PUBLSIHER’S NOTEBOOK: Traffic and Transportation

At the Palmer Chamber of Commerce lunch meeting this past Wednesday, Jessica Smith, Mat-Su Borough Transportation Planner was the feature presenter. The gist of her presentation was a grassroots effort to get public input on our long-term transportation plan for the borough. In March of this year three public meetings were held regarding the subject and a whopping total of 15 people showed up. So, if the people won’t go to the meetings then the meetings will come to the people via presentations at service clubs and other organizations plus an online open house.

The online open house is hosted at msblrtp2035.com, after navigating to the websites homepage then on the right side you will find the open house link in red. The open house started on March 20^th and ends May 12^th, 2017. The purpose of the online open house is to explore transportation improvements, funding decisions, and policy development now through 2035.

The borough is encouraging you to not only think about your transportation needs right now but what they would look like for you personally in the next 20 years. The site is well designed and easily navigates you through the presentation from what is a long-range transportation plan, the challenges and risks of the plan, goals, strategies, performance measures, implementation and your opportunity to comment. On the last page of the presentation you can leave a comment on the public comment form or you navigate to the interactive map on the site. The map allows you to place a pin on the exact location you want to comment about and allows you to leave your comment on the pin. To sum it all up, you get to view the presentation at your own pace, and your opinion on specific areas of the long-range transportation plan will be heard.

Moose Baseball

David Combs, head coach of the Palmer Moose high school baseball team gave a brief shout out at the Palmer Chamber lunch to let everyone know his team’s fundraiser involves spring cleaning. Give coach a call at 907-841-6638 to set up a time for the team to come by sweep gravel off of your business parking lot or do some yard work for you. Also high school baseball has started so go support your favorite team.

The girls are running wild

The annual Who Let the Girls Out starts today. The event runs through tomorrow in downtown Palmer and includes games, prizes, live music, contests, great food and most importantly lots of great sales. Check out the Make a Scene website for complete details. Kudos to Josh Fryfogle owner of The People’s Paper and Make a Scene for getting behind this great event.

Ending on a good one

Fellow Wasilla Sunrise Rotarian Matt Ketchum and co-owner of K&H Civil Constructors lead the charge for this year’s Rotary Career talks. Matt put together an impressive collection of local professionals to speak at Wasilla, Teeland, and Colony middles schools this past week. Each presenter was given twenty minutes to give the students an overview of their career field. The Frontiersman team was represented by Marketing Sales Consultant Tawni Davis, Regional Managing Editor Matt Hickman and News Reporter Chris Ford. It was a positive experience for both student and presenter. A hardy “thank you” goes to Matt Ketchum and those who assisted with putting on this event. I hear the students were engaged and enjoyed the opportunity.

Thank you for reading the Frontiersman