Yesterday afternoon, Mayor Bronson issued vetoes to the 2024 municipal budget passed at the November 21 Regular Assembly meeting. The vetoes include $4 million in cuts to public safety and housing affordability initiatives, as well as the elimination of $2.79M to strengthen the municipal workforce.
“If Mayor Bronson's cuts to public safety go through, the Mobile Intervention Team at the Police Department will be defunded and will go away," said Assembly Vice Chair and Budget and Finance Committee Co-Chair Meg Zaletel. “This well-loved program saves money over time by diverting police resources and is one of the Municipality's best tools for reducing mental and behavioral health crises."
In response to the cuts to the Housing Affordability initiative, Budget and Finance Committee Co-Chair Anna Brawley added, “the Municipality has set housing affordability as one of its top priorities and the Assembly has committed to put more resources toward cutting red tape and incentivizing new housing development so that everyone who wants to live in Anchorage can afford to do so. It's disappointing to see Mayor Bronson try to derail this effort and hamstring the city's work to solve the housing shortage crisis."
Assembly Chair Christopher Constant added, “the recent debacles with snow removal and emergency shelter have proven that the Municipality is starved of resources. The people of Anchorage demand better and we owe it to them to ensure delivery of vital services. Mayor Bronson's vetoes cut positions across ten departments and we cannot afford to continue to underfund the basics if we want to see our roads plowed and our citizens kept safe. This is a classic case of a penny wise, pound foolish because as we've seen over the past two years, expensive emergency contracts can cost three times as much as the municipal workforce."
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Contact:
Christopher Constant, Assembly Chair, christopher.constant@anchorageak.gov
Meg Zaletel, Assembly Vice Chair and Budget and Finance Committee Co-Chair, meg.zaletel@anchorageak.gov
Anna Brawley, Budget and Finance Committee Co-Chair, anna.brawley@anchorageak.gov