Keith McCormick is one of two candidates running for Anchorage Assembly District 6, representing South Anchorage. We asked each candidate the same five questions and gave them 90 seconds to answer each one. Read the transcript of McCormick’s answers below and click the play button above to listen to where he stands. Find the rest of the Anchorage municipal election candidates’ Q&As here.
1. Why should people vote for you for Anchorage Assembly?
Yeah, I'm a local Anchorage kid. I grew up in South Anchorage, graduated from South High School. I served five years in the Marine Corps infantry, and immediately moved back home to South Anchorage with my wife because we knew that this was the community that we wanted to raise our kids in. I'm passionate about this community. I've seen it through so many different phases, and right now, I think there's great room for some change and some improvement to happen and making this a place where our kids want to come back to after they go to trade school or college, and make it that they can come back to a place that they find vibrant and beautiful and a place that they can call home.
2. What is the single biggest issue facing the city and how would you address it?
The single biggest issue facing our city is public safety, and when it comes down to a lot of it, it's the homelessness issue. We have a rampant homelessness problem that has rapidly developed. I've been volunteering at the downtown soup kitchen since I was eight or nine years old. Now, as my career is budding, my children go and volunteer more than I do, but I'm passionate about this community. I want to help this community, and a little-known fact is that before COVID, the city put no money toward solving homelessness. The burden on our community was entirely borne by nonprofits, and they were doing a very good job. And of course, COVID exacerbated that problem. But now, as the city puts tens of millions of dollars every winter into short-term, immediate relief efforts, everyone around Anchorage can see that the problem continues to worsen. To fix this, we need to bring in more mental health services and case managers that can bring wrap-around support to these people and our neighbors who need it.
3. What do you see as the best way to reverse Anchorage's trend of outmigration in recent years?
We've seen great outmigration, especially from my generation, and it's, I would base it around our public safety and homelessness issues. We used to have the most vibrant parks. The Rabbit Creek, Chester Creek, Coastal Trail parks that made this city so much fun to live in have been overwhelmed with a homelessness and public safety crisis that then when our children leave the state, they go places that, frankly, are probably warmer, less snow and have less of a public safety issue where they feel safe. And I can't blame people for wanting to stay there, but I think that Anchorage has a great opportunity to return to the vibrant, economically-spurred town that it was not too long ago.
4. How would you reduce homelessness in Anchorage?
As I talked to earlier, reducing homelessness, everyone around Anchorage can see what we've done over the last five years has made the problem worse. We've not seen a reduction in homelessness. We've seen a growth. The nonprofits that bore the burden of this crisis for the last decades have been stifled with zoning and permitting issues that have inhibited their abilities to do this. We don't have the infrastructure to maintain scatter shelters. We need, we don't have the case management social work required to staff one or two shelters, let alone dozens spread across our communities. We need to bring these services to centralized locations. Of course, we need immediate housing, but then we also need to help these people get identification so they can get into treatment centers. And all of this requires accountability and action from the neighbors that we’re trying to get a hand up to.
5. How would you improve public safety in Anchorage?
I know in my district, in South Anchorage, a key part of public safety is wildlife dangers. The Hillside has spruce bark beetle kill all over it. We are in a position of not when the Hillside will experience, or not if the Hillside will experience a wildfire, but when. And we need to prepare for that. We need to push more resources to fire mitigation in our areas, along with public safety of increasing police officers. We need higher-paid, better-trained police officers across our community so that people feel safe parking alongside the street, let alone trying to walk down it.
Read the candidate Q&As with McCormick’s competitor: Darin Colbry