The Anchorage Assembly voted Tuesday night to move forward with changes to the city seal, despite pressing issues like public safety concerns and the bizarre public survey process that drew questions about transparency and methodology.
The vote passed 7–5. Oddly, the version of the seal approved by the Assembly was not one of the options presented in the public survey that had been conducted earlier this fall.
Assembly Chairman Chris Constant oversaw that survey, which allowed respondents to choose among four proposed seal designs or select an option to leave the seal unchanged. However, the survey was open to anyone with internet access and did not include geographic restrictions, allowing participation from outside Anchorage.
During the survey process, The Alaska Story reported that there were no safeguards to ensure respondents were Anchorage residents. That issue was later raised during Assembly discussions.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Constant said a significant number — thousands — of survey responses were discarded due to concerns about automated or “bot” submissions, though no documentation or technical evidence was presented publicly to substantiate that claim. Responses that referenced cost concerns were also excluded by Constant because he said those concerns were invalid.
Constant argued that changing the city seal would not result in costs because the new design would be phased in over time. However, Assembly and staff time has already been expended on the issue, including multiple meetings, consultations, and work sessions dedicated to seal discussions.
The final design approved by the Assembly removed the ship and the plane from the existing city seal. The ship has historically been associated with Captain James Cook’s HMS Resolution, the ship he used in exploring Alaska’s coast. Assembly members supporting the change appear to believe the imagery is offensive, apparently swayed by the influence of the Eklutna Tribe, which was consulted about the matter. The plane on the seal was indicative of Anchorage’s role as a major transportation hub. It’s gone, too.
The issue of changing the city seal was not initiated through a public petition or constituent request, but was instead brought forward by woke Assembly leadership as a way to sanitize European explorers from the city history.
The narrow margin of the vote reflected divisions within the Assembly over both the process and the timing of the decision.
More coverage of Anchorage Assembly actions is available at The Alaska Story.
2 thoughts on “Anchorage Assembly votes for a new city seal – one that was a last-minute reveal to the public”
The new seal is offensive to me and I was born here. Emphasizing Native influence in Anchorage when it never existed in any significant form is an insult to those that founded and built Anchorage. Mr. Constant embodies much of which is so very wrong in Anchorage these days. His time in elected office cannot end soon enough.
I get the reasoning behind scrubbing the ship. You know, “because colonialism”. But the plane? If the old seal dates to 1975, then the term “Air Crossroads of the World” was still fresh on everyone’s minds back then. True, in the years since, Anchorage’s international role in passenger air travel diminished with the fall of the Soviet Union, which opened up new routes. However, air cargo picked up the slack in more recent times. The plane would still be emblematic of something of primary importance to Anchorage’s history.
Is that history the problem, though? Historical revisionism thrives on the web through aggressive deletion and/or omission. Does the same principle apply here? If you remove these items, people won’t ask questions about why they’re there, thereby saving explanations the respondent would rather not make or even see acknowledged.
The LaFrance administration has already shown itself to be a proponent of historical revisionism. The commentary on the 50th anniversary of unification lacked any scrutiny of the “unification happened because of the 1970 Gold Rush fire” narrative, which was advanced on the administration’s behalf by Jane Angvik and David Reamer. The Muni website devotes a page to this narrative, with a quillwork pattern image at the top and a long series of cherry-picked facts backed by cherry-picked sources. The narrative, which I’ve only heard for about seven years, alleges that a motel fire on Northern Lights Boulevard immediately outside city limits, in which five people died, occurred because the greater Anchorage area resisted big government and all the benefits it brought. The Spenard Volunteer Fire Department, under the administrative umbrella of the Greater Anchorage Area Borough, was ill-equipped to fight the fire on its own. The Anchorage Fire Department positioned equipment across the street but didn’t attempt to help fight the fire. Here’s what was omitted from most retellings of this event. First, AFD abruptly terminated its mutual aid agreement with the GAAB only weeks before. If an explanation was ever offered, I’ve yet to find it. Second, unification was voted down in the following two elections. How do facts demonstrate that the fire was not a motivating factor for influencing voters at the time, yet in 2025, we have people trying to convince us it was?
Revisionism doesn’t stop there. A certain Wikipedia editor, known pseudonymously but who claims to hail from a long-time Anchorage family, has been a self-appointed guardian of Wikipedia’s coverage of Anchorage for many years. In one discussion, this person said that the term “Anchorage bowl” shouldn’t be used because it’s evocative of a bygone era. In another discussion, this same person said that the old city limits included Muldoon. Wrong. It did creep into the present-day Northeast Community Council area somewhat, but never touched Muldoon Road or immediate adjoining neighborhoods. In fact, if anything, the primary catalyst for the successful 1975 unification vote was the controversy that ensued following the city’s unsuccessful 1973 attempt to annex Muldoon.