Anchorage Mayor LaFrance appoints 4 more executives, including new library director

Anchorage Mayor Suzanne LaFrance on Friday announced four appointments to top leadership positions of several city departments. The appointments include a new leader of the public library, the return of a former Solid Waste Services executive as the new deputy municipal manager, and the promotions of two longtime staffers to lead the Public Transportation and Development Services departments.

Marjorie Harrison will join the municipality to oversee the city’s public libraries as director in early 2025, according to the mayor’s office.

Harrison has nearly 30 years of library and management experience in libraries across the U.S., the mayor’s office said in a written statement. She most recently worked as executive director of a 13-branch library system in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the statement said.

Harrison has a master’s in library science from Wayne State University and has worked as a librarian, coordinator and director at libraries in Arkansas, Nebraska, Michigan, Colorado and Washington, the mayor’s office said.

Anchorage’s former public library director, Virginia McClure, resigned in July. She had been appointed by former Mayor Dave Bronson, after a tumultuous period of failed director appointments and other controversies at the library.

The city also is seeing the return of Mark Spafford, a former general manager of Anchorage’s Solid Waste Services, who will now serve as LaFrance’s deputy municipal manager. Spafford resigned from the general manger position in 2021 under Bronson, who replaced him with Dan Zipay, the former head of Alaska Waste. Zipay later resigned in 2023. Spafford also previously worked as the operations and maintenance director at the Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility.

As deputy municipal manager, Spafford will implement the mayor’s climate and energy initiatives and will oversee several utilities and departments, including the Public Transportation Department, Solid Waste Services, municipal airports and the Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility, among others, the mayor’s office said in its statement.

He is a licensed engineer with more than 20 years of experience in the water, wastewater, solid waste, recycling, telecom, and electrical utilities fields, according to the mayor’s office.

Spafford is also a local blues and rock guitarist who moonlights as a band frontman under the pseudonym “Spaffdaddy.”

The Public Transportation Department is now led by Bart Rudolph, who has served as its acting director since August and has accepted the position permanently, the mayor’s office said.

Before moving up to acting director earlier this year, Rudolph had worked as the department’s planning and communications manager since 2015. In that role, he oversaw the planning, marketing and RideShare divisions and acted as the department’s spokesman. Rudolph has also worked at the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities and has about 19 years of transportation and planning experience, the mayor’s office said.

Longtime municipal staffer and civil engineer Greg Soule is taking the roles of director of Development Services and the city’s building official. Soule has been leading the department as its acting director since 2021, and will now be in the position permanently.

The department is responsible for the city’s permitting processes for residential and commercial development and land use, inspections and code compliance investigations and land use and right-of-way enforcement.

Soule has worked for the city for more than 23 years in project engineering, private development engineering, and development management.

Harrison, Soule and Rudolph’s positions require Assembly approval.

While campaigning for mayor early this year, LaFrance insisted to voters that she would “restore competence” to City Hall, and said she would put her efforts toward staffing up departments with high vacancy rates after waves of departures of long-term staff.

“Since day one, we’ve been committed to hiring qualified, dedicated people to lead our departments,” LaFrance said in a Friday written statement. “I’m grateful to these four individuals for taking on these roles and joining the team.”