right now. Moving in on it. All right. You can't make this stuff up, people. You just can't make this stuff up. Today is the day that I agree with Peter Machicky.

I wasn't sure if this day would come. I mean, I'm joking a little bit. He and I see eye to eye on a lot of stuff, but there's quite a few things over the years that we haven't seen eye to eye on. But I have to admit that today is the day that once again I find myself in agreement with Kenai Borough Mayor Peter Machicke, former state senator Peter Machicke.

The Peninsula Clarion, Jacob Dye over there, has got an article talking about the borough has now decided to provide maximum funding for the school district. Now, this is what they were trying in Fairbanks, too, right? They wanted to fund maximum funding up to the cap for the school district. And so this is going on all over the place because, again, oh, that education spend, it's so important. We'll give anything to get to the promised land of, you know.

The Kenai borough last night, excuse me, on Tuesday, is going to fund the schools to the peak, to the cap. We're all the way up to the top. It was an eight to one vote. on Tuesday in favor of the move. The amendment to increase the amount of funding in the budgets, which was advanced by Brent Johnson, will take their budget funding from $57 million to $62 million, which is right up to the cap.

Now, the people who were in support of it went on and on and on about how it was just important to continue to have the success that the districts are showing and that we need to have music and sports and art and how.

We need to do whatever we can to fund the schools, no matter what. They shouldn't lose one person in the school. Now, again, no discussions on... how the funds in the schools and this is not just a kpb issue this is an fnsb issue this is an anchorage school district issue this is you know but no discussion on how the funds have been managed

No discussions on the continual declining enrollment in brick and mortar school. No discussions on the explosive growth of alternative methods of schooling, whether it's homeschooling or allotments or anything else. It's all about, we've got to do it. They went on and they went to talk about all the deep cuts to programs and staffing and facilities. And it was a sob story. It was a story of woe. So they go through and one member voted against it.

Because he wouldn't support more funding to the Kenai Peninsula School District because he was unconvinced that the increase would save anything. It was Ryan Tunseth. And he said that this is a... a thing from the state he said this is a failure of the state to provide adequate funding if you know if we funded the cap all these same issues will be back because we're talking about because they still exist and it should be the state that's doing and that's

kind of the answer that everybody has been saying the state's not doing their job we need the state to step up and do more That was almost everybody's answer. Anyway, they got all the way down to the mayor. And the mayor, Peter Michicki, he was opposed to it. He said.

repeatedly that the borough cannot afford to fund the education to the maximum allowable amount over a long period of time, and that the KPB provides a greater contribution to its schools than other comparable boroughs in the state. And he's right. They have one of the highest contribution rates of anywhere in the state. And that if the borough within just a few years that the borough will be paying more for its schools than the state does.

basically by the end of the decade. And then he says, this is where he lost me, because I'm with him up until that point. He repeated that the pressure and the onus needs to be on the state to fund education adequately. But, and he catches me back again to agree with him. that the KPBSD needs to consolidate its operations and meet the challenge of declining student populations. I mean, this is what we've been talking about the whole time.

Where are you guys? You guys have got to learn to live within the budget and knowing. that the budget is going to continue to get smaller because you have a declining enrollment population and your budget is based on a per student funding model. So you have to acknowledge. that your budget is going to continue to contract and shrink. No longer can you expect continued expansion of that budget every year.

What you need to do is get some people on the school board and in the school district and in the finance that can, you know, that understand that, you know, you got to cut it. You got to trim it back. You got to start squeezing stuff down now. And this should be for every school district. But, you know, if history tells us anything, that ain't going to happen. But, you know, we can we can hope.

We can hope that that's that's going to go on. And then there's this big, long article in the Peninsula Clarion. I mean, big, long article about how they're going to cut. schools, they're going to cut pools and theaters and libraries, all of which are great things. I don't want people to get sideways with me here.

All of these are great things. I participated in all of those things when I was growing up. I participated in theater. I swam in the pools. I did. But the fact that they keep throwing all these things back up at us.

over the fact that really the schools knew that a lot of this was coming. The districts knew that there's been a declining enrollment. They knew that all this, but you see, it's come to the perfect head where the state can no longer continue to bail them out at a certain rate. And now they're on their own. And so the cuts that they make are kind of these.

And they've done it in a weird way. The article talks about how one teacher went to clear out their stuff. It wasn't a teacher. It was the theater technician. When she went to collect her things from the high school, the principal there hadn't even been informed that her job had been cut. So he had no idea. He's like, why are you here? I'm here to collect my stuff. I got fired. Right. Or I got not being retained or whatever.

I mean, it's like, again, they're intentionally doing it in such a way to cause shock and awe, right? It's like the school board's version of shock and awe. is they just start dropping these bombs of people losing their jobs and, oh, why do you hate the children? Don't you like the pools? Don't you like the theater? Don't you like all these things? And again, they're trying to get the public spun up.

to be their stalking horse on this. It's exactly what I was just saying in that last article from, you know, over the, that, that everybody on the assembly was, it's the state's fault. It's the state's fault. But we should go back to the state. They should be funding this. And it never, you know, again, guys, declining enrollment.

Your whole model is based on a per-student formula funding. You have declining enrollment. Ergo, you're going to have less money. Maybe you should plan for that instead of... demanding more money and then... When you don't get your way, you cut all these high profile, high visibility, high things. You hurt people and do all this and then expect them to go out and carry your battle standard for you to the legislature to say, save us, save us.

Sorry, I'm getting a little wound up about this. But, you know, again, why should we expect any different from the clown posse? Yeah, that's right. The Clown Posse. Okay, we gotta go. The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense. Liberty-based, free-thinking radio. Back with more right after this. listened to by more staffers in Juno than any other show. Because their bosses told them to. And after what they just heard, oh man, they're gonna be best. You're a bad, bad man. The Michael Duke Show.

Okay, man. I think I better go back to bed. I just think when this is over, I think I'm going back to bed. Not me, said Richie. I voted for Ben. Yeah. Yeah. Well. Somebody bought into his narrative. Well, that and I guess I can't always blame the Republicans for that because. He is a school district and a union leader and everything else. So he probably had a whole bunch of people who voted for him that weren't normally ours on the ticket.

He's taken a page out of Murkowski's book, calls himself an R, and then does what he needs to do. Yeah. Rick says people need to learn how to read people. If they tell you what you want to hear, well, most of the time they're the ones spewing crap. Right. Exactly. Terry just said, I hadn't heard about this. I'm not privy, nor do I really pay attention to all the intricacies or...

inner workings of the Republican Party. She says the Republican Party has changed their rules and they have some teeth to them now. There will be consequences. Well, tell me more. Tell me more. uh yeah kim nelson just said oh no that's right i'm sorry wrong one let me do that let me do that again I found the button. More. Um. Sorry. Sometimes I've just got to. Sometimes I've just got to. And. entertain myself all right that's how it works i gotta entertain myself um jeffrey says

When all but a few are left, do you think Alaska will be one big park, or will they slice it up into smaller units, you know, make jobs for more administrative positions? Oh, what do you think, Jeffrey? Oh, I don't think it'll be one big park. They'll have to have a lot of people here to administer this place. A lot of people. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Rep Kevin McCabe, who we're going to talk about here in the next segment.

Said school districts. I'm so sorry, guys. Normally I could cover up a yawn, but that. I'm having a hard time this morning. School districts have become big business dealing in the community, the commodity of our children. If there are not enough children to garner the funding needed to pay teachers, then we need to increase the value to the district of each child. That's pretty much it.

That's pretty much it. Cindy says we're not holding the school accountable, let alone the superintendent. The deflection is deep. I mean, I agree with that. There's something going on where they are... And this is not, again, just a KPB issue. It's not just an FNSB because Melissa Burnett and I have talked about this, that there are deep, reoccurring issues.

And there there is a failure in the part of school boards across the state to address this issue of declining enrollment and all these other things. They and I think it goes back again. to the education industry and i mean you know like kevin said school districts have become big businesses the commodity is the kids Although they don't really care about what the product quality is like. They just want to move the commodity around so that they can get paid for handling the commodity. That's it.

Uh, oh, Lisa's in the chat. She says, when they closed Nikolaev's school, they said, we can just do homeschool. If they could have everybody sign up for Connections Homeschools, they get our money for our kids, but only give us $2,500, which is cheaper than keeping the schools open. Many parents chose the other homeschools because the KPBSD doesn't play nice with the parents. I'm with you. You know, I recommend idea. That's what I recommend.

There are several other good programs, but Idea is the one that I'm most familiar with. I don't know if they have an idea on the peninsula, quite honestly. I didn't look. Because I didn't need to. All my kids are graduating. Okay. Guys, guys, guys. Need some coffee this morning. You guys ready to go? Terry says she's going to... She's going to make sure she's factual on the new teeth and the GOP thing and get back to me. Okay. I can't wait, Terry. I can't wait. All right. Let's do this thing.

Going to talk about Kevin McCabe next. Going to use dirty words. No. Oh. Public enema number one. Oh, wait, sorry. Enemy. Public enemy number one, which makes more sense. On the other hand, he's a little bit of a pain in the Michael Duke show. I've been accused of many things. That one is true.

All right, welcome back to the program. Our two is dead ahead here. We got this one final segment, and then we're going to be joined by David Uragi from the Kenai Peninsula area. Um, I'm trying to, I'm trying to be very cognizant of, uh, trying to be very cognizant of, uh, of, of doing more stuff on the peninsula than I'm doing up in the interior or in the Matsu.

Because we broadcast all over the place and I want, but you know, you guys should reach out to me. You guys in Fairbanks, get some folks to reach out to me because I don't have my finger quite on the pulse of what's going on there. So have them reach out to me at me at michaeldukeshow.com. It's my email address right here. And you can, uh, you can, you know, you can do it. Um, what I just, I got a text message. Oh yeah. John, um,

There's a fundraiser this weekend down in Homer BB's bakery. Some of the best donuts in the state. Just going to say it. I know for some of you that's heretical, but I will tell you that you will not find a better. filled donut in the state than at bb's bakery uh on the down on ocean drive now on the spit and at the bottom of my hill i mean literally it's two miles from my house which is dangerous because I drive by it every time I leave.

Um, you can, uh, you can go down there there. It's their first birthday this weekend. And to celebrate, they're asking you to donate, uh, to the dive search rescue and recovery, uh, crew. And those are the folks that. go out there and search for people who are lost, uh, or recover remains of people who have drowned or died. Uh, they're the ones that just got the, all the members of the Maynard family here down here and that from that.

uh, from that, uh, wreck last year in Ketchamack Bay, that Texas family, they went out and found them anyway, go to BB's bakery and, uh, and drop a few, drop a few extra bucks in the, in the kitty for the, uh, uh arctic uh for the arctic dive uh rescue um the dive search and rescue and recovery folks uh from bb's bakery and happy birthday to bb's it's one year one year ago it's good i can't believe it's been

that long bb everybody in the chat room bb bakery is so good it is so good the the the donuts are so good and they got lots more than just donuts this is not an ad for them It sounds like one, but only because I'm slathering at the mouth. They wanted me to know that the, that the proceeds that they're raising this weekend go to the dive and recovery folks, which are, it's a great organization. So.

Okay, where was I? Distracted this morning. Oh, Kevin McCabe. Kevin McCabe, who has been, he's gotten to be quite the... The word Lothario here, man, you got some, he's been writing some good pieces. Um, and I don't know if it's because I've been caterwalling about it or if he, you know, we great minds think alike or whatever. But he has written a piece about how Alaska's constitutional mandate on the one-third of the spending must be reserved for capital projects and loan appropriations.

And that's Article 9, Section 16 of the Constitution. And yet the capital budget this year allocates 19 percent, not 33 percent, 19 percent. because 33% is one third. For those of you who graduated from Lathrop High School with me, the 33% is one third and that would have fulfilled the mandate. Did I tell you that somebody...

Oh, I'm going to sidebar here. Did I tell you that somebody got mad at me because I made a joke about barely graduating or I can't do math? I made some kind of comment about how I can't do math because I'm a... I are a graduate of wherever. Somebody sent me this nasty email about how, you know, I can't believe that I would denigrate the teachers.

And do all this, you know, and the thing, and I'm just like, well, most people understand that that's a joke. That it's a self-deprecating joke. I can do math. I know I said that I can't, but I can do math. Maybe not, you know, to the beautiful mind level of math, but I can do basic math. And when I make a joke about that, you realize that it's just a joke. And most people get it.

This, this, this lady just turns out she was, uh, I looked up her name because she gave me her name and I, and she's a former teacher and everything. She was butthurt because I wasn't saying it was the teachers. I was saying it was anyway. Sorry. Didn't mean to squirrel. Um, all right, let's go back. Just, I just, I just remembered that because I made a joke about how I couldn't, you know, the math. Um, yes.

One third, 19% is less than one third. Anyway, uh, Kevin, Kevin goes on, this whole thing is falling apart in this morning. If Kevin goes on to talk about how, you know, look, uh, we're, we're short of the one third requirement. And I think this is the real meaty part of his whole discussion.

He said, when the legislature falls short by over $1.6 billion, it's not a math problem. It's a failure of priorities. Pressure from expanded social programs continue to squeeze out infrastructure investment. While these have their place, They cannot come at the cost of letting our roads crumble, our ferries rust in port, or our school buildings fall into disrepair. When every dollar is treated as a zero-sum choice, infrastructure always seems to draw the short straw.

This goes back to my deferred maintenance bugaboo. I mean, I'm so... my pet peeve of deferred maintenance. He's a hundred percent right. You know why? Because fixing buildings and painting fairies and doing all this other kind of stuff is not sexy. You know what's sexy? Creating a new program and getting a new constituency and patting yourself on the back. You know what's not sexy? Replacing the boiler in your school.

You know, ripping out the old wiring and having to put new wiring that's up to code or put new carpets in or something. That stuff is not sexy. Being able to pound yourself on the chest about how you got this new program in for your community. That's sexy. Fixing stuff. Building, you know, putting new roofs on stuff and maintaining the stuff you have is not nearly as gratifying to politicians as some new shiny widget. Or, you know, funding, funding.

You know, he goes, he goes on to say, he goes, you know, he's talking about the base student allocation. He says, while funding education is important, so is investing in the buildings where the learning takes place. Pouring money into operating costs. which is what they want and the unions love, because that's all the operating costs, while letting the facilities rot is not a solution.

It's a shell game that puts our students and teachers in unsafe and outdated environments. Folks, you need to go read this piece. And I'm out of time on it. So you need to go read this piece because this is an amazing thing. But I will just say it right there. That is part of the problem.

When you are more interested in creating more government programs and more government spending than you are in maintaining the stuff that you already got, maybe there's a problem. Just saying, maybe there's a problem there. Not that, you know, not that I would know or anything, but we'll see what happens. All right, my friends, we got to go. David Yoragi is going to be joining us here up next. It's going to be a full hour. You might want to buckle up for this.

And we're going to continue The Michael Duke Show. Coverage Sense, Liberty Base, Free Thing and Radio. If you've got to go, be kind, love one another, live well. Don't forget to hit the podcast so you can hear this later. We'll see you. Okay. I think we're about ready to go. I see that David is down in the green room.

eating all of my virtual donuts and drinking my virtual coffee. I don't know what that's all about, man. Save one for me, man. Don't eat them all. We're going to get to him here in just a hot second. Uh, but I do want to get caught up before we go too far along, uh, to get caught up in the chat room to see what else is, uh, um, see what's up. Lisa, who just went through this and Nikolaivis said, they don't take care of our buildings.

I'm disappointed in that. Yeah. No. I mean, that's exactly it. What was, you know, what's going on? David said to Kevin's comment, to Kevin's article, he said, Kevin, that's what monopolies do. Until a monopoly is broken up like AT&T, nothing will change for the better. I've said it over and over and over again.

We need to acknowledge that there's something fundamentally flawed with the way that we do education. I'm not saying that we should stop. I'm not saying we shouldn't educate. I'm saying we need to acknowledge that the product that we're receiving is inferior and throwing more money at the problem is not going to solve it. Tracer said many of us older folks are mourning the national death of the sense of humor. I mean, it was I had I was like I was reading this piece from this lady.

who who sent me this email because i made some kind of self-deprecating i mean i i i'm a huge fan of self-deprecating humor um and um what was the what was the I'm trying to remember where this gal, because this gal reached out to me through the contact. What did she say? There we go. Here it is. I found it. Is this it? Yeah. She said,

Today is the second time in recent weeks I've heard you slam Lathrop High School. If you aren't good in math, that's on you and not the teachers at Lathrop. Of our four children, all graduated from Lathrop and received a very good education. I will say that the standards have drastically decreased.

Our youngest graduated 20 years ago, but laying that on the district and not the teachers who are doing the best they can with large class sizes and more and more demands placed on them by the district. They are no longer left to do what they signed up to do. Teach.

And I said, well, first thing, I appreciate you listening. Secondly, anytime I say something like that, be assured it's a joke. Self-deprecating humor. I know, I had to look that word up because I graduated from Lathrop. Seriously, I'm not knocking anyone.

Just, you know, most people understand that I'm not really attacking anything in particular, but, you know, apologies if you feel it goes too far, but I'm too old to stop making fun of myself and my upbringing and other stuff. That's what it's all about. It's just, you know, she was just so outraged that I was blasting later. Again, it's, it's a joke. People, man, sometimes people, they just don't get it.

All right. What else we got here? I think I'm about all caught up in the chat room. Melissa said, I can't math. Thanks, Michigan Public Schools. Yeah, no coffee this morning. I know, I'm definitely feeling the no coffee this morning. Okay, I am, I'm all caught up. All right, you guys talk amongst yourselves here.

I'm going to, uh, we're going to pull this together here and get, uh, David onto the program. So let's, uh, let's pull all this together and we will click that. And then we will add Dave up here and we'll say, good morning, David. How are you? Good morning, Michael. I'm good. You all ready to dive into this hot, hot mess this morning? Sure. We'll give it a go. We'll give it a go.

David's ready. He's got a full list of stuff. And I mean, this is going to be hit the ground running. You guys might want to take some notes on this or bookmark this for your podcast later on, because you're going to probably want to listen to this. over again. There's going to be a lot of good information here this morning that's going to be laid out with some history about what's happening here in the Kenai Peninsula Borough. So we're going to be good. All right, David, I'm going to...

We're about a minute and a half out, and so I will take you off back into the green room, and we'll be back as soon as the show starts, okay? Very good. All right, Dave, it's going to hang out there in the, you know. I mean, he's got donuts. What more do you want? That's all I'm saying. He's got what he can do.

All right, tomorrow on the program, I meant to tell you this earlier, tomorrow on the program, Dr. John Lott was going to be joining us from the Crime Prevention Research Center, also from the... Well, he writes for Fox News and he's got the books out, you know, War on Guns and More Guns, Less Crime. And anyway, we're going to talk with him tomorrow about all this hand-waving freak-outery about the suppressor ban or suppressor bill.

That is in the big, beautiful bill where they basically are taking suppressors off the the NFA list and they're just going to make them, you know, they're just going to make them an accessory. Just an accessory, regular old accessory. Still got to pass a background check, still got to do all that other stuff. But anyway, we're going to talk with him about that tomorrow on the program for Firearms Friday.

Uh, and that'll be right at the beginning of the show, uh, tomorrow. And, uh, then we'll have, of course, we'll have Willie Waffle and, uh, you and me tomorrow and probably Fred, Fred from Rhode Island, we'll probably call in tomorrow. So that'll be a good thing.

Uh, and then, uh, next Monday, I have no idea. That's a long ways away. You have to understand that's a long ways away from here. I may not be alive on Monday. That's how you just, you know, you get to my age. You're just not sure. Make every moment count. It's Thursday. I'm so ready for tomorrow. Here we go. The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense Radio. Back with more. Let's do it. Hour two is right now.

Buddy, put that thing back in its holster. We haven't gone anywhere. I don't understand. Check out themichaeldukesshow.com for information on how to get access to the podcast. Welcome to the party, pal. you The Michael Duke Show. The greed and the entitlement is astounding to me. What more could you want from a low-budget radio program? This is a dumpster fire. That was just BS.

It is time to get a new perspective. We know just what you need and we've got just the cure. Open wide and prepare for steaming hot cup of freedom. I just don't. Fathom it. The Michael Dukes Show, streaming live across the world.

Live around the world on the internet at michaeldukeshow.com and across the state of Alaska on this, your favorite radio station and or FM translator heard all the way up from Fairbanks in the north out on Alaska, out on the Aleutian chain and everywhere in between. Good morning, my friend.

Friends, welcome to the program, and thanks for joining us. Thursday edition of the show, Hour 2. We've got a guest in Hour 2. I met David Yaragi just through a phone call. We were talking about something else, and he started talking about this story. And this story is a tale of woe. Now, if you know me, you know that I'm a huge proponent of...

private property, property rights, being able to do what you need to do on your own property as long as you're not hurting anybody else and everything else. And you also know that I'm not a fan of governmental intervention in every aspect of your life. So as he started to tell me this story, I thought,

wow, more people need to hear about kind of some of the things that are going on and some of the backstory of what's happening on this. And so I invited him on the program to discuss it with us this morning. And he is ready to join us right now. We're going to talk about... What has happened here in the Kenai? This is going all the way back to 1999. So we're been this kind of those whole tale started almost 25 years ago. So we're going to try and walk through it.

I mean, this could be a three-hour program just on this one thing alone, but we're going to try and give you the brief overview, and then maybe we'll have David back in the future to discuss more as things develop. But we're welcome to the program this morning, David Uragi, businessman here from the Kenai Peninsula. And good morning. Good morning, David. How are you doing? How are you doing?

Very good, Michael. Thank you. Good. Are you ready for this? We're going to dive in. Let's get to it here. Sure. David, so as you told me this story. You couldn't see me because I was on the phone and my eyes were just kind of getting wider and wider and wider like wow wow wow. So let's start off at the very beginning and this goes back to the fact that you were a guy who had a dream. And your dream was to...

You know, was to create like a mini ranch environment, like have a ranch and be able to just kind of like farm hay and raise some livestock in your old age. And then you started thinking, well, I could break this out and do this. other people and we could all be in kind of the same area. So, so walk us through the beginning of that and then where we went from there. Okay. So in 1979, I came to Alaska from Oregon.

My wife and I both grew up around ranches. So I met my wife in 1981. We've been married 44 years. We started a readout plumbing and heating in 1981. I ran that for 38 years. We had 3,600 customers in this general area.

Very successful. Did everything that we wanted to do. Our dream was to build a ranch. So when I started working the plumbing and heating business, we did a lot of residential and then we got into commercial and then we started doing schools and clinics all over the state of alaska so 1999 we bought our homestead We started clearing, took me a couple years, working basically night and day to clear it and put in a hayfield. My uncle lived right next door.

His name was Jim Doyle. And I helped him hay his ground for probably 10 years prior. So I started acquiring all the hay equipment, tractors, all that kind of stuff. And we... built our ranch in about 2001 2002 we were in hay production and people started looking at the ranch and going man we would love to have a place like this so um In 2002, I bought 300 acres south of our property and started working on that. We developed a fair park down Bowie Street.

put in all the applications, all the permits, Corps of Engineers, DEC, DNR, everybody got on board and wanted to see this thing happen. So we built it and we spent

10 years, 12 years putting this together. And then in 2013, I was building a cow pond and noticed that our water table had come up 11 feet. And so I... Called a friend of mine who's a, he's an attorney, but he does crisis intervention. And he said, I needed a hydrologist to look at it. So I hired a hydrologist named Jim Munter. who is just an incredible guy. Very straightforward, very honest, taught me for the last 10 years everything I could possibly want to know about hydrology.

We started looking at everything and warned the borough in 2013 that it was imminent that we were going to flood. that there was a tremendous amount of water in the wetland complex to the south of our property so i made the borough aware of that and they got pretty upset Didn't really want to talk about it, but they did give me permits to dig out Trolling Street and some of the other drainage.

outlets right before you get it before you get too far into that part of it because by this time you had started to again you created this kind of mini complex of smaller parcels that were like mini ranches, right? And as you built that out, you, I mean, you were building the roads and you were building the proper drainage and ditches and all this other kind of stuff.

um and putting all this together when you put this in right that's how you noticed that the water level was coming up yeah when we in in 2000 and About 2002, 2003, we started building Bowie Street, and we had to go through a lot of paperwork, a lot of permitting, coastal questionnaires, river center. um everybody agreed that it was a great idea to to subdivide this 300 acre industrial park that was that was planted in 1973 turn that into mini ranches so that we could have

growth in the agricultural field. I had already purchased all of the equipment that I needed. And so the idea was to develop five and eight acre parcels with 20, 25 acre. uh parcels that that people could hey pull the hay off feed their livestock build their little mini ranches on their five and eight acre parcels and um all of the paperwork

From the very beginning was mini ranches. The concept was born in 2002. And I told a lot of the people that were buying hay from us that we could make this happen. And you had to fix up a lot of these roads, right? I mean, what were the conditions of the roads like on Bowie Street and everything before you got to work on all this? Well... When I first built or started to get the Bowie Street engineered, the first 1,700 feet of Bowie Street was pretty dilapidated, no drainage.

So I had gone through all the borough statutes on roads and had a pretty good understanding of what those drainage resources were supposed to look like. And so when I had the Bowie Street Farmstead and Tiller designed by McLean Engineering, we had already started the road project with. with uh dean robinson from cooking construction who is incredibly good at what he does um so we built the road all the way to uh the end of buoy street which was about a mile uh then we built farmstead and tiller

i put all the utilities in underground because at the end of buoy street was going to be uh i had bought i had i had bought a 120 acre parcel and i i flew um with my uncle um we hunted for years together and um i developed the air park and all the permits everything was there so at a point in 2000 12, I had dug a ditch, or not a ditch, but a hole on the ranch to find out where our water table was. Our water table was at 15 to 16 feet.

now at that time i had already developed the air park so there was five miles of of uh ditches that were built in the air park where i took all the stumps and everything and put them into the ground and then covered it with three feet of sand then built the airpark at that time the water table at the airpark was around 16 feet so 2013 rolls around and i'm planting 120 acre hayfield that i that took me a couple years to build uh on just south of our homestead um

I was out seeding that hay field and I thought, you know, it's more important to get the cow pond put together because the water is so deep. So I went back to the ranch with my excavator and started to dig a hole. now in 2012 i had put together a culvert 42 inch culvert 20 feet long and i got all the pumps floats uh pit liner everything to build a cow pond so i started digging and hit water at six feet

And thought, you know, something's definitely wrong here. The water table had come up like nine feet, 10 feet in a matter of six months. So. So when I hired the hydrologist, we started investigating. We found out that the drainage that goes to the beaver ponds on Kay Beach Road was plugged. Took me five and a half hours to walk about a mile up through it. It was just...

incredibly plugged up. We started with the hydrologist. I started investigating all of the drainages. We went down through Hillcorp's property or Ceres property that Hillcorp leases. Went down the Hill Corps Road, which is south of all of our property, and Jim noticed sheet flow coming across the road, which indicated that the wetlands complex was completely saturated.

So I started doing a bunch of research on cause and effect, what's going on. My background's mechanical. And I taught plumbing and heating for 30 years.

had the apprenticeship program the first lesson was cross-contamination you want you want to stay away from septic and domestic water being uh contaminated right domestic water from being contaminated by septic so i did a an investigation on how many properties were flooded there was there was an excess of 400 properties people's crawl spaces were filling up they didn't know it their septics were overflowing their wells are contaminated

Anyway, I made a record of everything. I kept a lot of documents, thousands and thousands. So at this point, you notify...

the community you notify the borough you do both right yep i've had a i rented the sports center on the advice of my hydrologist we had uh probably 150 people at the first meeting and i pulled out my charts my maps lidar mapping uh all of the information that i'd garnered from jim the hydrologist and brought it out to the public's attention and at that time

Well, our current mayor was there. Said that he would absolutely help us figure out what was going on so we could get a... solution to the problem so for the next two years um we started the kb child water task force we had a lot of local local support a lot of uh people that got had been hurt by the flooding came in everybody had put their ideas together about drainage we identified uh cleaning out the drainage to the beaver ponds

Back in 2013, we had made different proposals, hired engineers. I had all of the survey work done. It looked to me like we had a solution in 2013, 2014, but the borough, the government shut it down, everything. Right. DNR got involved. told me that i could not impound water and i could not discharge water and that's during 2013 when i had eight inches of water on our hay field and it was flooding our home

So at that point in 2013, I dug a mile and a half of ditch around our property. I also dug out Trolling Street, worked about two and a half months. 18 20 hours a day on the excavator trying to keep people from flooding um we got pumps put together hoses went around to people's homes tried to pump them out tried to get the water away from people's homes did a lot of mechanical work uh a lot of uh moving pressure tanks that kind of stuff trying to save people

furnaces and borders um hold hold on a second david we're up against the break i want to continue this discussion um because uh i think you we need to we need to circle back for just a second here but david uragi is our guest We're trying to get some information here on what was going on, what he's gone through, the flooding issues down there on Cape Beach and what's happening and the response of the government and more. We're going to continue here in just a moment. Don't go anywhere.

The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense, Liberty-based, free-thinking radio. We'll return with more right after this. running on 100 pure beard power oh also some coffee we dip our beard in coffee nice beard The Michael Duke Show. Okay, we're in the break with David Yuragi right now. And yeah, because I think we skipped over something here that was...

kind of important because at some point uh and we're going to get into this when we come back uh on the air here but the government uh basically came out and said you were you're the cause and in fact richie in the chat room says is this the guy that reverted things and caused a bunch of people's houses to flood? Because I think that was the narrative, right? I mean, that was the narrative that came out of this. And so we'll get into that here into the...

in the next segment. But I mean, I think this is a... You know, you really caught me when we were first talking about this, you know, about this idea of developing this land and making it, you know, kind of a dream dream area for folks to be able to have their own little.

you know, their own little farm parcels or their own little livestock or ranch parcels. I thought that was, you know, it, and it obviously it caught people's attention because people, you know, that that's a dream that I think a lot of us have. Yeah, that was our dream, and that's what we wanted to do. We wanted to raise our kids. I had given my daughter 8.1 acres, my son 8.9 acres, cleaned it.

put the fields together, planted it. And then that was 2011, 2012. And then in 2013, we flooded. So at that point, The KPB government, local government got with the state agencies and the federal agencies and started to ramp up the. rhetoric, I guess is what you'd call it. Basically telling everybody in the community that I flooded everybody. In fact, my uncle hired an attorney to come after me at one point. And then I tried to tell him that I'm...

basically trying to save people's homes and so the the uh local government went after me pretty hard uh got dnr involved uh corps of engineers right it's this gone on for 12 years now um basically what's going on the the borough got mad at me when i uh upgraded the first 1700 feet of buoy street and demanded that I put culverts in the ditches that weren't there to begin with. That's when they got pretty hostile towards me about 2008.

But at the same time, they also said, there's something you said about something like, I'd never refuse free gravel. I mean, the borough was like, they were taking stuff and they were happy to take stuff until they weren't happy. Yeah, I put like 20 side dump loads of gravel on the first 1,700 feet of Bowie Street and made it where two cars could actually pass. Brought the road up to some kind of a standard.

I think that really irritated him that I had the gall to do that. But the thing is, is that we had family living down Bowie Street. We had to have... I knew the development was going to happen. We had to have a road that was passable for emergency vehicles and snow removal and stuff like that. So it's our community. So I did the work. I paid for it. the roads director was more than happy to to get free gravel it came out of my father-in-law's beaver loop gravel pit incredibly good gravel

brought the road up to a standard that was workable. And at the same time, the borough absolutely refused to put in any kind of drainage until 2014. when they, after everybody had flooded, they accused me of creating the flood, not only in our narrow community around Eastway and Carlick Street, but also on Gaswell and Poppy Lane.

So I started receiving phone calls from people, gas-full and populating, threatening me because I'm flooding them. Well, they're 20 feet higher than we are in elevation. And I said, you guys, you don't understand. i was up there in your area i inspected the wells and septics um i've got a

Hold on. We're about to rejoin the radio here, so we'll kind of circle back here, and we'll start things off back to where we were. Hold the line. The Michael Duke Show, Comedy Sense, Liberty Base, Free Thinking Radio. David, you're welcome. ragi is our guest please like share subscribe ring the bell here we go so michael and

Public enema number one. Oh, wait, sorry. Enemy. Public enemy number one, which makes more sense. On the other hand, he's a little bit of a pain in the Michael Duke show. Yes, yes, I am. We're continuing now. David Yuragi is our guest. And we're about to reach the pariah part of the story here. where David gets accused by the borough of causing a lot of the problems when he was literally out there, you know, for what he says, trying to.

trying to fix some of the issues that were going on. Somebody in the chat room just said we had an abnormal amount of rainfall in 2012 and then record snowfall in the winter of 2013, probably contributing to all this. But at some point. You had already notified the commission. You'd created these task forces to the high water task force and all these other kinds of things. You'd gotten the community involved, but the government started blaming you for the flooding.

Now, how did that, how, what was the reasoning behind that? What was the rationale where they said it's your fault that all these areas were flooding? What was going on? You know, I'm not sure. I'm not sure what the rationale is.

The government obviously did not want to spend any money on ditches. So we had offered to create the ditches and do the work, hire the engineers, which I did. And every time we... came with a proposal to the borough or DNR any government agencies at all they just shot it down so Our hands were tied. We started the high water task force to see if we could get different government agencies and different people involved in finding a solution. And every time we came up with one, it got shut down.

I got blamed for it, for the flooding. So the property lane, gospel road area. That must have been, yeah, I was just going to say that must have been pretty tough because you're here trying to help the community. You're trying to create new communities. You're trying to do this. You worked with the government. You've gone through all the things. You've jumped through all the hoops. That must have been kind of devastating to have all this stuff laid at your feet that somehow this is.

This was your fault. Walk me through that a bit. Well, it was pretty interesting. I worked three months nonstop. My wife finally told me that I was going to have a heart attack, but I didn't stop. And that's working 18, 20 hours a day, pretty consistently. Three months, I quit.

the day before thanksgiving in 2013 and told my two weeks before that i told my wife i'd stop digging and and get the equipment put away for winter and for her to leave go down south um I flew two weeks later, the day before Thanksgiving, to Oregon, to the coast with my family, extended family, and promptly got shingles.

It was on the way down to Oregon, I had this little postage stamp rash on my side that I noticed when I got to Oregon. And that was... two days later i was in full-blown shingles and uh so i had those for about three months until i figured out that it's stress that has to eliminate that did a lot of organic healing and just kept working on the, kept working on ditches, kept working on the property, trying to.

get people to understand how devastating the flood was and what actually happened was a real challenge i rented the sports center i think two more times put on committee meetings or meetings for people to tell them what was going on. We had all the permits, everything from the Corps. As soon as it flooded, DNR came after us. Local government got all the government agencies pretty much after me.

Uncle got an attorney after me until I explained to the attorney that I had a hydrologist and I was trying to save our community. And then he backed off, but it pretty much ruined our relationship for five years. We had hunted and flown together for years. That was devastating. That was incredibly hard. Then we couldn't hay our fields.

uh the water had ruined all the fields so in 2017 i went back with the tractors and tried to re-establish the fields and uh our water table was still at about three feet

so it did not go down so my thought process was that because water takes a path of least resistance even underground that maybe we had ground subsidence in the area And so I started looking at it. And what is ground subsidence for those of us who don't know what that means? Well, ground subsidence is when, for instance, in our area, there's a Sterling Pool 6 underneath our property.

and it encompasses all the places that flooded and i've made maps of it and shown people but bottom line is there's six reservoirs underneath our property stacked one on top of the other uh the closest reservoir is about 4 800 feet deep if natural gas is pulled out of those reservoirs in a in a rather sudden fashion it can cause ground subside anything can cause ground subsidence but at this point i'm thinking okay maybe something's going on with the reservoirs let's look at it and

Just for the record, I'm very, very much pro oil and gas, and I'm not interested in blaming an entity for creating a problem. What I'm interested in is finding a solution to the problem. And the only way to make water move is to run it downhill. It's been like that for thousands and thousands of years. In the plumbing industry, we know how to move water. We know how to move waste.

And so that was my intent. And it still is today. So bottom line is we couldn't hay our fields. We couldn't do anything. The water table is still high.

um we flooded in 2013-14 uh i worked on on the properties uh constantly since then for 12 years trying to figure out ways to get government to let us create the drainage that's needed and basically we everybody flooded again in 2022 uh dnr again came back and told me i couldn't impound water and I couldn't discharge water without a permit so we applied for the permits they got denied I took the one and a half mile

ditch that i had built around our property and made it a trapezoid ditch which means wide at the bottom wide at the top not deep but to store as much water as i could because i couldn't discharge it we're still flooded we're still underwater at that point in time but that's the only thing i could do to protect as many homes as i could and we got it down to about eight or nine homes that actually flooded out of uh

400 plus so i felt like that was quite an accomplishment and then the uh local government um i think in 2023 Our current mayor said that you can be assured that I'm using my relationships with state officials to instigate a permanent solution to the flooding to preserve your property. I've already reached out to DNR, DOT, and DEC, among others.

KPB team and I are identifying options for relief and creating partnerships with state agencies to find a lasting solution. To put it in simple terms, this water must find a path to the Cook Inlet without passing through your basements and crawl spaces. That was the letter in May of 23. We flooded in 23. They put in a culvert system.

roads that didn't have culverts in 2013 they finally put the culverts in but she kind of messed it up a little bit the ditch is flat the culverts nine of them have reverse grade It still flooded people, and the water came over the road and flooded people again in 23, 24, and then this year, 2025, in January, people's houses flooded again. and and one local couple a young couple with a bunch of kids three or four kids their basement had four feet of sewage in it in 2023

And it flooded. They reconstructed it, tried to, and it flooded again in January of this year. So it's very, very, very destructive for young families. And for some of the people, the older people, I've got some very, very good friends. The husband is suffering from aging orange from Vietnam. Very, very poor health. Great guy. His wife is trying to take care of him. So we've been working with them for two, three years now, trying to help them.

keep their house from flooding right and it just goes on and on so well and and at some point again the government has again said he just said the mayor had said they were going to stop the flooding um uh the but then the work that they did

uh didn't uh didn't happen and yet they're coming after you uh for anything that you've done to try and mitigate this as well and they have now as of 2013 they sued you, right? They sued you for trying to help your community, yourself, your community, and the houses around you. They actually took you to court. Yeah, shortly after the mayor put out this letter in August of 2023, they filed a suit against me for digging the ditch. And in 2022...

The water had completely flooded our driveway, 12 inches of ice and water, and we got... we've got thousands and thousands of pictures and videos and everything else of water pouring out the borough's property onto ours we can't stop it we can't do anything about it so um yeah they sued me and uh It was very deceptive, the lawsuit was. They had falsified reports, pictures, and I've...

I've kept all my documents for 25 years, better than 5,000 documents. So bottom line is they sued me. We settled out of court, I think for $7,500 after a year. legal fees and I just told I told my attorney I said I'm not interested in in fighting them over over things that are It's ignorance, I guess is what I'd call it is that it's you know, it's it's beyond

And at some point you had to provide what killed me was that you were talking about at one point, these agencies were coming to talk to you, the DNR, the EPA, all these other ones. And yet. They didn't have any of the records of any of the permits or anything else. And so you had to turn around and provide them with copies of everything to.

It's like the government didn't know what one hand one hand didn't know what the other hand was doing. And you had to provide them with all the documents to show you had gone through all these steps to do it the right way. Well, I think what's critical about it is that, and I just figured it out because I'm a little slow, but in 2016, the Corps came after me for a wetlands violation. and demanded that I get a wetlands study done, which I did. It was $4,800. HDL did it for me. No wetlands.

and that was on 60 acres through the air park on buoy street both sides um we did the wetlands delineation and i gave that information to the corps of engineers and they probably lost it and in 2022 the corps came after me again for wetlands violations and i told them in a meeting that i had all the documents all the permits all the way up through everything that i i had been doing

and they didn't have any copies so i gave them 108 pages in a three ring binder had a meeting with them they were very very standoffish did not want the information i don't think so they promptly turned it over to the epa so the epa came after me for a 404 violation which is clean water act

And when I showed them our paperwork that they had given us an exception to it because it was a ranch, they said, well, it's not the 404, it's 402. It's industrial waste. And so... i i said well i've got a study on this figure out the industrial waste so i did and uh Bottom line is if you put a ditch in and try to get the water off your property, you're going to be in violation of some federal statute. What kind of industrial waste comes off of a hayfield? That's my question.

you know that's interesting because the only industrial waste i can think of is is caribou and moose waste yeah but you know it's um it's just sad because because what's happened is they the local governments drug a bunch of federal and state people into this and they don't understand the problem and they don't know how to fix it and they're not capable of it because They don't have any background at all. So I brought DNR down and had a meeting with them and asked their hydrologist with a PhD.

How do you make water move? And he just couldn't answer it. It was and I don't know if it was because at that point in time, the borough was suing us. But. They just wouldn't give me any answers at all. All right, David, hold the line here for a second. We're up against the last break. We got one more segment with David Uragi. We're going to continue to talk about this in the next segment. I just want to ask him, you know, where do we...

Where do we go from here? Because this is the big question. We've gone through all this stuff. He's trying to do the right thing. He's gotten all the governmental permissions, even though they apparently lose it sometimes and can't find it. And but but here we are flooding again early this year. What's the real solution and what needs to be done in his mind? David Yuragi, our guest, The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense, Liberty-based, free-thinking radio. We return with more right after this.

We're broadcasting live through a series of tubes. Allowing all of these entities to provide streaming stuff going on the internet. Well, it's kind of hard to explain. Sorry. Streaming live every weekday morning on Facebook Live and MichaelDukesShow.com. Okay, we are in the break right now. David Yuragi is our guest.

I want to kind of go back and I kind of want to back up just a little bit here because the mayor says in this letter, uh, and this is, uh, is this mayor? Is that who it was? Um, in this letter that he's doing everything in his power. He's going to bring all these people together. He's going to work with all these departments and they're going to stop it. So after he sends the letter, what actually happened? What actually was done?

Nothing. They decided to put a culvert in. When we flooded in 2022, they decided to design a ditch and put culverts in that we asked them to put into 2013.

that that our task force had recommended but they absolutely refused to do it so in 2022 they came out with a they were going to do an engineered study on it or engineered design for the drainage and told everybody that it would be done in 2022 well then the engineering never came out until 2023 in fact the contract wasn't until 2023 for the uh engineer to design it but

When they designed the drainage, it was a flat ditch with reverse grade on all the culverts. So basically what it did is backed up water and backed it up a long ways.

um it didn't do anything to relieve the flooding so um i i tried you know i tried hard to get dnr and different engineering firms to look at it um we my wife and i have spent huge amount of money in the last 12 years trying to protect as many properties as we can and the solution to get water to leave an area is to build a ditch and we've given them all sorts of options for ditches we've agreed to do the work they've absolutely refused they think that what we're trying to do is drain

the wetlands that's to the south of us and what i i've tried to explain to the borough and dnr is that when sheet flow is coming off a wetland the wetland is completely full the only way to get rid of the water is to direct it to the inlet or the kenai river that is the solution um so

In 2023, the borough got wind that I was trying to put together a coalition of community members to do a class action lawsuit. And so they sued me. And we settled that. What I decided to do was go ahead and file a lawsuit in 2023, but not as a coalition of community members. In other words, not a class action because there are so many people that think that all I do is flood them out and create this water that there's just no way of getting over that hump at this point.

what i need to do is bring it to court show where the uh the borough has accused me for the last 12 years of flooding everybody out and bring the hydrologist and bring the professional people in that i've hired over the years to uh debunk it and and show the truth um we still want to have i still want it finish the ranch and put this community back together. But I need people to be aware of what's actually happening and what the dangers are of this flooding.

And we can build the ditches. We can put in the culverts. DOTs refused to do anything. DNRs refused. EPAs refused. The Corps of Engineers, they're a regulatory agency. I've asked them to put some of their engineers. Let me communicate with some of their engineers. They've never done anything. So it's going to flood again. It's going to keep happening. The water table is not going down in the whole area.

people are going to continue to get hurt until people take the time to actually look at what's happening if they wanted to i would put on another i'd rent the sports center again and put on another uh display of what's happening um i think i'm up to four times renting that sports center now um so i need the community to come together and and people to actually look at what's going on and i have

All the documentation from everything I've done since 1999 on the ranch. I kept all my documents, all the permits, every authorization, every letter that came from the borough or any other agency. Right. Well, I think we need to delineate that here. This next segment, we'll take that and we'll give you your head here, give you a chance to see where we go from here. We are about 30 seconds out right now from...

from returning armed and AK on YouTube says this story should go national. Yeah. I mean, this is the kind of stuff where government is standing in the way and not providing solutions. then people need to be able to do it themselves. I mean, it needs to be a little bit of self-determination. Here we go. We're jumping back on. We will continue on. Here we go. The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense Radio.

The Michael Duke Show. Not your daddy. Wait, sorry. Not your daddy? Ooh, not your daddy's talk radio. Whew. I was scared for a second. Thought we were going down. Here's Michael Dukes and the show. Okay, one final segment here for this Thursday show. Just before I forget, coming up tomorrow on the program, Firearms Friday, we're going to be joined by Dr. John Lott.

who's going to come on board and talk with us about the suppressor issue, where they're going to go ahead and take them off the NFA. That's going to be a discussion that we're going to have tomorrow, and, of course, all the caterwauling that's going on over that.

We're going to have that discussion tomorrow with John Lott on the program and, of course, Willie Waffle. But right now we're just finishing up with David Uragi, who lives down on the KPB. He's been trying to fight this issue of flooding down. in his area of K Beach for years. He's taken a lot of blame.

uh for things that have been going on um although again in my discussion with him i found him to be very passionate about trying to fix this issue for everyone in the area so we've kind of gone through the timeline here and here we are

Again, flooding this year, January again of this year, more flooding. And so I guess my final question here in the last six or seven minutes, David, is what is the solution and how do we get there? That's the, you know, what is, what, what needs to be done in your mind and what can the community do? Because this needs to be a community effort.

Your name's been kind of thrown around and sullied in the community with the blame going to you, but you just want to get this fixed, right? I mean, so what's going on? Well, I think it's important to realize that... The local government have they have statutes that require certain drainages to take place in order to have subdivisions. And instead of instead of.

uh taking care of a problem what they do is they build the roads up because they think that that's their only their only requirement is to protect the surface of the road it's not to protect the community so i think going forward, what I need the community to do is come together and take a look at what's actually happening and what we've come up with as far as solutions. um the hydrologist and myself i've spent thousands and thousands of hours doing this um my wife wanted to uh

to just quit and sell the property and get out of it. I've been a part of the community for 44 years. It's my intent to create the drainage one way or the other. The only way that I've been able to get the borough's attention is to follow the lawsuit. Which you've now done, right? Now you're suing the borough themselves, right? Yes. It's a tremendous amount, it's a tremendous waste of time to go through the court system because it's all controlled by government.

What I've seen so far from the court system is it's not, it's why people don't get into this type of a situation, but I don't know of any other way to get the borough and the state and the federal government. to pay attention to what's happening. People are getting hurt. And I would love to finish the ranch, put the hay fields back into production.

Get our community to come back together. Quit fighting amongst ourselves. No more blame. No more pointing fingers. Let's just create the drainage. And I have asked. of the federal agencies and state agencies to work with us and so far nobody's done anything at all they don't want to they want to stop me from doing anything and

They can do that, but it's going to take jail. I'm not going to quit trying to protect the community and get this thing finished. So I'm almost 70. We lost our dream of the ranch. But it's not too late for the community. People can have their space. And the Constitution and the state government. require people to help each other it's not about one individual going out and doing something it's about people coming together and helping each other we're a really small

community in a really big state, and we need to take care of each other. And that's the way I grew up. That's what I believe in my heart. I understand there's a lot of people that are mad at me and think that I've created water and I walk on water and I've been accused of all kinds of stuff. It's okay. Let's. try and figure out a solution. If it doesn't happen and the borough decides that they want to follow through with this lawsuit, then that's where we'll go.

I want, I want this thing fixed and I'm going to, I'm going to keep pushing for it. How can folks in your community who are listening, you know, folks who are up there in K beach in that whole area, how can, how can they help you?

uh you know or help themselves i guess with your help in this fight what what what can they do you know i think i think the first i think the first step in in helping is to become aware of what's happening in your own home in your own crawl space um look at the static water level in your well and septic if they're the same static water level you have the potential for contaminated

domestic water. And people need to be aware of what's going on and quit burying their heads in sand. I've got a tremendous amount of information that I would share with anybody. Yeah. If folks want to get a hold of you, David, we're down to the last minute here. Folks want to get a hold of you and talk to you about this or they want to come together, how do they reach out to you to get information and to come together to work on this?

Email address is deregui, Y-R-A-G-U-I at outlook.com. My phone number is 907-252-1891. um i own beaver loop sand and gravel with my wife and brother-in-law um and um we're here come on we are you know well i i hope we're available I hope that you get, I hope you get some more exposure on this and I hope more people will come to you, especially people who maybe have been sold a bill of goods and will come to you and get some of the straight dope on this.

because it's the only way coming together as a community is the only way you're going to be able to fix this. All right, David Uragi, thank you so much for coming on board and joining us today. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Michael. It's been good. All right. Hold the line for just a second. Folks, we're out of time. We got to go. We'll see you tomorrow with Firearms Friday. Be kind. Love one another. Live well.

All right, David, I want to give you one final bite at the apple for you, me, and 60 of our closest friends on the internet here. Any final thoughts on... on on this i mean to me when you told me this whole story and there's a lot here like i said this could have been a three-hour show um going through each and every piece of this but you know what struck me was you had a passion

during our conversation that you know you were basically like i'm trying to help my neighbors i'm trying to prevent people from being flooded i'm trying to you warned people before the flood that this was going to happen if certain things weren't taken care of

And of course, then it came about and then you got blamed, even though you're the one that's out there telling them, hey, this is going to happen. We've got to do something. And so, again, the finger of government pointing the blame at you, I found to be.

you know very unfair uh based on uh based on uh the timeline and everything and uh you know this is just very frustrating as a person who truly believes in private property rights i mean at some point a property owner is just going to be like i'm just going to dig this up and we're going to fix it and if the government wants to come after us then so be it but i mean

Give us your final thoughts here before I let you go, David. You know, I promised my wife that I wouldn't do any ditching on anybody's property. or anywhere in the community that wasn't authorized. And my relationship with her is incredibly important. So family first.

god first family second community third um i need people to understand that if the government can do this to me after after uh 44 years here of taking care of the community people don't stand a chance if we don't get together and and start protecting our property rights we're we're just going to lose them um so i've I'm hoping that the Pacific Legal Foundation will take a look at this. They just did a podcast two days ago on exactly this kind of stuff.

We've got to start working together as a community and not rely on the government for anything other than... I don't really know what we need to rely on them for. Public safety, I guess. Well, yeah, that. The military, I think, would be the only thing. Other than that, it's just too bad. yeah that is this way well again 44 years of working on this with all the paperwork to back you up and then they still act like you're the bad guy

And then they get away with it because, again, they have all the governmental pressure and control and they they have your money to fight you with. Right. They're taking public money to fight you with the public's money. And that's that's the most frustrating thing to me on this for sure. Well, the problem that I see with it is that we come from two different realms. I believe in trying to be good and spiritual and pray.

And one thing this has taught me is how to pray. I'm not that good at it as nearly as good as I need to be, but we can come together and. We really do need to rely on each other and people need to start being nice and kind to each other and get out of the realm that you're the most important person in the world.

and everything that you do is right. It's not about that. It's about coming together as a community. Let's fix the problem. It's a simple, stupid problem. I think I told the borough seven days I could have a ditch dug. uh with my own expense at my own nobody has to pay tax money towards it but the amount of money it's tough to cost our community is astronomical it's in millions and millions of dollars right so

We need it fixed. If they're not going to do it in agreement with the community, then that's why I followed the lawsuit. Yeah. Well, we just... We'd love to be updated on that and keep us in the loop on what's going on with that. And I'd love to make a call to people to reach out to you and to get together and to form a community effort to try and fix this.

that you've got unelected bureaucrats in all these different agencies that are telling you no without offering any alternative solutions or anything else. And not even caring again to retain paperwork or to be able to, you know, again, just to come up with other ideas is infuriating to me. And Frank is right. Frank in the chat room just said, you have no problem.

property rights, sir. I mean, and that's kind of how we feel today. We pay taxes, we do all this stuff. And the second that we stop paying taxes, they come in at the point of the gun and they take it from us. But don't you dare try and fix it yourself. Because, you know, you didn't ask Uncle Sugar's permission to do it. And that just infuriates me. Well, Michael, for the last 10 years, they've...

They've raised my taxes almost every year. Sometimes they double them. Sometimes it's only a hundred thousand a year, but they've raised my taxes every year and I've appealed my taxes every year. And the reason I appeal it is because. They need to be made aware, but people just don't want to take the time. And it's sad because it's going to hurt everybody.

It is. All right. Well, David, thank you so much. And again, your email address is, is it Uragi? I've been pronouncing it wrong, so I'm sure that. If you were in Spain, it's Yeragi. Okay. It's Basque. It's Basque. Okay. We pronounce it E-Rege. E-Rege. Okay. Dave E-Rege. So it's D-E-Rege at Outlook.com. I just posted that up in the chat room. If you want to send Dave a message, if you live out in that area or you want to.

want to find out more now's the time to uh to go do that and get with dave and maybe as a community as more than one voice you'd have the upper you know maybe we could get the borough to to actually move on that so All right, David. Well, thank you so much for coming on board and being part of this today. We appreciate you. We appreciate you joining us. Thank you very much for your time, Michael. I appreciate it. All right, folks, we are out of time.

We got to go. Thank you so much for being with the show today. Again, tomorrow is Firearms Friday. And we will see you then. In the meanwhile, as always, be kind, love one another, live well. The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense, Liberty-based. Free thinking radio. We've shed our terrestrial radio skin, and now we are slimy lizard internet people. It's the Michael Duke Show.