Anchorage is studying a new wildfire tax on every property owner as the federal money runs out

Anchorage property owners across the municipality could eventually pay a new tax to fund wildfire mitigation, under a proposal now in early study at the Anchorage Fire Department's request. A preliminary report headed to the Assembly on Tuesday lays out possible ways to fund a new Wildland Interface Service Area — but nothing is up for a vote yet; the study is exploratory.

The fire department paid the University of Alaska Center for Economic Development about $32,000 to map out where such a service area should reach and how to pay for it. Notably, the center intends to recommend the tax cover the entire municipality, not just the neighborhoods most exposed to wildfire — and to build out a fully staffed wildland fire division within the department.

What it would cost is still rough. Under the simplest of the options studied, an early estimate points to a rate that would run roughly $40 a year on an average Anchorage single-family home — a small fraction of the existing citywide fire levy, which funds regular fire operations and runs closer to $900 a year on the same home. Across the city's tax base, that low rate would raise on the order of $4 million a year. The report is careful that the figure applies only to that one option and says nothing about what the others would cost.

Part of what's driving the timing is money running out. The department's wildfire mitigation program currently runs entirely on a federal Forest Service grant — enough to cover a single full-time position — and that funding expires in April 2028. A locally funded service area would be the way to sustain and expand the work once it does.

The study still has real questions to resolve, including a legal one: whether standing up multiple service areas would require residents of each to vote separately. As the project team reads the law, it would. Assembly member Zac Johnson, describing the original request in April, called it "merely a request to the administration to investigate the feasibility and mechanisms by which something like a wildfire interface service area could be adopted." Final recommendations are due by the end of October.