Kudos to Zachariah Hughes, Emily Goodykoontz, Iris Samuels, and Michelle Theriault Boots for their reporting on the latest “informal” agreement between the municipality and the Alaska Department of Transportation plowing.
Anchorage residents should be rightly upset about the snowplowing situation this year. While the Bronson administration may have made some improvements to planning, it undercut those improvements by enabling the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities to dodge its responsibility. A week earlier, a department spokesperson, referring to the Municipality’s clearing of state-maintained roads with their graders, was quoted as saying it was “a really good partnership for us.”
All I see is the department getting off scot-free, shirking its maintenance responsibilities, and pushing the cost onto Anchorage taxpayers, all the while promoting more expensive new road construction projects with no mention of how they will be maintained in the future.
It’s time we paid attention to the cost of Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s lack of a fiscal plan, his cuts to services, and the cost to us all in terms of canceled school days, lost work days, damage to vehicles and dangerous transportation policies that put people unnecessarily at risk.
— Jedediah Smith
Anchorage
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