Persistence Plus Pandemic produces plan

Girdwood Area Plan Funded From Multiple Sources

By Brooks Chandler

TNews Contributor 

Comprehensive planning costs money, and more than expected.

The total cost of the draft Girdwood Area Plan now out for public comment through March 31 will exceed $200,000, according to Imagine!Girdwood Treasurer Amanda Sassi.

The final funding originated from a source no one would have envisioned in 2017 when the update effort began. Regardless of the price, readers can now review and comment on the draft at imaginegirdwood.org. 

Comprehensive planning is what is known as an “area-wide” function of local government.  Girdwood historically was dependent on the Municipality of Anchorage to fund the Municipality’s Planning Department who ordinarily oversees the process of updating area plans. 

Girdwood Board of Supervisor member and current Imagine!Girdwood chair Mike Edgington said Girdwood began asking for MOA to fund the update in 2017.

Edgington told the TN, a GBOS subcommittee led by Lewis Leonard and Diana Livingston first considered  an update that simply edited the 1995 Area Plan.   It soon became apparent that a complete rewrite made more sense.  An initial effort to fund the rewrite through the Planning Department budget was not successful. 

With the help of then Assembly member John Weddleton two “seed money” grants were received in June of 2018.  A challenge grant of $10,000 from the Heritage Land Bank and a $13,000 grant from the Anchorage Assembly.  Imagine!Girdwood meeting minutes indicate this initial funding paid for a community survey as the initial phase of the update.

The “challenge” from HLB was for Girdwood to match the $10,000 through other sources. Sassi summarized Imagine!Girdwood’s local fundraising efforts which met the HLB challenge.  Girdwood Inc. contributed $10,000.  The Girdwood Alliance contributed $1,000.  Girdwood Rotary added $2,000. 

Local residents may have contributed as much as $13,124, although Ms. Sassi was not able to verify the exact amount of private contributions.. Edgington said the local funding allowed Imagine!Girdwood to keep going between “dry spells” of grant funding and to spend money on tasks that were not grant eligible such as providing child care during community meetings.

Meanwhile support for the effort through lobbying the Assembly for funding achieved some success. Imagine!Girdwood members that assisted in this process included past chairs Eric Fullerton, Erin Eker and GBOS chair Mike Edgington.  

In a first quarter budget revision on April 23, 2019, the Assembly appropriated $20,000.

In April of 2021 the Assembly threw another $25,000 into the pot again during a first quarter budget revision.  This funding carried the plan update through Phase Two.  This still left Imagine! Girdwood short money to finish the plan.  But events in Washington, D.C. would reverberate back to Girdwood. 

On March 11, 2021 the President signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to aid economic recovery from the pandemic and to do so quickly.  The feds distributed these funds directly to state and local governments with wide latitude as to how the funds could be used.  Anchorage used an application and review process.   

Imagine!Girdwood, largely through the efforts of Sassi, submitted an application.   Assembly records show that on Aug. 10, 2022 the Assembly Anchorage appropriated $140,000 in ARPA funds to the Planning Department to complete the Girdwood Area Plan. 

That still was not the end of the funding story. 

At the time the ARPA appropriation was approved   Imagine!Girdwood, Inc. already had a contract in place with Huddle LLC to prepare the plan update.  Edgington said routing funding through the Planning Department would require a procurement process with substantial delay  and potential inefficiency if Huddle was not awarded the remaining work.   

Imagine!Girdwood asked the Assembly to redirect the ARPA funds to Girdwood Inc. who could award the final phase of the plan update directly to the existing contractor Huddle.   On Nov. 9, 2022, the Assembly redirected the funding.  Sixteen months later a draft plan has been completed.

Stassi wrote Imagine!Girdwood would “like to thank everyone in the community of Girdwood who has contributed their thoughts, time, advocacy and/or money to the success of this project”.   

Edgington believes having the process run through Imagine!Girdwood rather than the planning department means the “community voice” of what he described as a “loud and proud community” has led the plan.   He anticipates there will be substantial community comments on the draft plan by the March 31 deadline. 

Imagine!Girdwood is also inviting local artists and photographers to submit work to illustrate the final plan.