A board steering Anchorage's biggest project met nine times. The public heard about one.

The public board advising Anchorage's most expensive project ever met nine times in a year and a half — and gave the public notice of one.

That gap sits at the center of a July sunset audit of the board overseeing the Port of Alaska Modernization Program, the roughly $2 billion-to-$2.75 billion rebuild of the state's main inbound cargo port. It is the largest capital project in the municipality's history, and it reaches every Alaskan: much of it is paid through revenue bonds repaid by surcharges on freight crossing the docks — costs that pass through to shoppers at stores like Costco and Fred Meyer.

The port handles goods that reach 90 percent of the state.

Of nine regular meetings between January 2025 and June 2026, the audit found only one posted to the municipal public notices site and none on the Mayor's boards and commissions calendar. Staff could not locate minutes for two meetings, and a third summary left out attendance, so auditors could not confirm the board had a quorum when it met. In that same window, the board voted on substantive design questions — earthquake-related ground improvements and the siting of an electrical substation among them.

Alaska's Open Meetings Act requires public bodies, advisory ones included, to give reasonable notice of their meetings, and actions taken without it may not count as official. The near-absence of notice raises that question on a project whose previous version collapsed into sinkholes, seismic doubts, and a decade of litigation that ended only this summer in a $191 million settlement.

The findings stop short of a proven violation. The board is advisory, so its lapses don't void port decisions, and the law allows notice by methods the audit didn't track, such as posting at the port office. The board was fully staffed with valid terms, and auditors recommend renewing it — a decision the Assembly must make before it sunsets Oct. 14.