Planning commission backs Anchorage's $88 million bond request after memo dispute

Anchorage's Planning and Zoning Commission voted Monday to recommend the city's 2027 capital budget, including an $87.95 million bond request well above the $40 million to $55 million the city usually seeks, after a city director urged commissioners to disregard a planning memo questioning how projects make the list.

The capital budget totals about $136 million, alongside a six-year capital program of about $876 million. The bond money would pay for road maintenance and drainage, traffic calming, fire and police equipment and park improvements. The Assembly is scheduled to vote on the budget Nov. 17, and bond projects it approves would go to voters in April.

Office of Management and Budget Director Ona Brause said deferred maintenance drives the larger request. State capital money that once paid for city projects "stopped over a decade ago," she told commissioners, and the city is only now accepting "that that's probably never coming back." She also said "there is a limitation on what we can actually ask of property taxpayers."

The operating budget is tight, too. The mayor's proposed 2027 budget closes a $15 million gap mostly with one-time money, Alaska News reported Oct. 3. "We project the potential deficit for 2028 to be between $15 and $30 million," Brause said.

The memo, from the city's Long-Range Planning staff, found that capital spending doesn't appear strongly tied to the city's growth plans, Alaska News reported Oct. 15. Since 2017, it said, 1% of Anchorage Bowl development has landed in areas the city's land use plan marked for significant growth, 32% in moderate-growth areas and 47% in little-growth areas.

Long-Range Planning Manager Daniel McKenna-Foster told commissioners that some projects have stayed on the list for years without a clear connection to a present need. "There's no good way to off-ramp projects that maybe no longer are needed," he said.

His recommendations included aligning spending with the city's big-picture priorities, putting projects where the city wants growth, weighing the long-term cost of maintaining what gets built and updating the comprehensive plan where spending and the plan don't match.

Community and Economic Development Director Robert Doehl said the memo was "a new approach prepared outside of the usual process and without coordination." It was written "in a very compressed timeframe," he said, without consulting the departments that built and prioritized the project list. "Accordingly, we believe the report should be disregarded," he said.

Commission Chair Andres Spinelli said the memo "is the reason why this process was added to the purview of P&Z so long ago." Commissioner Scott Pulice, who made the motion to approve, called the budget "kind of a standard annual typical" plan with "no big changes."

Commissioner Jeff Raun asked staff to send six recommendations from the memo to the Assembly along with the commission's action.