Fairview road plans cause stir

KNIK-FAIRVIEW — Surveyors preparing three roads near here for a maintenance project expected a relatively easy task, borough officials said.

Instead, they got confrontations and complaints, said Director of Public Works Terry Dolan.

“The designer sent some surveyors out there,” he said. “The residents saw the surveyors and literally ran them off. That happens from time to time in some of the outlying areas of the borough.”

The original plan had been to eliminate some of the 90-degree turns in a system of three roads composed of Twilight Drive, New Moon Road, and Ogard Street that stretch between Hazel Avenue and Horizon Drive in a neighborhood just off Knik-Goose Bay Road. However, a borough employee who accompanied the surveyors out there was told in no uncertain terms that residents favored the turns, according to Dolan.

“He told them ‘Hey, we’re gonna upgrade your road, and straighten out some of these 90-degree corners and some of these bumps,’” he said. “They told him, ‘We like them.’ It keeps the speed down on their roads.”

So borough officials put the word out that they’d discuss the issue at the Knik-Fairview Community Council meeting in May and received a standing-room-only response that sent them back to the drawing board, Dolan said.

“I laid out the financial background for (the project),” he said. “Then I listened to the residents talk about it.”

“‘Please don’t use our road tax money to hurt us,’” Dolan recalled one audience member saying.

So borough officials and the company, astonished by the unexpected strength of the response, surveyed residents to find out what they wanted. After three or four months, they’ve obtained a design contractor to redo plans for the road, Dolan said.

“Our new plan takes into account all of these things the residents out there would like to keep and all of these things they would like to see changed,” he said. “We can lay down the first draft of what we think we’d like to do. We heard what you told us. We’re gonna collect more resident input on that, and see how much we can incorporate.”

“The goal is to come up with a design for these roads,” Dolan added. “I want it to be their design.”

The response to the surveyors was akin to complaints about snow or ice berms created by public works’ plowing equipment, said road maintenance supervisor Scott Sanderson, and was driven in large part by misunderstandings.

“They, residents, kind of jumped to some conclusions,” he said. Surveyors were “putting ribbon out, and (residents) just weren’t aware what was going on.”

The passion behind the meeting caught officials by surprise in part because the advisory board for Road Service Area 17, which encompasses the section of road under discussion, has been vacant for some time, though the borough has been able to obtain more interest as a result of the donnybrook, Dolan said.

“It’s a little bit of a unique situation,” he said. “These residents feel very strongly. Usually residents just want the roads fixed.”

The meeting about the project will take place at 6:30 p.m. Dec. 17 at Fire Station 6-2, Mile 7, Knik-Goose Bay Rd.

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269 or brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com.