In early March, we talked with West Anchorage Assembly candidate Anna Brawley to learn about what motivated her to run for Assembly, and what she would focus on if elected. Brawley is a city planner and senior associate at Agnew::Beck Consulting. The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Tell me why you decided to run for Assembly.
I love cities. That’s why I became a planner. Even all the way back to playing the video game SimCity as a kid (I always built a lot of parks and fully funded roads!). I also studied history, and found local history and the story of how cities developed very interesting.
For a long time, I didn’t imagine I wanted to be an elected leader. But after learning so much about the challenges we face, and believing that we have so many opportunities to fix these problems and make our community better, I decided to step up. We are a small community in the end, and the people who came before us made it a nice place to live. We need to build on that legacy and do all we can to make our city work better for everyone.
Tell me some of the work you have done as Chair of Turnagain Community Council. What resolutions have you helped pass?
I first got involved with community councils when we lived in Spenard. I served as secretary for five years, on our land use committee, and then served as president in 2022.
We have a very active and engaged council, so many of the resolutions and comment letters I signed while president were related to long-term issues important to our neighborhood, such as mitigating impacts from the airport, supporting park improvements, and advocating for road safety upgrades.The one I was most active in, and proud of, was a resolution regarding sale of the land across from Rustic Goat on Turnagain Street. It was a contentious issue, so I used my skills as a planner to inform, engage, and build consensus for a path forward. Ultimately, the land was approved to be sold, and we (TCC) were successful in reserving some parcels as green space, for potential dedication in the future as a new park.
You have been a planner at Agnew Beck for over a decade. Tell me about that.
Working at Agnew Beck is the job that brought me to Alaska, and has kept me here. While my background is in city planning, I have also had extensive experience in policy, public health, grant writing, facilitation and strategic planning, and some design work.
Through the years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with communities across the state, with Tribes and Native Corporations, nonprofit organizations and coalitions. I’ve worked with thousands of people across Alaska who I continue to run into years later.
For over a decade, I’ve worked to modernize our alcohol laws for the benefit of industry and to protect public health. This passed last year as Senate Bill 9.
Another favorite project was working with Denali Borough to create a land use and economic development plan to accommodate growth in the tourism industry around Denali Park. The Borough ultimately passed the plan, and is using it today.
A big part of your job has required consensus building across many competing interests, particularly with the Alcohol rewrite bill. How have you done this?
Consensus building takes time, relationships, common understanding, and common goals. The alcohol rewrite was complex, many-faceted, and could have easily fallen apart if the different interests could not find a way to agree. The reason we were successful is the shared commitment we built through those years of work. Having a strong team who came together despite other differences to achieve a goal is the deciding factor in why it finally happened.
At times, there have been some pretty big divides between the administration and the Assembly. How do you build consensus between elected bodies that are sometimes deeply divided?
Anchorage’s two branches of government face a difficult challenge: how to find common ground among so many differences. I believe consensus is possible, even if we start with one issue of agreement and work to expand to broader cooperation. It requires all sides to come to the table in good faith, ready to hear other perspectives, and ready to place trust in each other. Finally, it starts with agreeing on the basics: that we all want to see Anchorage succeed. We want people to be able to find opportunity and thrive here. And we all want to feel safe in our homes, in our neighborhoods, and in any part of our community.
What do you believe are the challenges and opportunities facing our community?
We have two primary categories of issues facing Anchorage: The long-term challenges that are increasingly coming to a head, such as stagnant school funding, and the growth in homelessness as rent and other costs continue to increase. These issues take work and cooperation to address, within the city and in partnership with the rest of the state.
The other type of issue we face is a widespread exhaustion with sustained political conflict in recent years, which makes it difficult to build consensus for a shared path forward. However, I believe there is a shared agreement that the status quo isn’t working, and that we are not doing enough to address our long-term issues.
What ideas do you have for addressing some of these challenges?
For many of our persistent issues, like homelessness and our tight housing market, we know what works: We need to increase housing choices in Anchorage, and also offer more safe places for people to be when they are in crisis, who need help, or who are suddenly without a home due to an emergency.
We can also make it easier to do business in Anchorage by addressing barriers for business growth in our land use laws, from code requirements to restrictions on outdoor seating.
In what ways would you like to change the direction of the Assembly over the next three years?
There is room for the Assembly to engage more with the community, educate people on the problems we need to fix, and build support through common ground and shared goals. I believe the best venue for this is not at Assembly meetings, which are formal business meetings, but beginning with more informal conversations, site visits, and community meetings.
