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HALO v. ANCHORAGE11/22/1996
in the Hillside area. Slip Op. at 730. The court finds it significant that about thirty APD officers reside in the Hillside area and drive their patrol cars home, providing a limited patrol service. Slip Op. at 730. The court also finds it significant that Hillside residents, while representing ten percent of the Anchorage population, represent seventeen percent of the assessed property value. Slip Op. at 730. These facts, while pointing to an
inequity in the funding of police service within the boundaries of APSA which inures to the benefit of nonresidents of APSA, do not support a determination that there will be a significant change in cost which affects the delivery of police service to residents residing within APSA.
V. CONCLUSION
The decision of the superior court should be reversed. The superior court found that the voting scheme in AO 96-30(S) rested on a correct determination of the areas affected by Propositions 13 and 14:
Giving the appropriate [deference] to legislative action, a review of the totality of the information before the Assembly reveals that the Assembly had a reasonable basis to conclude that all Anchorage voters will be subject to significant change in cost, quality, and quantity of police service if a citywide police service area is created.
The change will affect the tax burden in the old, as well as the new[,] police service area. It will affect the quality of service and its cost throughout the city. It will affect the scope, consistency, and uniformity of delivery of police services citywide to all Anchorage residents. It may affect the quality of police services citywide.
This decision includes findings that are manifestly wrong, including a finding that the quality of police service citywide will be affected, as well as the scope, consistency, and uniformity of such services.
The case should be remanded with instructions that judgment be entered in favor of HALO, declaring that a service area cannot be created or altered unless by a majority vote of those people residing within the boundaries of the area burdened with tax liability it has never before borne. It is these people who make up the "area affected." Surely the area affected cannot include those who by their vote can shift their tax burden onto someone else.
Even if we accept the proposition that one service area can foist its tax burden on an area that has chosen not to be taxed, the issue whether there will be a substantial change in cost affecting the delivery of police service should be remanded to the Assembly for appropriate findings. Although on this record I view the Assembly's actions to be arbitrary and capricious, we need not foreclose the Assembly from authoring a decisional document which attempts to make the requisite determination of substantial change affecting the delivery of service, thereby justifying a vote by the people residing in APSA.
COMPTON, Chief Justice, dissenting.
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