Anchorage’s government is spending money it doesn’t have on a project that many residents see as unnecessary. While asking for a 3% sales tax from residents, it’s dabbling in artwork that could ultimately cost the city tens of thousands of dollars.
With eight days left, the municipality is asking the public to vote on a new municipal seal – or to keep the old one – in a process that is wide open to anyone on the internet, whether they live in Anchorage, AK, Papua New Guinea, or Anchorage, Kentucky, where the zip code is 40223.
There is no residency requirement and no verification step, meaning municipal employees, local nonprofits, and an unknown number of outsiders will be able to weigh in on the city’s symbol, while the rest of Anchorage’s working people are busy chipping ice.
Voters can choose between five finalists, including “Option C,” which leaves the seal unchanged and is the fiscally conservative choice since it requires no new rollout.
The city’s preferred choice, however, has been signaled clearly: a version that incorporates a slight Indigenous motif created by a Dena’ina artist commissioned earlier this year.
The municipality partnered with the Anchorage Park Foundation in 2025 to hire artist Sebastian Garber to develop artwork for the city’s 50th anniversary celebration and new pedestrian signage downtown. That work, drawing from the original 1975 municipal seal, simplified the design to feature the anchor and sun with motifs inspired by Indigenous quillwork.
Anchorage’s original municipal seal was created in 1975, when the City of Anchorage and Greater Anchorage Area Borough unified into what is now the Municipality of Anchorage. Local artist and University of Alaska Anchorage professor Joan Kimura designed the seal, which depicts a blue anchor against a yellow sailboat, with a blue airplane and yellow sun. Kimura later became known as one of the founding figures of Alaska’s contemporary art movement.
As the city approaches 50 years, Assembly Chairman Chris Constant has put forward AO 2025-135(S), which would adopt one of the five proposed designs as Anchorage’s new official seal. If the Assembly approves a change, the municipality says the old seal would be replaced gradually to reduce implementation costs.
But the process itself is already raising eyebrows. There is no transparency on who will count the votes or how the selections will be verified, and the Assembly chairman has openly expressed his preference for the Indigenous-styled version. Given the lack of guardrails, many residents expect the online vote to be stacked in favor of that outcome.
Public comment and the online vote run through Dec. 16, just ahead of the Assembly’s hearing on the measure. The link for residents and non-residents to weigh in is here.
8 thoughts on “Anchorage opens municipal seal survey to the whole world: What could possibly go wrong?”
Like the hieroglyph and chain motifs. Target rings on Option B are a nice thought, too.
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What better symbols could one find to depict the Fall of Anchorage?
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Well, maybe something with bums and dancing perverts, but this is a good start.
Until those municipality residents who protested through social media and in-person at meetings since 2020 stop protesting and complaining to put themselves at their neighborhood councils and help one another get on as council officers
Again! January is election month for deciding your neighborhood council’s officers for the 2026 year.
The current leadership (though they only represent 40%of anchorage who thinks like them) will do what they think is correct
Convince us why people should care about politically inbred, amateur homeowners associations representing themselves as community councils whose sole purpose seems to be demanding more rules, regulations, and money to perfect the Potemkin village vision to which each council aspires.
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Community councils mattered way back when voters believed elections were honest and elected officials cared about them.
Now it’s all about squabbling for attention and money, demanding private property be seized for their trails, bending over for casinos, bending over for the education industry, meddling in everyone’s else’s lives, providing monthly booster shots of gloom and doom coming if they don’t get what they want.
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Remind again, which community councils were all in for Eaglexit, or for joining Eaglexit?
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Eaglexit and the casino happened because community councils were able to do what, exactly?
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Anchorage is in the shape it’s in because community councils are so great at what they do?
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Assembly members have open contempt for residents but not for community councils made up of the same residents, how does that work exactly?
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Bottom line: Why should working stiffs who have lives and jobs care about demented social clubs like these, what’s in it for them?
And, anyone can vote as many times as they want. Using some relatively simple code, one person could easily vote 10,000 times. And, that’s very likely to be what happens.
It is virtually certain that the socialists will select something with an indigenous theme – although the historical Native involvement with the Anchorage bowl is paper-thin. (I personally think it is more likely than not that indigenous people have NEVER set foot on my property.) And Mr. Constant will want to include a rainbow flag if he can.
J. Your understanding of local anthropology and archaeology is paper thin.
Option C, keep it simple. Now the Anchorage Assembly can more on to more urgent concerns.
Why change it? What is the meanings of the A & B examples of the extra graphics mean? For a city that is going broke by the minute due to the many unvoted passed ordinaces, why change??..Where is the $$ money coming from to pay for all the changes..They want this and they want that..but $$$$ and we don’t have the money..The Muni should should have it as a ballot measure..to vote on.