Snow storage, Garage art, and dollar demands

The city has an ongoing problem of what to do with the snow it picks up in the winter. Often in the past we have simply dumped it into the channel – and we still do that in some places. But the fact is that snow from the roadways is often polluted with the chemicals put down to melt ice, and with automotive and other debris. Dumping it into the channel is environmentally harmful and DEC has been pushing us to find alternatives. A couple years ago we dumped Valley snow at the site of Thunder Mountain HS. Last year and this year the feds have given us permission to dump at the bus loading parking lot at the Mendenhall Glacier visitors center. We are currently developing a site between Industrial Boulevard and Engineers Cutoff which will filter out the pollutants and that will hopefully be ready in another year. Downtown we are looking at the Little Rock Dump area. And then there is the issue of where all the private haulers should dump. Such a mundane issue- yet very complex.

Work on the downtown transit center and parking garage is beginning, and many people have been concerned that the structure will be an ugly concrete block. I have been advocating since early planning that we pay particular attention to the aesthetics and that we use the 1% for the arts (required for all public projects) to do more than just put individual pieces of art here and there. A public committee has been appointed to coordinate these efforts and includes: Paul Voelkers, Nancy Waterman, Barbara Craver, Ken Alper, Donald Gregory and Jane Lindsey. I am hopeful that their creativity will inspire positive results.

I continue to be concerned about the long term financial health of the Borough, given story after story about cities across the U.S. falling into big financial crises. I think we need to be very cautious about our spending. I mentioned previously that the Jensen Olson arboretum lost a bunch of money from their endowment because of the market downturn. Now they need to borrow from the city general fund. The Airport is looking to borrow against future revenues. We recently had a request from the Fisherman's memorial group to just forgive their debt. I can see more things like this happening in the future. This is going to require careful planning.