By ALEX GIMARC
One of my correspondents sent out a blast e-mail last week, warning about AO 2023-66, a change in Anchorage municipal code relating to zoning of residential districts and waiving planning and zoning commission review process.
The ordinance was first heard May 23. The Muni press release 5/23/23 can be found here. It says that the ordinance will be heard at the next regular Assembly meeting, July 25. Whether that happens then or earlier is anyone’s guess.
A major rewrite of Anchorage zoning law during the summer while everyone is out fishing raises a red flag. Assemblywoman Meg Zaletel’s fingerprints on it raises that flag much higher, especially after she has left town for the next month or so.
The problem comes down to trust. Do we trust this Assembly majority to do the right thing, as in take testimony, address concerns, and modify their proposal as necessary? Or do we trust them to simply shove whatever they want down our throats regardless of what we want them to do just like they have done with the homeless problem, Covid lockdowns, and spending over the last several years?
Sadly, my dime on them doing what they do best, the cram-down technique.
The press release defines the problem as a housing crisis, with land use restrictions contributing to the issue. Solution in this ordinance? Higher density housing city wide. A page and a half of WHEREAS clauses fall all over themselves touting the joys of increasing residential density.
OK, problem stated, and Assembly solution proposed. The problem with this is that they completely ignore the deeper problem, opting instead to deal with the symptom (housing crisis). This is sort of like treating swelling around a broken leg as a problem rather than the broken leg.
But what is causing the housing crisis? At its most basic, the housing crisis is caused by lack of land to build new homes on in the Anchorage Bowl. This has been a known issue for the last 30 years (or more), and to be expected in a chunk of land bounded by a National Forest and Cook Inlet. Happily, there are several hundred square miles of mostly empty land available right across Cook Inlet at Point Mackenzie available for building.
How to get to that land? The Knik Arm Bridge, the same bridge Sen. Ted Stevens had funding for in 2008. The same bridge Sarah Palin killed in 2008. The same bridge every single Democrat in this town has opposed for the last two decades.
The two Assembly members offering the high-density residency as a “solution” completely ignore both the underlying problem and the simple solution, opting instead to blow up planning and zoning rules so that it is easier to cram us all together like rabbits in a warren, bringing all the family unfriendly blue inner-city pathologies here to Anchorage. Quite the solution, that.
No discussion about why the current planning and zoning system no longer works. No discussion about why the planning and zoning commission review is no longer necessary. No discussion of any other solutions that don’t involve high density housing. No discussion about the local impact of the nationwide crash in commercial real estate that is working its way north.
High density housing is what they want. And with this majority, this is what they are going to try to get, property rights of homeowners now irrelevant.
Bad legislation is proposed to solve a symptom rather than the actual problem, which will work out for homeowners just as well as Assembly efforts to solve the ongoing homeless problem for the last decade.
Like homelessness, it’s going to be difficult to agree on a solution if you can’t even acknowledge what the actual problem is.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He was a small business owner and information technology professional.
