Mayor takes aim at smokers

April 29, 2005

KATE GOLDEN/Frontiersman reporter

PALMER - Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich apologized to the smokers in the audience at Thursday's Rotary Club luncheon.

"I apologize for bringing this up. But you know deep down in your heart it's good for you, and we're here to help you," he said.

Begich was more gleeful than repentant, however, after the Anchorage Assembly took three weeks to pass a bill adding a $1 tax to every pack of cigarettes sold in the city. Given the 300 million cigarettes sold each year, the city expects to make about $16 million, he said, which will all go to property-tax relief.

Plus, there's the added benefit of reducing smoking. Cash-strapped young people in particular, he said, are less likely to take up a now more expensive habit.

"I think you should do it out here," Begich said he told Mat-Su Borough Mayor Tim Anderson. The borough has apparently been kicking around the idea.

Kim Floyd, spokeswoman for the school district, said she'd strongly support such a diversification of the borough tax base.

Tony Pippel, a Palmer city councilman and a smoker, loved it.

"I'm an addict myself," he admitted. But he continued, "Is there a huge social cost for smoking? Sure."

Other Begich ideas:

€ Reinstate revenue sharing. Begich said it was "appalling" that Alaska's riches from resource extraction are not being shared with smaller communities, which suffer greatly.

"And yet we have surpluses beyond imagination," he said.

Begich proposed to the Alaska Legislature a return of revenue sharing. He said Anchorage and the Valley should ride with the rural communities in both lean and fat years.

"What's good in the rural communities is good for us," he said.

€ Find energy solutions. Projected growth in the Valley will force energy conservation from the year 2012, Begich said, and it's more than a regional issue. Because Southcentral is "a driving force," he said, its energy struggles will affect everyone.

Given the usual pace of development, he said, now is the time to find solutions.

Additional exploration of Cook Inlet, he said, would cost $5 billion.

Begich is pushing for a gas pipeline from the North Slope.

"Get the gas where there's plenty of it down to us in some form or another," he said.

€ Take charge with big box stores. "They've really held Wal-Mart's feet to the fire," said Palmer City Manager Tom Healy of Anchorage officials.

When Wal-Mart Stores Inc. came looking for a new Anchorage location, Begich said the city pointed to the existing enormous gray box in Midtown and said, "You don't build those anymore like that."

Instead, the city gave the corporation examples of the kind of landscaping it deemed acceptable - and mandated it.

Anchorage has raised the bar for design standards, and Palmer should take advantage of it in their own negotiations, Begich said.

€ Start a business development district. In Anchorage, downtown merchants tax themselves, using the city as a conduit for the money, to sponsor downtown events and plan community economic development.

A recent university study suggested that Palmer merchants could start their own business improvement district. Begich suggested that the Anchorage group could share what has worked.

After all, he said, the two communities benefit from each other's successes.

"We have a joint economy in a lot of ways," he said.

Contact Kate Golden at 352-2284 or kate.golden@frontiersman.com.