The Anchorage Assembly has a special meeting called for Sept. 5 to pass a resolution stripping $100,000 from the mayor’s navigation center, and reappropriate it to the Anchorage Health Department, Anchorage Police Department, and Anchorage Parks and Recreation to assist with mitigation at large vagrant and homeless encampments.
Weeks ago, the Assembly sealed the deal, pulling its support for the navigation center, which was to be a place where drug addicts, homeless, and other people down on their luck could find help and temporary housing.
Mayor Dave Bronson negotiated the arrangement to pay for and build the navigation center with the Assembly’s appropriation, under a plan agreed to by him and the Assembly and signed off by both last year.
Other parts of the agreement included homeless hotels, which were a priority of the Assembly. But after the Assembly got the completion of its portion of the deal, it pulled out the support for the navigation center. Now, a massive sprawl of drug-infested camps have popped up around the city, with the homeless and vagrant problem worse than anyone has ever seen it in living memory.
The meeting has just the one item on the agenda unless another is placed “laid on the table” at the last minute. The special meeting will take place from 1-2 pm in the conference room #155 at City Hall, 632 West 6th Ave.
