The Alaska Legislature has come together with overwhelming bipartisan support for stable school funding. Anchorage Mayor Suzanne LaFrance has overseen the most comprehensive, effective effort to clean up homeless camps in city history. There’s new mixed-use development underway Downtown. With voter-approved bonds to expand parks and trails, there’s real consensus that Anchorage can capitalize on our city’s unique quality of life amenities to drive economic growth. We have a long way to go, but I see real promise for economic growth and significant improvements in the quality of life for Anchorage. Let’s work together to accelerate economic growth and prosperity for our city.
First, we must continue rebuilding a school system that was decimated by years of funding cuts and rising class sizes. The legislature’s vote to restore $700 in classroom funding is a critical first step, but it was only sufficient to stop growth in class sizes — not to bring class sizes down to a level that is a prerequisite for educational excellence. That will take additional state funding and continued coordination between school boards, families, appropriators at both the state and local levels to provide sufficient and stable funding for great schools with smaller class sizes.
Second, we must fill vacant police and other critical public safety positions. In recent months, Anchorage has had an average of 75 police vacancies. This is a completely untenable level of police understaffing, and it is a direct result of Alaska’s worst-in-the-nation retirement system. Alaska is the only state in the U.S. with zero secure retirement system for police and other first responders. So while Mayor LaFrance and the Anchorage Assembly are running as many police academies as they can to recruit, even if recruitment is successful, we are losing officers to all the states that offer a meaningful retirement. House Majority Leader Chuck Kopp and our Finance Committee have introduced legislation (HB 88) to fix Alaska’s broken retirement system and end Alaska’s disastrous experiment with defunding the police. We simply must pass this legislation to fill police vacancies and have adequate staffing to respond to and prevent crimes. In addition to the ultra-time-sensitive calls for service, adequate police staffing is essential to clear illegal homeless encampments, because Parks and Rec staff must have police in the field for safe camp cleanups.
Third, we need to invest in the infrastructure that make Anchorage an attractive place to live. Let’s face it — too much of our city looks like a depressed Rust Belt city, with endless expanses of parking lots and deteriorating strip malls. There are zero highly-skilled workers and investors who will move to or stay in a profoundly ugly, unsafe urban environment. Instead, as communities from Bozeman to Boise have demonstrated, highly skilled workers want safe, walkable, attractive environments. Anchorage has the potential to have some of the best quality of life in America, because we have convenient access to parks, trails, libraries and a performing arts center with exceptional quality for a small city. We have to modernize our streets and connect trail systems that are severed by wastelands of parking lots and dangerous, outdated roadways.
Many Alaskans stay here because we can hike, mountain bike, and ski within town or a short drive from town. To enhance the competitiveness of our city, we must modernize our urban infrastructure so it is safe and enjoyable for families to walk, bike, or drive and spend time at local shops, restaurants, and entertainment venues. Both the Municipality and the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities’ Central Region staff have initiated great work to achieve this goal, but we have to accelerate the pace of infrastructure modernization.
For the last seven years, most of us in the legislature have been engaged in nearly full-time damage control to prevent the governor from totally wrecking this state. As we look to the next gubernatorial administration, we have real potential for sustained economic growth and the kind of durable prosperity that Alaskans have sought for generations. We’re on the right path with bipartisan legislative majorities and a highly competent mayoral administration in Anchorage. Let’s hold ourselves to high expectations. Anchorage has the potential to have the best quality of life in America, and it starts with good schools, safe streets, and modern infrastructure. Let’s deliver on that promise.
Zack Fields represents Downtown Anchorage and surrounding neighborhoods in the Alaska House of Representatives.