An ordinance aimed at clearing illegal encampments from Anchorage parks and playgrounds faces a dramatic twist at tonight’s Anchorage Assembly meeting.
Assembly Chairman Chris Constant is introducing a substitute version — or “S version” — that would attach a $15 million tax-funded price tag for enforcement, in a move designed to kill the proposal from within.
The original ordinance, backed by conservative Assembly Members Scott Myers, Jared Goecker, and Keith McCormick, seeks to prohibit unauthorized camping, squatting, taking over and criminal activity on public lands. The gained public support from residents frustrated with rising crime, drug use, and organized theft rings operating out of makeshift encampments in municipal green spaces.
However, the core ordinance faces opposition from the Assembly’s liberal majority, who have resisted similar enforcement-first approaches in the past.
Now, with Constant’s “S version,” the ordinance would require the city to raise $15 million from taxpayers to fund enforcement efforts — an amendment that could turn the tide of public sentiment against it and force the ordinance’s own sponsors to vote against it.
The sudden fiscal attachment is a “poison pill,” designed to sink the original ordinance without appearing to oppose it outright.
The maneuver comes after weeks of increasing crime and arson in vagrant encampments, with growing demands from Anchorage residents for visible action on the city’s drug and mental illness crisis, particularly in neighborhoods like Fairview and Spenard, where residents have reported encampments overtaking public spaces.
Last week, when the city began abatement of the Davis Park “SLAZ” encampment, the squatters lit numerous fires in the park and created a public safety crisis. While that camp has been cleared (and burned), the vagrants seem to be edging back into it.
The original ordinance would have authorized law enforcement to remove illegal campers from parks, trails, and playgrounds, and impose fines or criminal penalties for repeat offenses. It also sought to prevent areas from being re-occupied once cleared.
Assembly Chair Constant’s S version, added to the meeting agenda just hours before the scheduled public hearing, shifts the focus from enforcement to cost without offering a concrete plan for how the $15 million would be spent or what departments would administer the funds.
Constant is weaponizing the budget process to undermine serious public safety legislation.
That section of the S version effectively proposes creating a new tax — subject to voter approval — specifically earmarked to fund the enforcement and social services related to illegal encampments and displaced homeless individuals. But in doing so, it raises a serious question:
Why create a new tax for something the existing Alcohol Tax was already supposed to fund?
When voters approved Anchorage’s Alcohol Tax in 2020, they were told the funds — roughly $12 to $15 million annually — would go toward public safety and law enforcement support, substance misuse prevention and treatment, mental health services, and homelessness response, including shelter, case management, and outreach.
The Alcohol Tax was sold to the public as a long-term solution to reduce vagrancy, substance abuse, and the visible impact of homelessness on public spaces.
Now, by proposing another tax levy dedicated to exactly those same goals — “addressing prohibited campsites” and “providing for the management and care of displaced homeless persons” — the S version duplicates the stated purpose of the Alcohol Tax, implying those funds are either misallocated, insufficient, or mismanaged. It also creates a political trap: If conservatives vote for the ordinance, they’re effectively endorsing a new tax. If they vote against it, they kill their own anti-crime measure. The new tax effort shifts the focus from enforcement to taxation, and would delay immediate action on public safety while punting the solution to a future election.
The Anchorage Assembly meeting begins at 5 p.m. tonight at the Loussac Library, with the encampment ordinance set for public hearing. A large turnout is expected.
The agenda and documents can be found at this link.
This is my surprised face.
😐
“king” Constant speaks
You misspelled “Queen”
His version effectively makes the tax-burden to remedy Everyone’s Problem But His!
I’m sure Anchorage has had enough shenanigans!
If the actions of our Assembly angers you, don’t just respond in the comments. You must show up to the meeting. These 3 representatives have invested time, energy and political capital to give you a voice. Tonight’s meeting is not the war, it is merely a battle. Show them you care and reveal to the socialists that their actions are not going unnoticed. Stand up and know that our victory is not a one off event, but one of perseverance.
The Anchorage assembly is the cause of the problem, along with the 80% of the residents who refuse to get involved and vote in the local elections. This is a tax and spend assembly which you gave the power to.
What are they afraid of? They’re afraid of results for starters. This issue has always been a cash cow for the adolescents & their useless sycophants. Merely a means to take taxpayer cash and purposely funnel it into the ecosphere so when it fails (as it always does) they can come back for more cash claiming all they need is a bit more… and more…
The proposal put forth by MGM would be sure to produce positive results. Would it “solve” the problem? Thats something the juveniles on the assembly can’t risk because any suggestion that the proposal had any positive results would expose their willful intent to sabatoge any meaningful solution.
This guy. Err… whatever ‘he’ is. The poison pill should be self indulged.
Chris C. and his merry band of wing nuts are constantly probing to find the pain point beyond which taxpayers won’t indulge them any further. Seems ANC residents have a very high tolerance for pain.
Is it not clear that the Anchorage Assembly far more values the homeless, bums, meth heads and the rest more than they do the Anchorage taxpayer? It is as if Constant is reaching down, sticking his finger in a fresh dog turd and then sticking it under our noses and saying, “Get a good whiff, this is all you get and you’ll like it because you can’t do anything about it.”
Constant is corrupt.
“Constant is weaponizing the budget process to undermine serious public safety legislation.“
BINGO
I was wondering what Constant would have up his sleeve for this one. What a slimy little toad.
Maybe we should have a NO KINGS protest outside Ass Chambers. Somebody can bring a Burger King crown for the gravelly-voiced, middle-aged puppy.
There are several front page articles today that connect what I’m going to include in this post summarizing my take on last night’s Assembly meeting as it pertains to the ordinance prohibiting camping on public lands. Hats off to Amber Brophy-King. She was the first to testify on behalf of the ordinance and, from what I could see, didn’t receive a mouthed “F.U.” from anyone. Unfortunately, for as long as I could stomach to watch it, I only saw one other person speak in favor of it and, it was the woman who spoke immediately after Amber. I’ve never seen so many people, ask for so much, while contributing so little (nothing) to the city that they feed off of. During the testimony regarding the old native hospital site, again the repeated mantra from the Party for Socialism and Liberation and others consisted of nothing more than “Give it to us, build it for us and fund it.” IT being homes for the down trodden proletariat. Naturally, Erin Baldwin-Day was giddy and patronizing as she assured the needy that “there’s a lot going on behind the scenes you haven’t heard about” and that she was excited about building more homes and create housing opportunities. Ironic that, like Zalatal, that’s what Baldwin-Day was doing while being groomed by the Assembly she’s now a part of. (‘https://www.planning.org/planning/2024/oct/how-anchorage-effectively-eliminated-single-family-only-zoning/). Rush Limbaugh used to refer to Al Sharpton and the Rev Jesse Jackson as “Poverty Pimps.” Begich, Walker and our Assembly are Anchorage’s Poverty Pimps by enriching themselves from the misery of others via political influence. In the words of Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” Time and our money is running down the drain.
My friend had his business set fire for a second time in less than two years.
The Fireman had to rip out the new security door he had put in, tear out the sheet rock, a lot of damage just because they had to make sure that fire was completely out.
He has to completely rebuild in there, and the paint was scarcely dry.
This if off Gambel somewhere around 7th…
Very near downtown.
Some of the street bums claim they know who did it and told him. The same name offered by more than one of them.
It seems to me to be an enforcement problem as much as anything else.
If the city were held liable for the damages caused by the vagrancy they endorse and nourish, possibly it might help.
I could not help to notice in Boise Idaho, the streets were clean, everything beautiful.
Vagrancy is against the law there.