This work session focused on reviewing the draft 2026 Anchorage Municipal Legislative Program, presented by Mayor's Office staff. The administration outlined prioritized state funding requests categorized under themes of Port Modernization, Public Safety (Safe), Infrastructure Resilience (Secure), and Affordability. Council members engaged in detailed discussion regarding the inclusion and exclusion of specific items,提出了 concerns about the balance of funding between surveillance and crime prevention, the prioritization of state park studies over wildfire infrastructure, and the omission of long-standing priorities like defined benefit restoration and education funding.
To the folks on the phone, we're just waiting for the administration to attend. So we'll get started when they get here. So we'll go get go ahead and get started. Welcome everybody. Today's Friday, November 14th. This is a work session on the legislative program. Item number for it yet. We will soon. We're on the calendar from ten forty to eleven forty today. It's ten forty six now. We'll start with introductions. Christopher Constant on the phone with Silvers. Silvers? Mr. Martinez. Yes, I'm here. Oh, thank you. Mr. Martinez, are you there? Yes, present. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Martinez. Mr. Johnson. Sure. Thanks. And we're joined by our legislative services staff. Also, Mr. Gates, Mr. Hurt for the legal clerk's office, and Mr. Clouder from the administration. Mr. Cloud, take us away. Thank you, Mr. Chair. For the record, Nolan Clauda with the mayor's office. So what you all have in front of you is the draft 2026 legislative program. This has been gone through with the legislative committee and drafted by folks in the administration, including myself and put out for your consideration as a as a body. If I can, if you'd like, Mr. Chair, I can walk you through the program and what we have in here. But what we have is that it is kept it focused on on items that are of, you know, pri that are that are more that are very direct municipal interests. And starting with the port of Alaska. So our top request is for funding for the port modernization. And this is, you know, this is obviously not this is a perennial topic and something that matters a lot to us by keeping those surcharges from from being too high so that they don't impact consumers in anchor gen around the state as much as we can. So that's the top of it. We know that the context for any asking for funding for the state right now is is going to be very lean. We're hearing very large numbers about what this projected state deficit is going to be, you know, in the 1.4, 1.5 billion range I'm hearing. So capital asks may not be uh may not may not may not be super fruitful, but nonetheless, we do think it's important to try. And also, if there's any possibility of a general obligation bond, we want to be included in that.