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.