Borough gets $1 million for roads, bridges

MAT-SU — Sen. Lisa Murkowski announced this week that, among other appropriations for the state, $1.25 million is heading to the Mat-Su from a recently passed omnibus spending bill.

The bill ropes together the appropriations for: Commerce, Justice and Science; Financial Service and General Government; Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education; Military Construction and Veterans Affairs; State and Foreign Operations; and Transportation, Housing and Urban Development.

According to Murkowski’s office, $1 million will go to the borough, the rest to the Chickaloon Native Village.

Other programs, projects and local governments that received money ranged from Anchorage’s bus service to a health consortium in Bethel to the Sitka Waterfront to the Juneau Airport.

The Chickaloon village’s money, according to Murkowski, is designated for facilities and equipment.

The borough’s money, on the other hand, is for road and bridge improvements.

“It’s great, a great deal,” said Borough Manager John Duffy.

But he noted there might still be a couple of hurdles to clear: the borough isn’t quite sure if President Barack Obama has signed the bill yet and the money will need approval from the Borough Assembly.

He said it’s also not quite clear yet what projects the money will go to. While it has to be spent on roads and bridges, he said he doesn’t believe the federal legislation singled out any specific project.

“We had some previous money for roads and bridges, particularly bridges. We had about 13 or 14 that we were rebuilding,” Duffy said. And this money could probably be well-used furthering that project. The bridges aren’t in any one area.

“They’re scattered throughout the borough,” Duffy said.

Since it’s federal money, Duffy said, whatever project it goes to will likely have to conform to federal environmental regulations and permitting processes. So what would make the most sense would be to direct it to projects where that work is already been done.

“We’ll identify all the roads and bridges where we’ve done that in order to, pardon the pun, get the most mileage out of that money,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.