By SEAN MURPHY
I joined Eaglexit two years ago this February. I donate monthly, attend meetings, and now am the chair for the group.
Michael Tavoliero, former chair, is a motivator. He speaks black and white. If you read his material and you are a Marxist or communist, you will probably take action. If you are a conservative, then you too will be motivated to action.
Motivation has its place, and it got me moving. But I am an educator, I want to see our communities educated about the possibility and process of detachment from Anchorage.
You may see this as a political process, but at this junction this is an educational discussion on civics.
As an educator, I have committed to taking on the Chair of Eaglexit with the goal of creating a civics course to inform the local community of their options for Alaska local government. To demean this as a political process is short-sighted and does not encourage a discussion among citizens to ultimately inform themselves and improve our community.
I don’t care which side of the aisle you come from. If you are a community member of Assembly District 2 (AD2), we need to have this discussion for our future and the future of our kids.
Eaglexit is a collection of citizens in AD2 who want to detach our district from the Municipality of Anchorage and make our new municipality in Alaska. We have studied the state constitution and the petition process, we have studied the revenue and expenditures of AD2, and now want to know if you, the public, during these interesting times are will to have a discussion on the civics of Alaska local government.
Over the next couple of months, we are planning to hold several educational sessions, in person or online to explain the process. In explaining the process, we will share with you the constitutional guidelines to detachment, the statutes guiding the establishment of a new municipality and school district and discuss the type of local government which may best serve our citizens.
After the educational sessions we plan on holding some public input sessions in some format to gather your opinions for our new municipality. If the total of your opinions indicate AD2 should move forward with this process, we will start writing our petition to the Local Boundary Commission. That will take some cost in media, polling, and cost for a legal brief.
As I talk to the community I get several kinds of responses, and I understand all of them.
First, will my taxes go up?
Our 2020 studies show a revenue of $62 plus million a year for general government and $105 plus million for education. For a community of 51,000 and a school district of 8,000, that should be sufficient.
Please keep in mind while under the Anchorage jurisdiction AD2’s property taxes alone increased 14.43% from 2019 to 2021, which total from $57,448 million to $65,739 million. We believe our community can do better.
Second, will my services stay the same?
We have an area of 1050 square miles. Our roads are outsourced and maintained through a public/private partnership. Our utilities will all remain in place with no increases resulting from the change in local government.
Most of our assembly district is covered by a volunteer fire department and JBER has its own fire and police, so there may be opportunities for cost savings and better service delivery.
In 2021, as one example, we paid $8 million in property taxes for public safety to the MOA, and we get 3-4 police a day. I think we can do better.
Third response I get is silence: “It can’t be done, or they will never let us detach from Anchorage.”
I understand these responses, and have had these same concerns myself, but Eaglexit is bigger than all of these.
There are seven principles our government is founded on.
- Popular Sovereignty. Who gives the government its power?
- Republicanism. How are people’s views represented in government?
- Federalism. How is power shared?
- Separation of powers. How is power divided?
- Checks and balances. How is power evenly distributed?
- Limited government. How is abuse of power prevented?
- Individual Rights. How are personal freedoms protected?
I do not see these principles being practiced in our current governing situation. Do you?
If we were a smaller community with direct local control, we the people would be more active in giving the government its power. We the people would have our views more readily represented in government. We the people would have more control over AD2.
We at Eaglexit continue to be a civics discussing grassroots effort by local citizens open to detaching AD2 from the Municipality of Anchorage. We want to educate the citizens of AD2 about the process of detachment, the effort needed to detach, and most importantly to give the people living in AD2 the choice for freedom and self-governance.
What a great lesson for us and a spectacular example for our children.
Lee Jordan said it best, “Will the people of Chugiak-Eagle River have the opportunity to control their own destiny, or must they forever remain subject to what has been decreed for them by Anchorage?”
The Alaska State constitution allows for our communities to grow and govern themselves. The process takes time and money, but most importantly it takes people. People with the will to stand up and exercise our right to make governing decisions for our community.
Sean Murphy and his wife Robin came to Alaska with the Army. He moved to Eagle River from Anchorage in 1999 with his family. He is a retired Anchorage School District educator and administrator. He is active with his community council. He is the new chair of Eaglexit.
