Q. You've addressed the issue of a possible sales tax in the past, and it became a big issue during the last weeks of the campaign. What are your plans now, if any?
A. We are going to look at it. It would be one of those things that would be a very slow, very cautious rollout. You have to engage the community. You'll never get a 60 percent vote supporting a sales tax if you have not really done your homework with the chambers and with the retailers that have to collect it, and landlords and renters and community councils. If you don't go out there and really work it, why bother? It'll just fail again.
I'm thinking it's going to be at least a year or two before we're even ready to maybe talk about a specific proposal and how it would work, but it's going to be something we're working on from Day 1 in terms of doing that groundwork. What does the community want? What have other cities done?
Consumption taxes are more fair, to begin with. You can control your consumption. You can't control the appreciation of your home. It's certainly more broad-based in that everybody who purchases in Anchorage participates, rather than just the folks who own property.
We talked a little bit during the campaign, (that) if you could balance off property tax, have that diversified portfolio (of property taxes and a sales tax), that's probably a good thing. But if it came to the point where the only way you thought you could sell it (was) by replacing property tax, at least residential property tax, I'd look at that option too.
One of the suggestions that came out was, well, how about if you just leave the property tax on the business community (and remove it from residential property). Nothing changes for (businesses) then. They still have the same contribution to government they do now. They buy wholesale, so they wouldn't be paying a sales tax. Really, it would be just neutral for them. That way you get away from the argument that, "Gosh, if you replace property tax, the Conoco Phillips and the Wal-Marts of the world are the ones getting this huge break," which is a legitimate point, I suppose. Then both sectors are paying.
Q. The budget obviously is the gorilla waiting outside your door when you take office. You've also talked about several other things: manpower, contracts, and so on. Do you have a timeline in mind for this internal review you're going to be doing on all of those things?
A. (The budget) drives everything. ... It's probably going to be about a 90-day process. The transition officially, I guess in some people's minds, ends July 1, but we're anticipating the true transition is going to go at least 60 to 90 days afterward, and that will coincide with how we're developing our budget. ... The goal is going to be, can we do things, provide at least the same level of service at a better cost.
And we are going to look at -- it might take a year or two to develop -- but if there are areas where putting things out to competitive bid makes sense, we're going to try and develop that. That's something you do very cautiously, though. You want to make sure you don't make the mistake like the state did with the road sweeping this year. You want to make sure you've got good, qualified people with the right equipment, and that you have benchmarks for performance, and if those benchmarks aren't met, then you have alternatives ready to go.
Q. The Port of Anchorage is in the middle of a huge expansion process. What do you think about that?
A. We've got Bill Noll, the former mayor of Seward, as the transition director for the port. We've asked him to augment his initial report by interviewing the users -- TOTE and Horizon, some of the barge companies. Their tariffs essentially help pay for maintenance and operations down there. So we'll take a look at it. It's a phased project. It may well be that some of the phases get pushed back on the timeline, or re-evaluated altogether.
I've actually had some correspondence from some folks who think the port project is much too ambitious and much too expensive. And that's going to be part of our analysis. Is that true? How do you determine it? Obviously, it's a strategic military port now as well as a cargo port, so there's certain factors that drive that expansion.
But I've got a feeling you might see, as with everything else, a little bit of a slowdown in some of that development. It also depends, too, (because) most of the money for that expansion has come from the federal government. (Port director and former governor Bill Sheffield) has been very successful in working the different departments to get funding, and whether or not Sen. Stevens being gone will somehow impact, that remains to be seen. I don't think there's going to be much support for any local bonds, or any local money for it.
Q. What do you think about downtown Anchorage right now? Do you think it works?
A. It does, but for the second year in a row, E Street is completely closed off. I don't know what they're doing there, to tell you the truth. Are they fixing stuff they did last year that didn't work? It's the exact same closure: I don't get it. ... Downtown improvements are essential. ... The only thing is that heated sidewalks are hugely expensive. You may see a slowdown in the progress of those projects. Just because of the cost, and money's tight.
That's also a several-phased project. Phase 1 is that E Street portion, then I think two phases after that include coming up G Street. It's a question of, can we afford it? We've got pretty good road needs out there. It might be a tough sell to some of those communities -- that, "By the way, we can't do your road this year because we're putting in heated sidewalks." And then I see they're putting canopies up over here on F Street. The goal was to be able to walk from the (new) convention center to the PAC or to the Egan Center, and not have to be in the elements. And that's all good. But again, the city is going to prioritize, and if you've got roads falling apart they're going to be fixed before amenities are put in.
Q. What do you think of Mayor Claman's proposal to put the sexual orientation anti-discrimination proposal on the ballot as a charter amendment next spring?
A. It's clearly become a community-wide debate. It might not be a bad idea to let that community debate be settled at the ballot box.
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