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One of the most important functions that I perform while representing District 28 is facilitating progress on local needs for infrastructure. No matter what our respective political beliefs and affiliations, most of us agree that we could do a better job on managing and maintaining our trails, roads, drainages, fire risks, and other infrastructure that we use throughout our communities every day.

This is a large ongoing effort, and on Wednesday, December 22, 2021 I hosted an amazing community meeting on this topic. My friend, Senator Josh Revak, co-hosted the meeting and attendance was great! We were joined by Senator Roger Holland and Representative Laddie Shaw as well as representatives of Congressman Don Young, the Governor’s office, Alaska Department of Transportation, the Mayor’s office, Assembly members, Municipal Planners, Community Council members, Road Service Area members, and others. The topic of discussion was understanding available funding sources, the various management processes and how we can work together to get progress on our most needed local projects.

The first segment of the meeting was mostly made up of briefings. These began with the Federal Infrastructure Bill, sometimes called IIJA or BIL, from Congressman Don Young’s office and the Office of the Governor. We then moved to the Municipal planning processes, how these processes interact with AK DOT and with the Mayor/Muni’s Capital Budget. After the briefing segment, my office presented our proposed timeline for this budget cycle and a possible path forward for status, actions, and engagement.

One of the things that became very apparent in my first year, was the need for greater visibility and transparency around our local project needs. This need evolved into increased project coordination to assure that projects are properly identified, communicated, funded, and then progressed according to criticality, need, and available funding sources.

The entire process of getting projects done can often involve all layers of government and multiple entities within each layer. The interplay between state, local, and federal involvement on a seemingly simple road project is not well understood by many of us which can cause us to miss improvement opportunities, while projects that are not our key priorities seem to march along to the beat of a different drummer.

In a desire to help sort through the processes and create more progress, we started interfacing and working with community organizations within and around the district. Our goal was to obtain their lists of project needs that have been ranked for importance and then find a way to turn a genuine need into a useful project. This interaction evolved into a comprehensive project list and much better coordination of projects. This briefing and coordination meeting was the culmination of interaction with many different groups and the start of even more work and engagement. I am extremely grateful for everybody who attended/presented and am excited to see the progress that we make together!