Anchorage work session leaves Chugach park access costs unresolved

Since voters created the Chugach State Park Access Service Area in 2023, property owners across the Anchorage Bowl have helped pay for Hillside roads and trailheads leading into the park, some of which would otherwise fall to the neighborhoods that tax themselves for their own roads. Whether money also flows the other way is unsettled. That question was laid out Friday in an Anchorage Assembly work session on a proposed advisory board for the service area, known as CASA.

The presentation describes CASA as combining the Anchorage Roads and Drainage Service Area and several limited road service areas, the districts where residents tax themselves for their own roads, into one. It asks whether those limited areas pay for Anchorage Roads and Drainage projects when a roads bond passes, and whether they help pay for city parks when a parks bond passes. The slides answer neither.

Voters have approved CASA bond projects in 2024, 2025 and 2026. At a Sept. 17 Budget and Finance Committee session, Assembly Vice Chair Daniel Volland said some roads eligible for CASA money would have been the limited road service areas' responsibility. Now, he said, "folks in the Anchorage Bowl can contribute to those same facilities."

The ordinance, AO 2026-98, would create a seven-member advisory board. Four seats would be split between residents of the Anchorage Roads and Drainage Service Area and residents of road service areas, and three would go to people with expertise in trails, engineering and park recreation. The Chugach State Park superintendent would hold a nonvoting seat. The board's role would be to plan budgets and projects in public, not to oversee operations. It would not adopt a project list or change the city's capital improvement process, and it would still have to consult with affected road service areas.

Volland and Assembly Chair Anna Brawley, who are sponsoring the ordinance, list issues still to be resolved, including how responsibility is shared between service areas, who pays to upgrade local roads and who plows parking lots. A revised version is expected Oct. 6, when the public hearing resumes, possibly with changes to the board's membership and a requirement for a public hearing on its draft recommendations.

The CASA capital improvement plan is scheduled for adoption with the 2027 budget on Nov. 17. Bond projects for the April 2027 ballot are set to be finalized Jan. 26, 2027.