Valley to get $132M

PALMER — The state’s capital budget is awaiting its date with the governor’s veto pen, but in the unlikely event all the Valley’s projects survive, more than $132 million will be headed to the Mat-Su Borough.

In one of the early drafts, Sen. Linda Menard, R-Mat-Su, tallied up the Valley bucks at $86 million. The senator expressed the sentiments of many of her colleagues when she said the Legislature looked at the capital budget as a form of a jobs bill, intended to give Alaska an economic pick-me-up.

Since then, the Senate took another turn adding in projects and the House of Representatives took its turn. A Frontiersman accounting of the final bill results in a figure of roughly $132.3 million in Valley earmarks.

The top five Valley projects break down as:

• $57 million to extend rails from Alaska Railroad’s mainline out to Point MacKenzie. Borough Manager John Duffy said that money doesn’t finish the job, but gets the borough very close.

• $23.5 million to build a center for Art and Learning at the Mat-Su College campus.

• $7 million to reconstruct the Parks Highway between Lucas Road and the Big Lake cutoff

• $6 million to put the Palmer Senior Center over the top in its years-long quest to build a new facility.

• $6 million for the borough to fix remote bridges.

The Frontiersman accounting left out a few big-ticket items that could be viewed as Valley related, all having to do with the Glenn Highway;

• $20 million to light the dark stretch of the highway south of the Palmer Hayflats.

• $3 million for reconstruction between the Parks and Old Glenn highways.

• $8 million for signage from Anchorage to Palmer.

• $10 million to resurface the highway between mileposts 109 and 118.

On the other end of the spectrum, the smallest Valley project to warrant a mention was $5,000 for the Upper Susitna Shooters Association, an earmark designated to help the shooters improve a gun range. The organization’s website says its gun range is between Willow and Trapper Creek just south of Talkeetna Spur Road and offers space for pistol, air gun and rifle practice.

Close on the heels of that appropriate are 13 identical appropriations of $7,500 for library and technology upgrades to Big Lake, Butte, Goose Bay, Knik, Meadow Lakes, Snowshoe, Trapper Creek and Willow elementary schools, Houston and Mid-Valley high schools, Su-Valley Jr./Sr. High School and the Midnight Sun Family Learning Center. A handful of Anchorage schools are marked for similar treatment.

Other noteworthy pieces of the budget include $2.1 million to reconstruct Knik River Road and $4.5 million to put a pedestrian pathway on Fairview Loop Road. Wasilla scored just under $2.3 million to fix up its sewage treatment plant and Palmer is set to get just over $1.4 million to do the same. And the Mat-Su Borough School District has a $290,000 line-item to buy a road grader.

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