This is our moment: Show up to Anchorage Assembly meeting and testify on 3% sales tax

By SUZANNE DOWNING

Anchorage, it’s time to show up.

On Tuesday, Dec. 2, the Anchorage Assembly will hold a public hearing on Ordinance AO 2025-133, a proposal to place a 3% citywide sales tax on the April ballot. If it makes it on the ballot, there will be a massive propaganda campaign to convince the public that such a tax will solve the street people problem.

They scheduled the hearing late in the meeting. It’s Item 14.K, almost guaranteeing it will run into the night. And if they don’t finish, they’ll simply continue it to Dec. 16. This is the tactic used when they hope the public stays home.

Anchorage is within $200,000 of hitting the tax cap.  The Assembly has already built the largest municipal budget Anchorage has ever seen –$657 million.

But when they want more money and can’t raise property taxes further without violating the law, they resort to a familiar trick: Convince voters to tax themselves, and then place the tax outside the tax cap. They’ve already done it with the alcohol tax and the bed tax. Now they want to do it again with a 3% sales tax, and on the same night they will consider an additional 5% short-term rental tax on top of the existing 12% bed tax. The pattern is unmistakable.

The Assembly insists Anchorage needs more revenue, but Anchorage doesn’t have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem. This year, the city will spend between $25 and $27 million on street-people-related programs, scattered across departments so the total is harder for the public to see. The Health Department alone accounts for $10.4 million. Non-congregate sheltering costs another $4.6 million. Police encampment response costs $4 million, fire crisis teams for putting out vagrant wildfires costs $4.4 million, parks cleanup of encampments is set at $800,000, and another $2 million goes toward housing initiatives. Next year’s budget keeps spending at nearly $27 million, with no serious effort at reform or accountability.

Despite this, Mayor Suzanne LaFrance now wants a sales tax 10 times larger, promising that one-third will go to property tax relief and the rest toward solving homelessness and street disorder. Anchorage has heard these promises before. The city’s deterioration continues. And programs like the mayor’s “Beyond the Beige” mural initiative move right along.

Compounding the issue, the Alaska Legislature is likely to consider a statewide sales tax this year. If that happens, Anchorage residents would pay a state sales tax and a city sales tax, on top of all the special carve-out taxes the Assembly has already stacked outside the cap.

This 3% proposal is not just a tax; it is the start of a pile-on that will never stop unless the public stands up.

The meeting will be held Tuesday, Dec. 2, in the Loussac Library Assembly Chambers, 3600 Denali St., Room 108. The business meeting begins at 5 pm, with appearance requests at 5:15 pm, and public testimony beginning whenever the Assembly reaches Item 14.K — likely late in the evening, although they can scramble the agenda whenever they choose.

To testify in person, simply show up. To testify by phone, sign up by 5 pm on Monday, Dec. 1, at www.muni.org/testimony. Written comments can be submitted at the same site. People can watch live on the municipal website or on YouTube at @moameetings.

Some may think the Assembly has already decided to push this tax onto the April ballot. They’re right. The majority of the Assembly are committed Marxists, we know that.

But public participation still matters. When Anchorage residents fill the room, the political calculus changes. When voters speak directly, loudly, and in numbers, elected officials take notice.

The tax cap exists in our charter, which is the closest thing Anchorage has to a constitution, and it’s meant to restrain runaway spending. The Assembly has no actual authority granted by the city’s constitution to sidestep it by creating so-called “special taxes” every time they want more money. Yet they have done exactly that with alcohol, with car rentals, and now potentially with sales taxes and short-term rental taxes. The people have been suckered into it.

If they succeed again, the message will be unmistakable: No tax cap is real.

If you don’t want a 3% sales tax, a 5% short-term rental tax, or a future statewide tax stacked on top of all of it, then you must show up Tuesday night. Anchorage has been asleep before, and pays dearly for it. Not this time.

This is your city. This is your money. This is your moment to stand up and say no.

Anchorage Assembly to vote on 5% short-term rental tax proposal and new rules