Anchorage work session leaves Chugach park access costs unresolved

Anchorage Bowl property owners can now help pay for hillside roads they did not previously subsidize. Whether the reverse is true is unsettled. That reciprocity question was laid out Friday in an Anchorage Assembly work session on the proposed Chugach State Park Access Service Area Advisory Board.

The presentation states that CASA merged the Anchorage Roads and Drainage Service Area (ARDSA) and some limited road service areas into one. It asks whether those limited areas pay for ARDSA roads when an ARDSA bond passes, and whether they help pay for city parks when a parks bond passes. The slides answer neither.

Voters created CASA in 2023, with bond projects approved in 2024, 2025 and 2026. Proposed 2026 CASA projects include $1.5 million for Basher Trailhead improvements, plus smaller allocations for the Lost Cabin Trail extension and Stewart Trail signage. Assembly Vice Chair Daniel Volland said at a Sept. 17 Budget and Finance Committee session that some roads eligible for CASA funding "would have been the responsibility of some of these limited road service areas, but now we have this bigger service area where folks in the Anchorage Bowl can contribute to those same facilities."

The ordinance would create a seven-member advisory board, with four at-large seats split two to ARDSA and two to road service areas. Its primary function would be budgeting and project planning through a public process, not operational oversight. It would not adopt a project list or change current projects or the existing capital improvement process. It removes cooperative agreement language from code section 27.30.085 while still requiring consultation with applicable road service areas.

Assembly Chair Anna Brawley and Volland list unresolved issues including the share of responsibility between service areas, who pays for local road upgrades and who plows parking lots. A revised version is due on the Oct. 6 agenda, when the continued public hearing resumes, with possible membership changes and a required hearing on draft recommendations. The CASA capital improvement plan is scheduled for adoption with the FY27 budget on Nov. 17, and bond projects for the April 2027 ballot are set to be finalized Jan. 26, 2027.