OPINION: The Anchorage Assembly, zoning and public trust

Anchorage Assembly members are proposing Anchorage Ordinance 2024-45 as a way to weaponize rezoning so they can bulldoze through the Comprehensive Plan and Land Use Plan, ignore existing neighborhood and district plans, ignore Title 21 approval criteria, eliminate direct notification of property owners, eliminate neighborhood safety and design standards, and fast-track the timeline for rezonings — thereby quashing meaningful public participation and input.

AO 45 paves the way for the Assembly to take over land use planning and zoning functions that in the past were the domain of the administration — Planning Department — and property owners, using a transparent process that assured public involvement.

This is the first time any Anchorage Assembly has tried to act as the “sponsor” of a rezoning proposal — with the HOME Initiative, AO 2023-087.

Through AO 45, they can bypass Planning and Zoning Commission involvement, and shorten the current 21-day notice for Title 21 text amendments to only seven days’ notice, which would make informed public input nearly impossible. It also would hamstring community councils’ ability to inform their neighborhoods and to respond. What the Assembly is doing erodes public trust.

My single largest investment is in my home, and the Assembly’s zoning decisions — especially when they minimize public participation and eliminate direct notification — have a large financial and legal effect on my property. I have an obligation to protect my property and my neighborhood, protections that are found in the existing Comprehensive Plan and the 2040 Land Use Plan that Assembly members are trying to shred.

AO 45 avoids use of the word “rezoning,” instead replacing it with “conforming amendments,” which is a sleight-of-hand intended to remove the legal procedures currently in place for areawide rezoning. That further erodes public trust.

In addition to bypassing the Planning and Zoning Commission, AO 45 would reduce review by the city planning staff to nothing, or next to nothing. There is a shared responsibility to develop the Comprehensive Plan through the efforts of the Planning and Zoning Commission and the planning staff with public involvement. While the Assembly has final authority, it does not have “sole authority” as inserted in the first “whereas” of AO 45. In fact, state and municipal laws grant the Assembly final authority in cooperation and collaboration with our professional planners and the public.

There are many destructive forces in AO 45. I have touched on only a few. Assembly members are wielding AO 45 as a sledgehammer to tear apart the Comprehensive Plan and Land Use Plan, and to abandon targeted rezoning and instead implement residential higher-density in a random fashion. Targeted zoning — not areawide zoning — is more effective at achieving efficient use of infrastructure and other goals for efficiency and the public good, according to an analysis by the planning staff.

AO 45 is a power grab that allows the Assembly to make unilateral decisions on a timeline so short that planning staff, Planning and Zoning Commission and the public are practically shut out. This is perhaps the biggest erosion of public trust.

Assembly members promote areawide rezoning as a necessary measure to increase housing without supporting evidence, and without justification for the destruction of Comprehensive Plan goals, including efficient use of infrastructure; reducing dependence on driving; design standards for safety, public health, and aesthetics; neighborhood commercial centers in planned locations, neighborhoods with distinctive character and harmony with the natural setting, among other desirable features.

The Assembly should stop fast-tracking AO 45 as if were an emergency solution to housing affordability. It is not.

We have a new mayor, who will have her work cut out restoring public trust in city government administration, but she cannot fix the loss of public trust in the Assembly. Only they can do that by respecting residents’ voices, respecting the public process, and keeping the rezoning process an inclusive, thoughtful process it had been until this past year.

Sharon Stockard is an Anchorage homeowner who has lived in the municipality for 30 years.

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