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Anchorage and Alaska have continually lost population over the last decade.

As more Alaskans leave and fewer young people move in.

Businesses struggle to recruit employees, and schools lose funding as their attendance numbers shrink.

Advocates say for Anchorage making the heart of the city more appealing could help reverse this trend.

Downtown needs to be the community living room.

You know, it needs to be the place where people that live in the outskirts and they say, what's a wonder what's going on downtown this week?

We'll speak with those working to make Anchorage a more appealing place to live and work.

Tonight, Unalaska Insight.

Good evening.

Tonight, we'll look at recent research that outlines ways for Anchorage to reverse the trend of outmigration and build toward a healthy, thriving future with a robust professional workforce.

There are numerous ideas to explore, and we'll get to that discussion in a few minutes.

But first, we'll start off with some of the top stories of the week from Alaska Public Media's collaborative statewide news network, the second of two snow machine ers who went missing after setting out from Kotzebue to Narvik last week has been found dead.

Alaska state troopers say 18 year old Thomas Brown's body was found about ten miles south of Kotzebue on Wednesday.

Brown and his friend Josiah Ballard, also 18, had messaged friends on January 16th, letting them know about a planned trip to Narvik that was found last Friday, 28 miles south of Kotzebue, alive but suffering from severe frostbite.

The roadless rule has been officially reinstated in the Tongass National Forest by the Biden administration.

The Tongass was previously exempted from the rule, which creates restrictions on road building and logging during the Trump administration.

But in late 2021, the US Department of Agriculture announced plans to eliminate that exemption.

The agency announced Wednesday it had completed that plan.

While conservation groups have praised the decision.

Governor Mike Dunleavy criticized it over social media for the effect he says it will have on jobs and tourism.

Alaska's 2022 principal of the year, Mary Volpe, was taken into custody for a mental health examination last week after a family member presented Alaska state troopers with a document they said was signed by a state judge.

However, the Alaska court system says no such document was issued and now both organizations say the incident was a mistake and that the document was not a valid court order.

A spokesperson for the Department of Public Safety declined to say whether the family member deliberately falsified documents or whether the mistake was an innocent error.

The spokesperson also declined to say whether charges are pending.

You can find the full versions of these stories and many more on our Web site, Alaska Public dot org, or by downloading downloading the Alaska Public Media app on your phone.

Now on to our discussion this evening.

Every year since 2013, with the exception of 2020, Anchorage's population has declined and the same trend can be seen statewide.

Lawmakers, business leaders and other community members are trying to figure out how to reverse this trend.

And tonight, we'll discuss some of the ideas to grow Anchorage and the possible reasons why people are leaving.

Part of the discussion tonight will incorporate ideas from a 2022 destination assessment of Anchorage by consultant Roger Brooks, who looked at ways leaders could transform the city to be more appealing to visitors and residents.

Alaska Public Media's Madeline Rose reports.

Thank you.

Between 2019 and 2022, city development consultant Roger Brooks visited Anchorage multiple times during the summer and winter seasons.

Brooks praised many things about the city, but also criticized how difficult it is to navigate as an outsider.

We spent most of the winter trying to figure out where stuff was so that when we got here in the summer, we'd be able to find it.

How many visitors get that opportunity?

Brooks was also critical of the appearance of downtown Anchorage, noting excessive parking, a lack of decoration and at times hazardous pedestrian areas.

I mean, come on, I'm shocked.

There was no you know, I find other little places where they have the little barricades over and over them don't really.

So Brooks distilled his ideas into eight initiatives he recommends for the city.

Four of the initiatives identifying districts, adding wayfinding signage, making one way streets back into two way, and adding blade signs to businesses.

All focus on making it easier to get around and tell where things are.

He cites Mountain View as a good example for how other areas of the city could look now.

Once we got into Mountain View, it was the best defined neighborhood in all of Anchorage because had the pull, banners were everywhere.

They were consistent.

But we saw lots of new apartment complexes, multifamily homes.

And so we just saw, wow, a lot of effort has come into this.

BROOKS Other four initiatives, beautification, adding more activities, parking lot infill and better event tracking what he called inviting us back all centered around making Anchorage, specifically downtown, more appealing to visitors.

Downtown needs to be the community living room, you know, it needs to be the place where people that live in the outskirts and they say, what's a wonder what's going on downtown this week?

All of Brooks initiatives focus heavily on making the city more appealing to visitors, which he argues is important in convincing people to stay.

But he also notes some larger issues the city faces.

You have a reputation of it's not safe.

You have this.

You have the second highest rate of violent crime of any state in the country.

Addressing issues like housing, crime, homelessness and the quality of education is another important hurdle in bringing more people to Anchorage and convincing them to stay.

For Alaska Insight, I'm Madeline Rhodes.

Joining me to look at some of the causes and solutions for Anchorage's population decline is Assembly Member Daniel Volland.

Dr. Roland represents North Anchorage, including downtown on the Assembly and was a member of the Mayor's Project Anchorage Task Force, which was created to provide recommendations to Mayor Dave Bronson on the issue of outmigration.

We're also joined over Zoom by Jeff Marcel.

Jeff is a senior partner at TIPP Strategies and was part of the team that put together an 11 month analysis looking at anchorage's population issues.

The report was commissioned by the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation, or ADC.

ADC CEO Bill Popp is also the chair of Alaska Public Media's Board of Directors.

The analysis culminated in a proposal identifying several ways the community of Anchorage could work to encourage the city's growth.

Thank you both for being here tonight.

Thank you for having me, Lori.

Thanks, Jeff, for you being on hand as well.

And Dr. Roland, I want to start with you.

Tell us a little bit about your work with the project Anchorage Task Force.

What was your main focus as part of that team?

Absolutely.

Well, I was very honored to be invited by the mayor to join the task force.

I think I had three roles.

Number one, listen to the wonderful ideas that were brought forward by other members of the task force and the priorities that were identified.

Number two, look at maybe code updates that would be needed to implement some of these ideas.

And then number three, if there are projects that were prioritized, how could we get them funded?

Who else is on or was on the task force?

Was it other assembly members, business leaders?

Just absolutely.

Is.

The mayor and his team did a fantastic job, I think, of convening some of the best and brightest leaders in our communities.

So we had Bill Popp as part of the task force from AC DC, Mike Robbins at AC DC, our new executive director of the Anchorage Downtown Partnership, Radical Krishna Beth Nordlund from the Anchorage Parks Foundation.

We had the directors of the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce, Bruce Bustamante, as well as the directors of the Eagle River and Girdwood Chamber of Commerce, Julie Sarpy from from Visit Anchorage.

So just a really good team of people who have been leading the charge and been involved for even much longer than I have.

So I felt I was able to learn a lot.

And the task force was was set to provide recommendations to Mayor Bronson ahead of the 2023 tourism season.

Has that deadline been met?

And if so, what did you recommend?

It has been met.

We have a final report that was submitted.

You know, we really recommended a lot of the the downtown beautification that is needed.

You saw in the clip of of Roger Brooks presentation, we have a long way to go.

And so how can the municipality empower business owners to really step up and be able to beautify the front of their shops and, you know, the sidewalks as well as wayfinding, you know, having signage so that when we have visitors to downtown, they know where the museum is.

Go that way.

Right.

Roger Brooks actually had a really funny story about he put flat top in his his navigator and it led him to flat top pizza instead of flat top, you know, the hiking trail.

And so how can we better market those things that make our city so special?

You know, we are the gateway to the Chugach mountains, our beautiful parks and trails, making sure that we get the word out about those things.

And then also those things would be, well maintained and easy for people to find.

I mean, how cool would it be if we had signage all around the moose loop?

So if people wanted to visit here and bike, you know, rent an e-bike, they knew where they were going.

So there's a lot of opportunity.

And of course, myself representing downtown, I was happy to see some of the focus be on downtown.

One of the big recommendations we put forward was the need to re-imagine and activate a rich park, that sort of one of the the centers there around the historic city hall right in the middle of our downtown that I think has the potential to be a beautiful gathering space and to have a little bit more positive activity happening there.

And so I'm happy to say that that will beyond the the bond package, that will be going before voters soon.

Well, that's all exciting and sounds like there's some great developments on the horizon here.

Jeff, I want to turn to you now.

Thank you for your patience.

Over 11 months.

You interviewed business leaders, hosted roundtables to get feedback and ideas.

What did you hear about the primary structural issues that people have identified?

Sure.

And first, Lori, let me say how much I appreciate the opportunity to spend time with you.

And I'm actually going to encourage your viewers to go to the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation's website, and they can have an opportunity to look at the entire Choose Anchorage plan themselves, including all of the data analysis that was compiled.

As a part of that, I think you'll find it fascinating.

But some of the structural issues that that occurred we identified were things related to housing that was loud and clear.

We certainly heard conversations around downtown redevelopment, those types of things, infrastructure, investments, all of those things were needs.

The plan itself that we worked on over the last 11 months was really a multi-stakeholder, multi organizational effort.

It's kind of an umbrella strategic plan, and it incorporates a lot of the work that was referenced by Roger Brooks and several other efforts that are currently underway here in the Anchorage region.

The consultant that we saw in the video, Roger Brooks, noted that better signage, better walkways for pedestrians is important.

He also referenced concern over violence, the statistics that rank our city near or at the top in these troubling numbers and have for so very long.

Did you have recommendations for addressing this?

Because this has been a chronic problem for Anchorage and Alaska for as long as I've lived here more than 20 years.

It's hard to attract professionals, especially women, when if they think it's unsafe here.

So just what did you recommend?

And then Dr. Vole and get your thoughts as well.

Yeah.

In terms of the recommendations that really were centered under public safety, those types of things, what we did was really leading to the effort in the work that Rodger had conducted on.

Rather than being redundant and have two firms doing the same work.

What we thought we would do is try to incorporate some of the work that Rodger has done, some of the great work that Rodger has done, and use that as a and use this Choose Anchorage vehicle to also push the importance of all of the work and all of the patience that he's made.

All right, Dr. Bell, and your thoughts on this.

This it's a very large problem that Alaska has.

It's both reality and perception, and we've got to change it.

Yeah, I think there are several interrelated issues.

Number one, we just need to get our staffing up in terms of our emergency responders, whether that's APD or fire department.

You know, I know one of the subjects of of Roger Brooks presentation in our conversation today is outmigration.

Well, we are actually seeing quite a bit of outmigration of our emergency responders.

Part of the problem is we don't have a robust retirement package.

And so folks will get trained here and then they'll leave our state.

They'll go to the lower 48 where they have more economic opportunity.

So making sure that Anchorage and Alaska are competitive, that we are able to pay our police officers and our our firefighters.

Well, and then coming up with more integrative approaches around mental health and substance use treatment.

I'm actually the chair of the health Policy Committee, and we've been looking at a lot of that.

We are set to implement both our mobile intervention team and our mobile crisis teams to 24 seven coverage.

So that's something that I'm really excited about when it comes to being able to respond to those mental health issues and get people the care that they need.

All.

Also, I'm excited about a recent alcohol tax appropriation that we made to recover Alaska, which is a group that does a lot of work in substance treatment.

And they are partnering with a to train upwards of 30 social workers and that's going to be a great workforce development and also a gain when it comes to having a trained workforce that are able to deal with some of those issues.

They had had already raised a lot of funds, about $900,000.

And then through our alcohol tax program, the assembly was able to just layer $100,000 on top of that and get them where they needed to do to train those social workers going forward.

So there's continued work that needs to be done, both in public safety and making sure that we we keep the good people that we have here in Anchorage.

Well, you mentioned Texas and one of the models that was discussed was Oklahoma City.

Sure.

And Jeff, maybe you could pick it up there.

They instituted a tax message that to the public as this is how we're going to help our selves in the future economically.

And it sounds like it's been quite successful.

Tell us about that.

Sure.

The program you're referencing is called the Oklahoma City Match Program.

And actually, the program itself has been in existence for several decades.

And it first started out because there were some there were some real needs that existed in the Oklahoma City area.

In fact, they were in the midst of trying to recruit a large scale company.

The company decided not to go to Oklahoma City, and the comments following was that there were some real needs that were existed in the Oklahoma City area.

And so that community came together and and to fund some of their infrastructure programs and some of the programs that they knew they had to put in place, they went to their voters and asked for a very defined amount of money for a very defined project and tried to be as clear as possible about how that would take place on and that those revenues, the tax revenues that were generated towards that and this was put on sales tax, it would sunset and it would end with the project and lo and behold, they carried out their body of this body work.

They they completed the project.

And it was very successful and it was clear on everyone's minds where their tax revenue was going to.

So that's how it started.

There have been successive efforts and following that where the over and over again have gone out to the voters with a very defined set of actions or infrastructure investments to be made.

And they followed through and were very clear and transparent about where the dollars were going.

And when it would end.

And then I feel like the community in Oklahoma City, the voters, the taxpayers, understood what they were getting for their tax revenues.

It was a fantastic way to generate trust and build trust in the community.

And now they are continuing to do that.

And they've used funding for a whole host of areas beyond just hard infrastructure assets.

Now they're doing things related to community development issues and workforce issues that a host of other areas.

It's it's a great success story.

In fact, there were almost 20 leaders in the Anchorage area that traveled to Oklahoma City just a few months ago to learn more about that project.

In that program, we think it's a fantastic inspiration for what you might want to consider doing here in the Anchorage.

And we have an assembly member with us, Tucker Boland.

What can I.

On top of that, I think it's a fantastic model.

And I think if you can get neighbors, you know, our Anchorage residents to really have a vision and and create that buy in for a project that they want to see move forward.

And we can kind of, you know, join forces and raise money for something that a lot of people think is a great idea.

Absolutely.

I think that that is a model that could be explored here in Anchorage while we're still on the subject of of taxes.

You know, one issue that we have here when it comes to working families and workforce development is the lack of quality and affordable child care.

Yes, that was actually something before I was on the assembly, I was part of the the legislative committee of the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce.

And every year they send out a huge survey to all of the the chamber members.

And they ask the question, you know, what are the barriers to workforce development?

And that was something that was identified by the business community as a major hindrance to growing the workforce.

So something that I'm pretty excited about just last night, the Anchorage assembly passed a, you know, to put on the ballot before voters in April the idea to use marijuana taxes to fund early child care and education.

You know, you mentioned women being part of our workforce.

I think that is so important that families who want to work and be, you know, have professional careers as well as parents, that they have the opportunity to do that in making sure that that parents have safe options for their kids during the day.

Absolutely.

We know that that's a big issue, not just here, but in so many places.

Yes, Jeff, did you.

Yeah, I looked at it to add on to the assemblyman comments related to workforce development.

Um, underage use Anchorage.

We have a one of the four goal zones centered around strategies dedicated to talent.

It's about recruiting talent and keeping talent in the community, but it's also about developing talent.

And so we have one of the strategic recommendations is to actually establish a dedicated Anchorage Regional Workforce Board.

Right now there is a statewide workforce board that's dedicated to serving the entire state, but typically workforce boards and there are literally hundreds of these organizations around the state.

They're dedicated to identifying the local and the local needs on the jobs market.

They also run job centers.

They coordinate workforce development initiatives in the community.

That's being done at a statewide level.

And I don't have to tell all of you that the needs of the workforce in in Anchorage, the industries that are in Anchorage are very different than the needs that exist in other parts of the state.

So we felt having an identified, a dedicated workforce board made absolute sense.

And I will tell you, we had a roundtable with workforce development professionals, training organizations, those types of groups, and we asked them, what does the what is the organized network of workforce training providers look like?

What's the network look like here in the Anchorage area?

And they said, Well, it's a short conversation.

We don't have a network.

We're not networked together.

We have we have individual relationships.

But it's not a coordinated effort where everyone understands what's going on and there's a dedicated effort.

So that's one of the things that we're recommending.

And we talked a bit about housing, but certainly we know that we have some major issues for people trying to live in Anchorage, a lack of affordable housing.

It's been a chronic problem for years.

Buildable space is one large problem and the expense of shipping building materials, that's not going to change labor shortages given these somewhat intractable problems.

What can the city really do to to address this?

Well, we are working on it.

Know, just today I had a patient, I'm an eye doctor.

And so I was doing exams this morning.

And one of my patients, who is also a friend, her and her husband, are considering, she told me, moving out of Anchorage.

Exactly.

For this reason, because they can't find a quality housing that is affordable.

We have a housing shortage here in Anchorage, and it's a shortage of both, both quantity and quality.

Yes.

And that is something where I think that the assembly and the administration are actually very aligned.

You know, recently we passed the ADA new ordinance making it easier to build accessory dwelling units or what some folks might refer to as mother in law apartments or granny pads so that, you know, folks can build an accessory dwelling and that will help hopefully with, you know, not only housing for for working age families or individuals, but also for retirees, folks who want to age in place.

When you have that, multi-generational housing.

Can help each other out.

Absolutely.

I also recently led the charge, along with my co-sponsors, former assembly member Dunbar and my current colleague Kevyn Cross, to eliminate parking mandates in Anchorage to give developers a little bit more flexibility with their projects where they don't necessarily have to put in as much parking in an effort to make it more affordable, to build housing, and then also to be able to have more adaptive reuse.

You know, these vacant buildings that are just sitting empty, sometimes businesses can't move into them because there's not enough specified parking and a municipal code for that use.

And so removing that, I think, is really going to unlock some of these empty buildings.

And while we will hopefully see a lot of revitalization.

In the in our final minute here, the time goes by so fast.

You engaged with minority women, owned small business owners.

Talk about the importance of these employers and how much do they add to the mix of local employment, these these smaller micro-businesses.

Well, I think it's huge and I think it's very important.

And that was something that the assembly we really targeted with our some of our ARPA appropriations.

And, you know, we had a lot of members of the community come forward with grant proposals and we looked at, okay, how can we support co-working spaces or community kitchens, opportunities for for entrepreneurs and different diverse parts of our community to create their businesses to have a place to work?

Yeah, end of our time is up.

Thank you so much to both of you for being here.

We'll have to revisit this discussion as things start to come into reality and move forward.

So thank you so much.

Affordable housing, child care, education, safety and helping residents who experience homelessness are clearly big, ongoing challenges for Anchorage and Alaska as a whole.

Clarifying a plan forward that Alaskans can support will be key to the future growth and success of our state.

That's it for this edition of Alaska INSIGHT.

Visit our website, Alaska Public dot org for breaking news and reports from our partner stations across the state.

While you're there, sign up for our Free Daily Digest so you won't miss any of Alaska's top stories of the day.

Thanks for joining us this evening.

I'm Lori Townsend.

Good night.