Valley capitalizes on funding

MAT-SU — The first draft of the state’s budget is out and it includes $86 million for local projects.

The Senate Finance Committee released its first version the fiscal year 2011 budget Wednesday. Though the Legislature has just over a week to get its business done in this year’s 90-day session, the budget draft is far from complete. Staffers expect another version will come out today. Then it has to go to the Senate floor, face the House of Representatives and pass the governor’s line-item veto pen.

Still, there’s a lot of money in this version of the budget for Valley legislators to crow about. All told, the Mat-Su Borough stands to gain $86,182,330 in state funds.

Reached Thursday in Juneau, Sen. Linda Menard, R-Mat-Su, seemed most proud of the $6 million in the budget to build the Palmer Senior Center.

“I couldn’t be more ecstatic to get that project. I’ve been pushing for senior center funding from that election of 2008,” Menard said. “We have a huge senior population that we need to pay attention to.”

She said that $6 million is what Palmer Senior Citizens Center Inc. told her it needs. The organization has already raised $5 million, she said, and the total project cost is estimated at $11 million.

Menard was also proud of the $1.7 million included to build a community library and resource center in Sutton, but she wishes the state could do more.

“I wish that we could have the $50 million in the budget that’s in statute we will give to libraries,” she said. “That’s in statute, but we haven’t funded it.”

There are also a handful of smaller building projects in the Valley — $423,000 for a new clinic in Sunshine, $195,000 for sports fields in Meadow Lakes, $100,000 to put a new roof on Trapper Creek Elementary, $1.4 million to improve the wastewater treatment plant in Palmer, $2.3 million to do the same in Wasilla.

“We’re trying to consider the capital budget as a jobs bill, and even though it might appear to some that we’re spending more than we should, you have to put jobs out on the street and that grows the economy,” Menard said.

And, it seems, the bulk of those jobs, at least in the Valley, will be in building roads.

There’s $9 million to widen and improve Seward-Meridian Parkway between the Parks Highway and the Palmer-Wasilla Highway, $1 million to upgrade Horseshoe Lake Road and $2 million to improve connections to the Parks Highway.

And, even though quite a bit of the money is to be spent outside the borough, the Glenn Highway seems due for a major overhaul. There will be $20 million to light the last remaining darkened stretch between south Birchwood and the Palmer Hay Flats. There is $3 million to reconstruct the Glenn Highway between Mileposts 34 and 42, and money set aside to address erosion issues.

And, Menard said, she’s pleased that it looks like there will be enough money to set some aside for each senator to have $1 million to designate to projects of his or her choosing. Representatives, if they choose to accept the plan, would get $500,000 apiece. She’s a champion of that kind of discretionary spending.

“I wholeheartedly support that,” she said, “because who knows better than a legislator” what the needs are on a local level?

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