Mayor Suzanne LaFrance’s 2025 budget for Anchorage is proposed to be nearly $36.5 million more than the proposed budget by former mayor Dave Bronson for the 2024 budget cycle. The Anchorage Assembly boosted his budget to $611 million and overrode his budget vetoes.
This makes the LaFrance proposed budget the highest in Anchorage history and that is 6% higher than the proposed budget by Bronson, who was attempting to trim about $2.4 million from the prior year’s budget.
LaFrance’s budget is just barely below the tax cap, which is the amount that the city can tax property owners, which is $344 million. Property taxes cover about 60% of the city’s budget, with state and federal monies, as well as some fees covering the balance. The median homeowner in Anchorage pays $4,508 in property taxes to the municipality, the highest in the state.
Last year, the leftist Assembly blew through the tax cap for the first time in Anchorage history, when it revised Mayor Bronson’s budget higher, in violation of the law. The Assembly was forced to pull back some of its illegal spending plans, but still passed a budget higher far higher than Bronson had requested and overrode his vetoes. This year, the Assembly has been given only $173,300 to spend if it wants to go right up to the tax cap.
With capital budget items added in, the LaFrance 2025 budget will actually reach a record $645 million, about 4% more than this year’s overall budget of $620 million.
According to budget documents, the priorities of LaFrance’s ministration are diversity, equity, inclusion with plenty of workforce dedicated to social engineering goals, which include hiring people for ethnicity rather than skill or experience. There are many pages dedicated to the public libraries, and few pages dedicated to the criminal prosecution division of the Municipal Attorney.
In the capital budget, the mayor plans to spend $4.5 million on pedestrian safety. This means following the Assembly leadership’s lead in lowering speed limits around Anchorage, reinstalling lights that were removed when “light pollution” was the government fad, and even dedicating some of the asphalt roads to pedestrians. Most of the 13 pedestrian deaths this year were due to drug- or alcohol-infused vagrants wandering into the middle of the roads — outside of crosswalks — during broad daylight and without signaling to drivers their intention to take over the lane the drivers use. The deaths increased after last October, when the Anchorage Assembly passed an ordinance that makes jaywalking permissible in most circumstances.
The mayor also has several million budgeted for homeless, camp abatement, and other issues involving Anchorage’s growing criminal class that has taken over sidewalks and greenbelts.
In LaFrance’s budget letter to the Assembly, the 2025 budget includes key changes to:
- Invest in housing, shelter, and camp abatement to address homelessness
Expand the Mobile Crisis Team to 24-hour service – Fully fund the Anchorage Safety Patrol; shift service from the Anchorage Health Department to the Anchorage Fire Department to streamline crisis response
Improve recruitment and retention in the Prosecutor’s Office – Raise snowplow operator pay to improve snow removal capacity, reliability, and expertise — Invest the Anchorage Child Care and Early Education Fund in stimulus payments to stabilize the childcare sector, and innovative pilot projects that improve access to quality, affordable childcare and early education
Kickstart a new grants team focused on securing federal and state investments for Anchorage’s needs
Make Municipal jobs more competitive to improve consistency and function of services
According to the mayor’s budget document, Anchorage has lost 12,000 residents during the past decade, and yet the homeless population has surged and the constant theme of government is that there is not enough housing, an indication that the working Alaskans are leaving the city and that nonworking members of society are filling in to a degree.
View the proposed budget here.
Check back for more analysis of the mayor’s proposed budget.