Michael Tavoliero: The case for detaching Chugiak–Eagle River, creating Chugach Regional Borough

By MICHAEL TAVOLIERO

The Eaglexit petition asks a simple question with big consequences: Should the Chugiak–Eagle River area stop being part of the Municipality of Anchorage and become its own borough, called the Chugach Regional Borough?

Right now, Chugiak–Eagle River (Assembly District 2 and nearby lands) is just one corner of a very large, unified Municipality of Anchorage that also governs the Bowl, Girdwood, and the other communities that function very differently. The petitioners state that Chugiak–Eagle River has matured into a distinct community with its own needs and will be better served, and better governed, as an independent home rule borough.

The petition asks the State of Alaska, through the Local Boundary Commission, to do two things at once: detach Chugiak–Eagle River from the Municipality of Anchorage and incorporate the same area as a new, non-unified home rule borough called the Chugach Regional Borough. “Non-unified” means it is only a borough government (not a city-borough combo), and “home rule” means voters adopt a charter and the borough can exercise any power not forbidden by state law, giving local people more room to design a government that fits their geography and values.

The proposed borough follows the Glenn Highway corridor from Eagle River through Chugiak toward Eklutna, including nearby lands and tidelands. It’s home to many active-duty military families, JBER commuters, and a network of small businesses, churches, and schools in a more rural-suburban pattern than the Anchorage Bowl. Over fifty years it has grown into a region of more than forty thousand residents. These are now communities which are large enough to sustain their own regional government.

Detachment changes which local government you live under. When approved and ratified, residents of the new Chugach Regional Borough will no longer elect Anchorage Assembly members or pay into Anchorage’s city-style service areas. They will instead vote for a Borough Assembly, Borough School Board, and other charter-created bodies, with their property taxes and local revenues set and spent by their own borough for their own services. Anchorage will remain a city-borough, but smaller in land, population, and Assembly districts.

Incorporation of the Chugach Regional Borough happens alongside detachment. The petition proposes a simple structure: a seven-district Borough Assembly, with the same districts used for the School Board and local commissions. The borough will handle core regional functions, education, land-use planning and platting, roads and transportation, police, fire, emergency services, parks and recreation, and basic ordinances and code enforcement, while the charter also allows it to contract with Anchorage or others for shared or purchased services when that is cheaper or more practical.

For residents and businesses, the biggest change over time will be who runs core services and how they’re organized. Fire, EMS, roads, and local parks will be managed by the Chugach Regional Borough instead of multiple Anchorage service areas. A new Chugach Regional Borough School District will oversee local schools and education policy, and borough lawmakers, not the Anchorage Assembly, will set zoning and land-use rules tailored to local conditions. Chugiak–Eagle River and its neighbors will no longer be just one set of neighborhoods in Anchorage’s patchwork, but the center of their own regional government.

Regional utilities and infrastructure anchored in Anchorage, such as AWWU systems serving the area and the Anchorage Regional Landfill, will remain with the Municipality of Anchorage and are governed under separate state utility regulations. In practical terms, trash still gets collected, water still runs, and power still flows; what changes is which local government sits underneath those services.

Why do this at all?

First, the petitioners argue that Chugiak–Eagle River is a clearly defined community of interest, repeatedly recognized in elections, redistricting, and public testimony, with growth patterns, an economy, and a social life distinct from the Anchorage Bowl.

Second, they contend Anchorage’s unified system is now too large and fragmented to serve this area well. The Anchorage government stretches from the Bowl to Girdwood to Eklutna and relies on a complicated patchwork of service areas to cover very different communities. The petition argues this has produced uneven investment, especially in roads and transportation, and that residents in this corner often pay more in taxes than they receive in services that match their priorities.

Third, the petition roots this proposal in Article X of Alaska’s Constitution. That article calls for “maximum local self-government” with a minimum of local government units (to avoid a maze of overlapping tax districts) and says local powers should be given a liberal construction. In plain terms: the Framers wanted fewer, stronger local governments, not a single mega-municipality that lumps very different communities together, and they expected courts and state officials to read local powers broadly so communities could genuinely govern themselves.

That’s the context the petition leans on. It argues that today’s Municipality of Anchorage has drifted from the Framers’ design: on paper it’s one unified government, but in practice it is a large collection of very different communities under a single umbrella that no longer reflects a shared “common interest.”

Carving out Chugach Regional Borough will not violate the “minimum units” principle but fulfill it. Leaving a city-centered Anchorage focused on the Bowl and a separate Chugach Regional Borough focused on Chugiak–Eagle River and adjacent lands, each a full-strength local government with clear taxing authority and fewer overlapping, half-powered entities. With this reading, the Constitution is not an obstacle to detachment; it is the blueprint the proposal seeks to restore.

All of this takes place within a clear legal framework. The Alaska Constitution sets broad goals and creates the Local Boundary Commission; statutes define how borough incorporation and detachment work; and LBC regulations spell out detailed standards for population, geography, economy, finances, and the “best interests of the state.”

The petition, brief, transition plans, and charter are structured to track those requirements point by point, so the plain-language story is backed by maps, financial tables, service plans, and legal arguments behind the scenes.

The process from here is straightforward. The LBC staff first conducts a technical review to ensure the petition is complete and accurate; petitioners can make corrections based on that feedback. Once accepted and with signatures gathered, the LBC issues public notice, takes written comments and holds hearings, then may approve the petition as is, modify it, or deny it.

Only if the LBC approves, does the question go to voters within the proposed Chugach Regional Borough, who then decide whether to detach from Anchorage and form the new borough. Without voter approval, nothing on the map changes.

This overview explains what the petition asks: to change which local government you belong to by creating a new home rule borough for the Chugiak–Eagle River region and reshaping how local services and decisions are made. The technical documents supply the maps, numbers, and legal citations. The core question is simple: should this community take on the responsibility of being its own borough, with its own elected leaders and charter, or remain one district inside a much larger Municipality of Anchorage?

Eaglexit submits formal petition package to state to detach from Anchorage