Anchorage Assembly delays Missing Middle housing vote again, this time to Dec. 1

The Anchorage Assembly put off its vote on the Missing Middle housing overlay again Wednesday, moving the zoning plan to Dec. 1 after members objected to taking it up at a midday Friday special meeting that some said they couldn't attend.

It took two tries. Members first voted 8-4 to send the overlay to a special meeting Nov. 13, from noon to 3 pm. Later that night, West Anchorage Assembly Member Kameron Perez-Verdia said he and two other members couldn't attend that meeting. The Assembly voted 12-0 to reconsider, then 12-0 to postpone to its regular Dec. 1 meeting.

It's the second time in four weeks the Assembly has delayed a vote on the overlay, which would let owners of about 28,000 residential parcels along transit corridors opt into building duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes and townhomes without a rezone. Mayor Suzanne LaFrance's administration has set a goal of building or rehabilitating 10,000 homes in 10 years. In 2025, it permitted about 400 units.

Midtown Assembly Member Erin Baldwin Day and East Anchorage Assembly Member George Martinez introduced the overlay in June as a rework of a 2025 version that was paused last fall. Its public hearing opened Sept. 15 and ran until nearly midnight with people still waiting to speak. On Oct. 7, the Assembly closed the hearing and postponed a vote to Nov. 4 so members could hold a work session on a substitute and a raft of amendments.

"MHOP has now been over a 2-year process, and at this point, if it needs to take another month to resolve, I'm okay with that," Baldwin Day said Wednesday.

Baldwin Day said she and Martinez are writing a new substitute, called an S-1 version, that would fold in parts of some amendments so the Assembly doesn't "end up with 17 amendments" and spends less time "making sausage on the dais." The postponement was meant to give members and the public "the most possible visibility into an S-1 version before deliberation," she said.

"It is not because we are being capricious," she said. "It's because we're trying to be very intentional."

Other members objected to the short notice and the daytime hour. East Anchorage Assembly Member Yarrow Silvers said members got notice Monday of a special meeting with no information on what it would cover, and didn't learn of the plan to delay the overlay until almost 2 pm Wednesday.

"I really hate supporting last-minute changes like this," Silvers said. A Friday daytime meeting "really bothers me, moving something that has this much public interest into work hours."

North Anchorage Assembly Member Sydney Scout, who said she would back the sponsor's motion, said UAA students canvassing in Midtown had stopped her at lunch the day before to ask whether the Assembly was taking up the overlay Wednesday, and community groups had emailed urging people to turn out. "Members of our community are watching this item closely," she said.

South Anchorage Assembly Member Keith McCormick said there wasn't enough notice for the public to attend a midday Friday meeting, and that he has patients scheduled during the day "that I cannot move." He said he wants the overlay done, too. "This has been pushed and pushed and pushed," he said. "If it needs to push till January, it pushes till January."

Chair Anna Brawley of West Anchorage said she had looked at evenings, but pointed to the Nov. 11 holiday, the upcoming budget meeting and other holidays. She said no member had told her they couldn't make Nov. 13. "I cannot carry all of the scheduling responsibility. I cannot read your minds," she said.

Vice Chair Daniel Volland of North Anchorage said he saw a long special meeting on the overlay as "a blessing." "I don't want them any more than you do, but we are trying," he said of extra meetings.

When the item came back up, Martinez said he would vote to move it to Dec. 1 as a matter of professional courtesy. "Courtesy is what was being requested by us as the sponsors, and courtesy is what I feel I'm providing with the yes vote," he said.

Public testimony closed Oct. 7. Every version of the overlay moves to Dec. 1, including a substitute from Midtown Assembly Member Janice Park that would leave out the city's two highest seismic hazard zones.