Jul. 6--Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan sat down to talk about his plans for city government a few days before he was sworn in on July 1. Parts of that interview have appeared in news stories over the last week. Other excerpts follow.

Q. You've addressed the issue of a possible sales tax in the past, and it became a big issue during the last weeks of the campaign. What are your plans now, if any?

A. We are going to look at it. It would be one of those things that would be a very slow, very cautious rollout. You have to engage the community. You'll never get a 60 percent vote supporting a sales tax if you have not really done your homework with the chambers and with the retailers that have to collect it, and landlords and renters and community councils. If you don't go out there and really work it, why bother? It'll just fail again.

I'm thinking it's going to be at least a year or two before we're even ready to maybe talk about a specific proposal and how it would work, but it's going to be something we're working on from Day 1 in terms of doing that groundwork. What does the community want? What have other cities done?

Consumption taxes are more fair, to begin with. You can control your consumption. You can't control the appreciation of your home. It's certainly more broad-based in that everybody who purchases in Anchorage participates, rather than just the folks who own property.

We talked a little bit during the campaign, (that) if you could balance off property tax, have that diversified portfolio (of property taxes and a sales tax), that's probably a good thing. But if it came to the point where the only way you thought you could sell it (was) by replacing property tax, at least residential property tax, I'd look at that option too.

One of the suggestions that came out was, well, how about if you just leave the property tax on the business community (and remove it from residential property). Nothing changes for (businesses) then. They still have the same contribution to government they do now. They buy wholesale, so they wouldn't be paying a sales tax. Really, it would be just neutral for them. That way you get away from the argument that, "Gosh, if you replace property tax, the Conoco Phillips and the Wal-Marts of the world are the ones getting this huge break," which is a legitimate point, I suppose. Then both sectors are paying.

Q. The budget obviously is the gorilla waiting outside your door when you take office. You've also talked about several other things: manpower, contracts, and so on.