By SUZANNE DOWNING
There is an old saying after an election: “the voters have spoken…and now they must be punished.”
Let’s hope for our neighbors in Anchorage that such a crack doesn’t hold water. The largest city in Alaska rejected balance in its municipal government, opening up City Hall to the fawning supporters of a tax hungry, government creeping assembly majority. So, what urgent matters will Suzanne LaFrance, the incoming Mayor, expect to consider once in office?
For one, bathrooms.
This is not a joke. Indeed, the issue of public sanitation is important, a foundational role of government. However, like most matters that come before our city leaders, the proposed path on almost anything is San Fransisco and Portland rather than Southcentral Alaska.
The same voters who elevated LaFrance to the mayoralty, and passed a slew of bond proposals, made it a decided point to vote down a proposal to fund up to $5 million for modular public bathrooms in the municipality. This wasn’t even close. Nearly two-thirds of the residents who bothered to vote made it a point to say No! to the Anchorage Assembly’s “Portland Loo-style” bathrooms.
If elections have consequences, and the people have spoken (pretty loudly), why is this subject in front of your reading eyes again?
For one, with this Assembly, nothing is settled. Case in point: the alcohol tax. In 2019, a measure to tax beers, ciders, wines, cocktails, and liquor purchases for homeless services was decimated by voters at the ballot box. The reaction from the tax’s supporters at that time, including now-disgraced former Mayor Ethan Berkowitz, was to blame misinformation and the alcohol industry’s peddling (never mind the tax had been rejected numerous times over 20 years).
The very next year, in the middle of the Covid lockdowns imposed by Berkowitz and the Assembly, the tax was put back on the ballot, and narrowly passed after some cosmetic changes to where the funds would go. Berkowitz is now gone, but his enablers on the Assembly are largely here, and Anchorage residents are paying taxes they had previously rejected.
That brings us back to bathrooms. A recent story in the newspaper, which retains its perch as the megaphone for the swift set on the left in power, disclosed that a nearly $50,000-dollar contract was issued to survey Anchorage residents on what kind of public toilets they would want.
You can take that survey at this link.
This would seem like something to be done before taking a plan to the voters.
But the mask slipped a bit on next steps, when an Assembly member was quoted that the incoming mayoral administration would be more supportive of getting funding for this initiative.
The translation is clear: Voters said no to paying for modular public toilets at this time, but no worries, city hall will help us come up with the moneys for this. No further permission needed. And why is it not needed? Because the voters elected a mayor with the powers to do so. So, the voters who said no actually also said yes.
Confused yet?
But it is the second, and bigger issue, that the Anchorage area’s supposed paper of record let the town down.
At no point in the article was one quote found from a public figure, group, or someone who could explain why one of the largest voting margins in the past election went the way it did. That is a disservice on many levels.
The same Assembly member quoted in the Anchorage paper said the big issue seemed to be messaging. Apparently, it was the name “Portland Loo-style,” that sunk the attempt to provide relief to folks on trails and streets. Like the former mayor, it was misinformation and labeling, not the merits apparently.
Anchorage should have an honest discussion about this. Supporters of the bathroom initiative may find out that a lot of folks who voted “No” are in fact sympathetic to the need for clean places to do what all humans must. The Municipality has a world-class trail system, and an active community of runners, cyclists, hikers, photographers, and countless sporting events. The demand is definitely there.
But that is not the issue. And the fact that the big issue is not being discussed, even mentioned in the article, makes it an even bigger issue.
Ask an average person if they will walk on the Coastal Trail with their family, they may very well say yes. Ask them if they will go to Cuddy Park, and the answer will likely be the complete opposite. Is it a coincidence that massive homeless populations make people feel unsafe, and not want their loved ones near the area?
Ask those same average Anchorageites who they think will be the most-frequent users of publicly funded, unattended, modular toilets, and then ask if they are comfortable with their family using them afterwards.
Being concerned about subsidizing closed spaces that can be abused with drug use or other harmful actions, destroying public property, and making it essentially unsafe or unusable for law-abiding members of the public is the issue. It doesn’t take a five-figure survey to understand the discontent. The people of Anchorage are reasonable, charitable Americans. That isn’t an opinion: look at disclosures of donations to charities and the purple voting record of the city. Treating them like adults, and for once listening, and not attempting to ram something down their throats, is not only politically expedient; it is the respectful thing a civil society’s leaders do.
There is still a window for the incoming mayor to defy the aphorism, and not impose suffering on a voting public that asked for balance. Please madam Mayor, do not erase the chance to have balance. Above all, please treat the public with the respect that it showed when voting for you but against specific measures. Today, it is public restrooms. But trust crosses all policy issues. Start building it.
Suzanne Downing is the founder of Must Read Alaska and serves as editor.
