The shocking part of the Anchorage budget submitted by the new mayor is just how much was spent during the Berkowitz Administration. In short, spending exploded.
The Dan Sullivan Administration, which lasted from 2009 to 2015, left the Ethan Berkowitz Administration with an $18.1 million surplus over the 12 percent of savings known as the “fund balance.” That is the amount the city is required to have to cover bonds.
But the Ethan Berkowitz Administration in its six years spent it all down and then some. It left the Dave Bronson Administration an $18.9 million deficit in that fund balance this July, when Bronson took over. That’s a $37 million swing from a surplus to a deficit position in savings required by bondholders.
While spending went up by 20 percent during the Berkowitz Administration (including the eight months when Austin Quinn-Davidson was acting mayor), Mayor Bronson proposes to cut $7.5 million out of the next budget cycle. And there will be another $1.2 million in reductions in enterprise services; those are rates people pay that are governed by the Regulatory Commission of Alaska.
During the Berkowitz spending growth years, the Municipality of Anchorage’s population decreased from 299,330 to 285,400 residents. The Bronson Administration said it believes government should begin right-sizing unsustainable spending to reflect the decreases in population that have occurred.
“Upon taking office, my administration has been working to stabilize Anchorage’s fiscal future to ensure we steady the growth in government spending, right size our services through efficiencies, and better delivery of government services to the taxpayers and the residents of Anchorage,” said Mayor Bronson. “This budget reflects months of work across all departments to evaluate our programs and explore all possibilities to maximize savings. As a result, I sincerely believe we are on a strong glide path to a more effective and efficient MOA while maintaining the services Anchorage has grown to expect.”
“Now is the time to act, to eliminate the level of uncertainty Anchorage residents and taxpayers have felt for years. This budget is a call to action for us. I will continue to seek a decrease in government spending and seek to take the burden off the tax cap for all people of Anchorage,” Bronson said. “We don’t want our children and grandchildren to have to pay the debts incurred today.”
The 2022 proposed budget is $550 million, a reduction in spending from the 2021 actual spending.
These reductions were achieved by implementing efficiencies in operations and eliminating a number (53 total) of non-essential positions, including 34 vacant positions and 19 currently occupied positions, the Mayor’s Office said. People in positions subject to elimination will have the opportunity to obtain employment with the Municipality of Anchorage.
Key items of interest in Mayor Bronson’s 2022 budget:
- Core services remain intact (police, fire, health, streets plowed)
- A focused effort to reduce the debt that has incurred over the past five years
- Reducing the property tax cap burden
- Not issuing more debt than is being paid off
- Reduction of government administration
- Seeking federal reimbursements for previous disaster spending
Municipality of Anchorage Plan Moving Forward:
- Maintaining the AAA bond rating
- Eliminating unnecessary and burdensome government policies, regulations, and practices
- Reducing the cost of government services to the taxpayers through the consolidation and streamlining of services.
Click here for the Fiscal Year 2022 Budget
Some good news!
Don’t worry, the ultra communist assembly will pass their own budget over Bronson’s veto
It will be good to see our property Taxes go down for the last six years mine has steadly increased. Finally some fiscally responsible budget working towards pro growth in private sector.
I see extraordinary time spent by road equipment all summer long, in our tiny neighborhood consisting of three 1/4 mile roads, finalized by a dead end road. Two years ago DOT spent weeks and weeks on these three little roads. ( Paving a road that did not need paving.) In fact last week, they sent a road sweeper down here to wipe off the rain! Then we had two separate snowfalls. Then where were they? Another example of waste….we have a tiny little park in the neighborhood with a basketball court with surrounding grass and an approach path to the court. One “ team” has been down here to “ mow” at least five times, to the point that there is almost NO grass in our little park. Few people use the park because bears like to walk through that area. If you need more info, Suzanne might be able to direct you to me.
Whoo hoo!
Finally a leader who doesn’t call themself a fiscal conservative because they can manage and be conservative managing their personal household budget-which doesnt count. I think all Leaders are fiscal conservatives with their own budget to the point they are stingy. It’s how little they spend a community’s money that counts to be able to honestly claim they are truly fiscal conservative leader.
The way it should be done.
I’m shocked. A San Francisco socialist spent money like a drunken sailor?
Elections have consequences.
Suzanne, think you mean $550 million, in the 2022 proposed budget, not billion. Unless Berkowitz really did go on a spending spree!
Yes, I missed the decimal. Got it fixed this morning. It’s $5.5 billion. Thanks – sd
No wonder Dunbar wanted the budget deliberation documents. He knew this was coming. Cheers –
This is great! A needed a review of mission creep. We can’t afford the clandestine growth of mega budgets. Very nice leadership cutting through the staged productions brought to us by drama seekers and swindlers.
I’m just waiting for the nine radical extremist Marxists on the municipal assembly to label Bronson getting Anchorage’s budget under control as “racist”.
They could save a bunch if they got rid of the grossly overpaid equity officer.
He could probably save twice that if he would get rid of half the positions that exist in the Anchorage government. No doubt that like all bureaucracies, they are twice the size they need to be, produce nothing and drain tax payer money.
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Secondly, outlaw lobbyists. Enough with the big corporate to government money laundering machine washing dirty corporate money with taxpayer money at a loss for the taxpayers and wealth building for the politicians/ assembly members. Lobbying equals corruption by design.
Let’s see. Places to cut expenses:
1. Cut the equity officer’s pay to $0.
2. Cut the Assembly’s pay back to 2018 levels.
3. Stop letting the Health Department pay for radio and TV ads telling us to plug in at 20
4. Stop paying for ads telling us to get vaccinated. Seriously, even the folks on North Sentinal Island are tired of hearing about the vaccine.
5. No more city advertising on the People Mover. The city is paying the city to pretend the people mover is not hemorrhaging money.
6. While we are on the people mover, let’s stop subsidizing every group that asks for it. Seriously, students, getting back and forth to class is a legit college expense. Plan on paying for it.
Oh, I could go on and on. But as noted above, the Assembly will simply override the Mayor veto, and spend on whatever they want to spend on.
Kudos for being knowledgeable about North Sentinel Island!
Anchorage would likely eliminate its deficit if municipal government just provided essential services.
That would mean the total elimination of all social services that use public funds to better the lives of those who’ve failed to provide for their own needs.
It is not a role of government in a free society to take from those who have to give to those who do not have…for any reason.
That’s the false promise of communism…that productive people can and will support non-productive people through government “charity” forever.
That situation destroys initiative and motivation once the productive people realize that their hard work is rewarding those who do not work.
It’s why every society that has gone down this road eventually collapses.
America is so far down the road to flat out communism that most don’t even understand what is really going on or how a society loses its fundamental freedom and rights by allowing government to become the great provider, the pseudo parent that we can all count on to pick us up, dust us off and fix our owies when we screw our lives up.
We’ve turned into a socialist country by popular demand.
They could save money by trimming the fat in mayoral and city manager salaries and budget. They both cost us WAY more than the current occupants of those positions are worth!!
One of your regular readers, a Brian Simpson I believe, said he would be interested in seeing results from a study about how much more unvaccinated people spread covid compared to vaccinated people. Unfortunately, this is the only article I could find with the Must Read Alaska byline when I came back with some information from a large study done by Oxford University, very well-respected University in England so American politics are not an issue. Someone please copy this information and repost it in reply to one of Brian’s responses. The following is an excerpt from a Bloomberg article by Akshay Syal on that Oxford study. The two vaccines involved are the Pfizer and the AstraZeneca vaccines. Moderna would likely be a bit better than Pfizer and J&J about the same as AstraZeneca.
“Both vaccines reduced transmission, although they were more effective against the alpha variant compared to the delta variant. When infected with the delta variant, a given contact was 65 percent less likely to test positive if the person from whom the exposure occurred was fully vaccinated with two doses of the Pfizer vaccine. With AstraZeneca, a given contact was 36 percent less likely to test positive if the person from whom the exposure occurred was fully vaccinated.”
This is just a single paragraph from an extensive, well-researched article. It was under the US tab of my SmartNews news feed.
Please don’t censor and delete this like you have my other posts that disagree with your readership. Copy it and repost this actual researched, true news for your readers rather than the untrue conspiracy crap they thrive on.
I agree quit wasting city money on advertising pushing the city agenda. I can live my life just fine without the BS. Deep state giving their cronies in the media some pay back. STOP IT!
To Estera
Apparently you are a hunter-gatherer with no recognition that we’re all pawns.
(shadow government). You are micro-engaging in a very serious game, that of commerce. This city is dying at your will and others, who nitpick about masks and various preventions of Covid. It’s a big world out here, and thousands of us are trying to keep Anchorage and the State of Alaska viably livable.
Best that you apply your energy to strength and Commerce of our community. You WILL be a hunter gatherer before you know it. Probably, you have a garage full of toilet paper already.
Apply your talents to keeping Anchorage alive. We don’t have much interest in what millions of authorities say about immunization. We’re trying to keep Anchorage ALIVE.
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