Next month marks the 50th anniversary of the unification of the city of Anchorage and smaller surrounding communities that made up the former Greater Anchorage Area Borough.
Jane Angvik was one of 11 members of the Anchorage Charter Commission who worked to write the Municipality of Anchorage’s founding document. It was approved by voters, leading to the formation of the municipality on September 15th, 1975.
It sounds technical, but Angvik said unification was about more than things like land-use boundaries and taxes. It also helped the community respond to disasters.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Jane Angvik: Once upon a time, there was a fire that was located at Northern Lights on the south side of the street, and it was a hotel that was on fire. And the borough fire department didn't have the capacity to do all of it by themselves, and the city fire department showed up and did not help, because it was a borough fire. And what happened is that five people died in that fire. That was one of the biggest impetuses for people to say, “Whatever this is, it's got to stop.” And what used to happen is that the city council met on Monday night, and then four people from the city council would go and serve in the Anchorage Assembly on Tuesday night, and on Monday night the city would sue the borough, and on Tuesday night the borough would sue the city. That's how it was working out between those two organizations, and it was not functional at the time. So it was not just, “Is this a good idea or a bad idea?” This was a tragic idea for the community, and we needed to create some way for people to be able to figure out how they could work it out.
Wesley Early: Describe how the various Anchorage communities before unification operated.
JA: There was a city of Spenard, there was a city of Anchorage, there was a city of Baxter, which was up on top of the mountain. There were all of 22 people who lived up there, who had a city government. But basically, the city had been established in 1920 and the borough was established when the state of Alaska passed what's called the Mandatory Borough Act in 1964. So the borough was the Johnny-come-lately to the community, and the conflict between those two entities were, “I've been living in the city and I've been paying taxes for the last 30 years, and you guys, whoever you are, are going to be coming in and I'm not paying taxes for your stuff. You're going to have to start paying for your stuff.” So who's going to pay for what was one of the critical issues.
WE: And so how did the Charter Commission come about and how did you get involved?
JA: There had been two efforts to unify the city and the borough previously, both of them failed. The voters said no, they didn't want to do it. And in order for it to pass, it has to pass inside the city and inside the borough. So the first time it passed inside the city and not in the borough, the second time it failed in the city and passed on the outside. So what we had to do is figure out, what are the variables that are going to influence whether or not people want to do this. I was very young. I was 27 years old. I was a city planner working for Anchorage, for the Anchorage Borough, and then had gone to work for the Alaska Federation of Natives, and was doing community development in rural Alaska. But I was very interested in what was happening with Anchorage, so I went ahead and ran for the charter commission. There were 11 people who were elected, five were women and six were men in 1973, and that was kind of surprising to all involved. There were three people who ran at-large, which is the whole community got to vote for them. And then there were four people who ran from inside the city, and four people who ran from the borough area.
WE: What would you say were the big sticking points in debates over the Anchorage charter? I imagine not all 11 people were all on the same page about how the city should operate.
JA: There were several issues of concern. Everyone was concerned about who's going to pay for what and and what was happening is that the population started to explode as we were getting ready for the trans-Alaska pipeline. The demand for gravel roads turned into paved roads, little tiny water systems turned into big water systems for all of Spenard, with hoses. So the demand… we had schools, but the schools were spread out, very inadequate for a growing population, because we were getting ready to build the pipeline and people were coming in large numbers. So in 1975, the population was 165,000 people. And today we're more like 250,000 people in this town. And so it grew, and the demand for services grew. And the order of events was really important, because once you take care of who's going to pay for what, and once you've taken care of what's the method of people being able to elect their representatives, then you've got something to talk about. And you can say, how do we pay for education for a far-flung community that's all the way down to Girdwood and all the way up to the Port of Anchorage?
WE: So at this time, Eagle River and Chugiak weren't even part of that borough?
JA: Eagle River was part of the borough and Chugiak was part of the borough, and Eagle River and Chugiak had seceded from Anchorage in 1973 and had left the Municipality of Anchorage. And in the middle of our year-long process, the (Supreme) Court of Alaska concluded that they were so much like Anchorage that they didn't have the legal authority to create their own borough government. So they had to come back and be part of Anchorage, and they were furious. So we went and held a public meeting in Eagle River to say, “Hi you guys. This is what we're talking about, and we've got a community council for Eagle River, and we've got a community council for ways of people being able to work with us. And we look forward to making sure that you're included and we will.” And they gave each one of us a lawsuit. They handed us lawsuits as we were sitting there, so suing us, group-wise and personally, for the inappropriateness of dragging them back into the Anchorage Borough.
WE: And so once unification is approved by the Charter Commission, did it go to the voters?
JA: Oh, absolutely. And the voters had to vote for it, and they had to pass inside the city and inside the borough. There had to be a majority of people in both places. And one of the things that we did that influenced the vote was we not only said, “Do you want this charter, this piece of paper that describes this government in this way, with a bill of rights, with community councils, with the ability to have both a strong mayor form of government, but he has to have a professional person who is managing the business?” So the question was, do you want to have this government, and then on the same ballot, the people who wanted to serve in those jobs were running for your vote. So Jack Roderick was running for the borough mayor, and George Sullivan was running from the city. So they'd say, “I'm George Sullivan. I want to encourage you to vote for the charter and vote for me. I'm Jack Roderick, I want you to vote for the charter. I want you to vote for me.” Plus 11 people on the Assembly and seven people on the school board. There were many people saying, “Vote for the charter and vote for me.” And we think that that was probably the most significant variable that pushed it over the top, so that people from both inside the former city and inside the former borough were willing to trust that they were going to have an opportunity to have a new government.
WE: Those first couple years of unification, did everything work smoothly? How were those first couple years?
JA: I think it was miraculous. George Sullivan won and was the chief administrative officer of the brand new thing. On the day after the election, he showed up for office at 6:00 in the morning, and said, “Okay, what do we do now?” And what that meant is taking all the laws from the city, all the laws from the borough, evaluating them, making sure that they could merge and that nothing was left on the table. They had to look at, I believe it was, nine bargaining units that were all different pay scales, all different job descriptions for the same kinds of opportunities. One of the things that George did was he made all the public works guys, and there were city public works guys, and there were borough public works guys, he made them all share offices. They were sitting next to each other. They had to go get coffee together, and they didn't like each other. But he made people work together in an effort to create some pathway for the government to be able to work on behalf of all the people.
WE: How do you think that unification, knowing 50 years from then to now, you know, knowing everything that's happened since then, why do you think unification was ultimately the right decision?
JA: I think we have changed in that we grew in population and we grew in complexity, and that we had the capacity to expand the port, we had the expanse capacity to expand the airport. We had the capacity to be able to be an information center for the whole state, and to grow and expand our capacities from who we were 50 years ago. And I suspect we will have similar capacities to be what are the kinds of businesses and opportunities in the next 50 years.
WE: You know, one thing that I'm struck by is when the charter was created, and similarly, when the Alaska Constitution was created, you had these people who represented these political differences, these sometimes stark political differences, all coming together and eventually creating this document that has lasted for 50 years. I think we hear a lot in the news about people being divided more so now than maybe ever. I'm curious if you think that something like this, like an Anchorage charter, could even be written today, considering how divided everybody is?
JA: Well, first of all, it is changeable, and we have amended it 48 times in that 50 years. And we've changed how much people pay for stuff. We've changed what the boundaries of districts are. We have changed the methodology. We've changed the number of people who serve on the assembly. We have changed many functions, but the Bill of Rights stands strong, and community councils stand strong, and the capacity of the community to be able to talk to their elected officials stands strong, and the capacity to be able to throw them out if you don't like them is still part of the deal. When we did this 50 years ago, the people who lived on the Hillside on 80 acres wanted nothing to do with the people who lived down the river, and the people who lived in Muldoon wanted nothing to do with those hippies who lived in Spenard. So I'm here to say that we figured out changes, even though they might have had different values about my life versus your life, but they had common ideas about having schools that work, having roads that are paved and having an ability to be able to trust that the water you're drinking is not going to poison you.
