Judi Slajer History Story - DN

 By Dave Kiffer

For the Daily News

This week, the Ketchikan Gateway Borough honored former Ketchikan Gateway Borough Manager Judi Slajer, the first woman to lead a borough government in Alaska. Slajer died on April 21 at the age of 80

Besides heading the Ketchikan borough for several years in the late 1970s, Slajer, also a long-time Ketchikan borough clerk, was the finance and budget director for both the Municipality of Anchorage and the Fairbanks North Star Borough during her more than 30-year career in Alaska local government.

 

She is also believed to be the only person who was president - at different times - of the Alaska Association of Municipal Clerks as well the municipal managers, and municipal finance directors associations in Alaska.

Slajer was born July 29, 1941, in Grayling, Michigan. Her father, Horace Sabine, was in the US Forest Service and her mother, Margaret Scherer Sabine was a teacher. Shortly after Slajer’s birth her father was transferred to Leavenworth, Washington where the family spent the next several years.

Her father died of a heart attack when she was nine and the family moved to Moorpark, California where her mother resumed teaching.

Slajer’s daughter Veronica said last week that her mother got her work ethic from her mother who – at one point – was teaching three classes simultaneously.

“My mom took all her mother’s classes,” Veronica Slajer said recently. “Typing, shorthand and business practices that was the basis for her own skill-set that allowed her to take on so many responsibilities (at the Ketchikan Gateway Borough) when she was only 22.”

Judi Slajer was also an avid seamstress, winner of several awards. Sewing became I was a lifelong  passion and it became a lifelong love. Judi Slajer would make her daughters’ Catholic school uniforms and many quilts for her grand children among other things.

In high school in Moorpark, Judi was involved in various community and school organizations and was majorette in the marching band. She was an active participant in talent, beauty and sewing competitions, winning several.

While at Ventura College, Judi met her future husband, Charles “Chuck” Slajer. She first met him when she went to a Los Padres National Forest ranger station to asked about a “field position” only to be told that women could not apply.

The couple was married in Ventura in 1961 and lived in Ojai, California for a year before the Forest Service transferred Chuck to Ketchikan in 1962. The couple remodeled a cabin on South Point Higgins Road and purchased a 24-foot cabin cruiser that they used to explore the area around Ketchikan.

In 1964, Judi was hired as the clerk and first employee of the Ketchikan Gateway Borough which had been incorporated the year before. One of the first things she did was begin to work with other clerks around the state and that led to the formation of the Alaska Association of Municipal Clerks.

She was instrumental in founding the AACM’s well regarded training institute to provide educational opportunities for Alaska clerks from all sizes of communities. Slajer also worked Dave Rose and others to help Alaska create its own municipal bond bank. The bond bank supports projects all over Alaska with asssets of more than one billion dollars.

 

She spent nearly 14 years as the borough clerk. In 1977, after having a string of short-term managers, the borough assembly chose Slajer to be borough manager, the first woman to lead a borough government in Alaska. She would serve as borough manager until 1980.

Among her accomplishments as manager were state land selections for community development, the first master plan for the recently completed Ketchikan International Airport, a borough-wide property assessment, and the first animal control laws.

“She chuckled to herself as she designed the first borough signs,” Veronica Slajer noted last week. “Ketchikan Gateway Borough was too long for the signs; she simplified the message on some of them to read ‘Dogs on Leash Required - $10 fine – enforced by the KGB.’ ”

 

During her time with the Ketchikan Borough, Slajer had not given up on her efforts at higher education and had continued to take classes at Ketchikan Community College – now the University of Alaska – Ketchikan. That led to her next big career move.

Her first marriage had ended in divorce in 1976 and four years later she was ready to make a move.

She resigned from the borough, stored her possessions, and packed her two daughters, Veronica and Franczeska, into the family Volkswagon and headed north.

She would graduate from the University of Alaska – Fairbanks in 1982 with a degree in finance and management, sharing a dorm with her eldest daughter at one point. 

After graduating from UAF, Judi became the Director of Planning and Budget for the Municipality of Anchorage under Mayor Tony Knowles. One of her biggest initial challenges was implementing a voter approved property tax cap.

It was in Anchorage, that “budgeting” became Slajer’s true governmental passion, and she helped lead the municipality to receiving an “Award of Excellence in Budgeting” from the national Government Finance Officers Association.

She also met the man who would become her second husband. She was attending a conference in Fairbanks, and she went with a group of friends to Gold Kings hockey game where she was introduced to Tom Rosaduik. They became friends and would eventually marry a decade later in 1997.

 In 1986, Slajer moved back to Fairbanks to be with Rosaduik. She spent a term teaching rural governance courses for the University of Alaska Anchorage and then was hired as the Chief Financial officer for the Fairbanks North Star Borough.

In Fairbanks, she helped revamp the borough’s financial structure, upgrade the landfill, purchase the borough office building and build several schools. She also brought Fairbanks a national “Award in Excellence in Budgeting” as well. During her time in Fairbanks, Slajer was also on the Alaska Municipal League Investment Pool, a $2 billion organization that helps local governments with short term investments.

She retired in 1997 after more than three decades in Alaska local government.

 

Post retirement, Slajer and her husband Tom returned to Southern Southeast, specifically a cabin in Dora Bay on Prince of Wales Island. The couple also spent time in La Conner, Washington in later years as well as in Hawaii.

“Her work ethic was her big influence on me,” her daughter Veronica said recently. “I knew her as a mother, as a peer, as a collaborator. I don’t think a week went by in recent years when we weren’t exchanging spread sheets.”

Veronica also noted that as a young girl, she often accompanied her mother on her borough duties.

“I still remember her taking out (official papers) to Don King (the first borough mayor or chairman) and me having to climb up on his Caterpillar so he could sign then,” she said.

The fact that Judi was also a single mother much of the time, further inspired her daughter, she said.

 

“She had to be both Mom and Dad,” Veronica said.

On Monday, the borough assembly passed a resolution in memoriam of Judi Slajer.

“As the first clerk for the Ketchikan Gateway Borough, Judith Slajer left a lasting impression on the citizens of the Borough and the entire State of Alaska,” the resolution read in part. “She was respected for her integrity, prudence and practical leadership as she helped establish efficient, effective and transparent operations in governments across the state.”

Slajer was also honored this spring with a memorial resolution from the Alaska State Legislature.

The Alaska Municipal League has established the Judith A. Slajer Municipal Clerks Education Fund to help pay for continuing education, professional development  and training for Alaskan clerks.