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You are here :  Home > Mayor's Office > 2003October6Speech

Mayor Mark Begich Remarks
AnchorageChamber of Commerce
Noon; Oct. 6, 2003; 4^th AvenueTheater

Thanks, George Vakalis, for that introduction, and for your service to this organization and our community. Congratulations also on your new job – I hear you’re moonlighting down at the Arthur Murray dance studio.

After George’s performance at the Gold Pan Awards the other night, I understand he’s in hot demand. I haven’t seen that much shakin’ since Jay-Lo’s latest video.

Thanks to the Chamber for honoring the importance of public service with your Gold Pan awards. Your recognition is certainly well deserved and encourages even more good work across our community. That’s something we can use more of in this era of tight budgets.

Let me also join the Chamber in offering God’s speed to our troops being deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Thank you for your service to our state and nation.

I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you today. This presentation was envisioned as a 100-day report and it’s pretty close. Today marks my 98^th day as mayor.

So far, it’s been a fantastic experience and I love every minute of it – well, almost. Some of the news we had to deliver last week was not pleasant, but I’ll get into that in a minute.

Today, I want to report on the direction my administration is trying to lead our city. I’ll outline our approach in city hall, what we’ve been up to for the past 100 days, and discuss some incredibly promising opportunities on the horizon.

I came into the mayor’s office with a little different approach. It can probably be described by a few simple phrases: Involve the public. Lay it on the line. And the glass is always half full – not half empty. I am truly an optimist.

Starting even before we moved into City Hall, we’ve tried to reach out broadly across our community to involve the public. We asked more than 100 Anchorage citizens to join our transition effort to dig through every city department.

I know some Chamber members who participated might like to forget those seemingly endless meetings in the middle of a sunny June. But I do appreciate the service of your members like Eric Britten, who co-chaired the effort. And many others – Tom Williams, Eleanor Andrews, Joe Griffith, Janie Leask, Ernie Hall. The list goes on.

Our goal was two-fold: provide me a report card on the pressing issues we need to tackle. And fully involve the public in the process.

The transition helped us set a new direction based on a simple vision: community, security, and prosperity.

Community is families and individual Alaskans taking pride in their neighborhoods to help build this great city.

Security is our most basic need, a foundation that must be strong before we can build. Thanks to the efforts of my predecessor and police, fire fighters, emergency responders, and our active military personnel and reservists, Anchorage is a safer, more secure community.

Prosperity is the dream of the future, the wealth of Alaska that each of us hopes to pass on to the next generation. When it comes to Anchorage’s prosperity, I believe we stand on the edge of greatness.

To achieve this three-part vision, one of the first steps we took was to reorganize city government. Instead of the five groups of departments we inherited, we shrunk them down to three. An Assembly review of our reorganization reported a savings of near half a million dollars annually from the elimination of several layers of bureaucracy.

Surprisingly to us, the words “economic development” did not appear in the org-chart of city departments we inherited. We’ve changed that.

What I call our toolbox of city government – departments that assist developers and help create a business-friendly environment – are now reorganized into a new agency of Economic and Community Development. It’s headed by a very energetic Mary Jane Michael.

One of Mary Jane’s first actions after I hired her was finding a small stash of federal money to demolish a dilapidated building in Spenard. It had been a public safety hazard and blight on the neighborhood for 40 years.

Bringing down that building was my first experience in the driver’s seat of a backhoe – and probably my last.

The publicity around that single act has motivated many private landowners to step forward and clean up other eyesores around town. We have a long list of other properties ready for similar treatment, with the next scheduled for demolition on October 22^nd.

We’ve worked to break the gridlock on many other issues over the past 100 days.

• A new sign ordinance after more than a year of debate.
• A comprehensive site condo ordinance after more than two years of discussion.
• Responded to safety concerns on Anchorage’s trails with the volunteer Trail Watch program which we put together in less than 30 days.
• After four years of controversy, we’ve got the Simonian Little League fields under construction and involved affected neighbors in the development.
• We opened five new dog parks.
• Closed nearly 700 delinquent accounts after posting the names of 21,000 people who owe the city money on the Internet.
• Re-energized the city Veterans Commission and advanced the possibility of an Alaska Veterans’ Home.
• Restructured the library to clear the way for future expansion.

     Just to name a few...

Of course, the single issue I have devoted most attention to is the city budget. A few days after settling in, our mild-mannered OMB director, Paul Wiltse, came with some news. It seems there’s a budget shortfall of a little over 5 million dollars for the current budget year, and less than six months to make it up, he reported. And that was the good news.

The bad news was a 33-million dollar budget gap for Fiscal ’04 - about 10 percent of the entire municipal budget. It is the worse budget challenge the city has faced since the oil price crash of the late 1980s.

My reaction was simple: lay it on the line with the public. Tell Anchorage residents the details regardless of how painful they may be and ask them to help us come up with the solution. And recognize that in every dark cloud, there is a silver lining of opportunity.

We enlisted the help of the Municipal Budget Advisory Commission, chaired by Eric Britten. In three unprecedented meetings across our community, they solicited a number of great ideas from the public which we incorporated in our budget.

As you may have read in the weekend papers, the way I decided to tackle this huge budget problem was what I called the duct-tape approach.

Think of applying a long strip of duct-tape to your arm, rubbing it down well and then jerking it off as fast as you can. The pain is sharp and immediate. But there is time to heal in the future.

This duct-tape way we’re dealing with next year’s budget requires a three-prong approach.

            First, we’re providing efficient core services while reducing costs. Of the 33 million-dollar overall budget gap, about 46 percent 
            or $15 million is achieved by improved efficiencies.

            Second, we’re asking those who benefit from services to more equitably cover their costs. This raises about $9 million.

            Third, we’re reducing non-core services or eliminating those we can no longer afford. This saves another nearly $9 million.

These actions provide us a stable budget, a sustainable budget – a strong foundation for the future.

Any budget is about people and unfortunately, this one eliminates 149 funded positions, about half of which are currently occupied. That means that about 75 workers will likely lose their jobs. Had we not been scrutinizing new hires so closely over the past three months, the number of layoffs would have been much higher.

We are working with the State and Small Business Development Center to lessen the impacts as much as possible and help these employees find new opportunities.

Even though we must contend with this huge budget gap today, the challenge tomorrow is continuing to grow our economy. A key way is continued investment in our infrastructure to encourage development and deliver core services - transportation, public safety, and cultural and recreational improvements.

Our budget provides the means to expand our economy with targeted investments in new economic diversification projects, from expansion of the port to improved recreation facilities.

Of course, the best way to balance our budget is to create new economic opportunities that contribute to our tax rolls. Members of the Chamber know that economic growth for Anchorage is not only good for our city, but for our state as a whole.

That’s why we have an ambitious agenda for Anchorage’s economic development. Let me name a few of the assets where we are building partnerships to get these projects moving.

First, Mountain View. We are aggressively redeveloping one of our city’s hidden neighborhoods of enormous potential by converting Mountain View into Anchorage’s arts and cultural district.

A few days after we got into office, George Cannelos, head of the Heritage Land Bank, came down to my office. He said there’s a couple of million dollars in federal money that could be available for Mountain View. And the city had never applied for it.

The only problem is the application is due in two days. So we scrambled to submit the mounds of paperwork for what’s known as a “Brownfields Economic Development Initiative” grant.

Last Friday, I’m pleased to say HUD called to say we got the grant. And not only that, but it now makes us eligible for up to 5 million in additional federal dollars to convert Mountain View into a mixed-use area for the arts, office, retail and affordable housing. My hat is off to those city employees who worked so hard to make this grant happen.

The private sector is a key partner in this development. The Rasmuson Foundation has already committed $5 million. Redeveloping Mountain View could eventually represent a $52 million public-private partnership.

Another fabulous economic development opportunity is right here in downtown. Our vision is a flourishing shopping and entertainment district that attracts not only locals but many more visitors, domestic and world-wide. This means a world-class museum double the current size. It means a fully utilized Town Square.

And despite Mike Doogan, it means a new convention center capable of attracting scores of big money-making conventions we are missing out on every day.

According to the International Convention and Visitors Bureau, there are more than 450 organizations with delegates of up to 5,000 people who are hot prospects for conventions in Anchorage – if only we had the space. Last year, conventions at the Egan Center produced $77 million in economic impact across our city and state. That’s from conventions of 1,500 or less. Just think of the impact from those larger conventions, or it we had the ability to book two or more at the same time.

We’re working with ACVB to put a new convention center back on Anchorage’s agenda. Within the next 60 days or so, we hope to put out a request for proposals from the private sector for a new center.

Our bottom line is this: a new facility must be private sector-built and financed, with backing from an increase in Anchorage’s hotel/motel bed tax. It must make good use of the Egan Center. And it must bring with it co-development and linkage to other downtown development – not just a stand-alone convention center to sink or swim on is own.

A new convention center, coupled with the other downtown development we envision, would help revitalize our city’s business core.

At our community’s southern border is another opportunity of unprecedented potential. That’s taking advantage of Girdwood’s natural assets to make it truly a year-round resort of world-class status.

Just north of the current ski and hotel development is an area known as Winner Creek-Glacier Valley. This area, five times the size of the existing Alyeska resort, is considered the best undeveloped ski terrain in North America.

Much of it is beginner and intermediate scale, which is attractive to marginal skiing families like mine. Some of it is on a glacier, so there’s potential for year-round skiing.

Preliminary estimates show the area could attract thousands more skiers per winter, with another 320,000 visitors in the summer. This would generate $74 million a year in gross revenues and create up to new 900 jobs.

Fortunately, most of the land is either in municipal or state hands, ready for development. This week, a couple of the nation’s top ski resort experts are here to explore ways to advance the project.

We are working closely with project sponsors and Senator Stevens – who has a warm spot in his heart for Girdwood. We will resolve Girdwood’s land use conflicts to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that represents a $400 million public-private investment.

Let me mention one more economic opportunity on our lengthy list. That’s capitalizing on Anchorage’s international time zone          advantage to make our city an International Financial Center.

Just as we’re making our mark as a global logistics center, I believe we can muster the financial resources of Alaska’s banks, investment firms and real estate companies to attract a greater share of this high-pay, low impact industry.

Today, three Anchorage-based firms manage well over $10 billion in assets for companies and individuals across the world. They do it right here in Anchorage, using a lot of home-grown expertise trained at our University.

Alaska’s advantage is that you can conduct business during regular hours here and touch most of the world’s finance markets during much of their business day. And instead of fighting congestion and crime like in so many other financial capitals, you can be home at a reasonable hour to enjoy dinner with your family, a cross-country ski, or whatever your pleasure. You have to think big in order to achieve our goal.

I’ve already started talks with some of Alaska’s leading bankers and money managers to flush out this opportunity for Anchorage.

Together, the ambitious projects I’ve touched on today and a few others represent a 1 billion-dollar investment that will create hundreds of jobs in the next 5-10 years.

As you can tell, I’m bullish on Anchorage’s future. After less than 100 days in office, I’ve learned that if you tell people the truth, ask them to get involved and stay optimistic, anything is possible.

Sure, we’ll have some bumps in the road. But if we keep our eye on the future, hold true to our values, and believe in the possibilities of our great city, what we can accomplish together is limitless.

Thank you for having me here today.

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