$500,000.00
Posted on 06/05/2005 4:07:16 PM PDT by HikikomoriWarrior
Tom Wilson is faced with a problem that many city administrators would envy: How to spend $1.5 million on a bus stop.
Wilson, Anchorage's director of public transportation, has all that money for a new and improved bus stop outside the Anchorage Museum of History and Art thanks to Republican Sen. Ted Stevens - fondly referred to by Alaskans as "Uncle Ted" for his prodigious ability to secure federal dollars for his home state.
Wilson is prepared to think big.
The bus stop there now is a simple steel-and-glass, three-sided enclosure. Wilson wants better lighting and seating. He also likes the idea of heated sidewalks that would remain free of snow and ice. And he thinks that electronic signs would be nice.
"It is going to be a showpiece stop," Wilson said.
He acknowledges that the money has put him in an awkward position.
"We have a senator who gave us that money, and I certainly won't want to appear ungrateful," he said. At the same time, he does not want the public to think that the city is wasting the money. So "if it only takes us $500,000 to do it, that's what we will spend."
That is still five to 50 times the typical cost of bus-stop improvements in Anchorage.
The money was contained in a $388 billion spending bill passed by Congress last November, when Stevens was the head of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Citizens Against Government Waste has ranked Stevens No. 1 every year since it began calculating legislators' proficiency at bringing home pork in 2000. In 2005, Stevens brought home more than $645 million, or $984.85 for each Alaskan, the group says.
City and museum officials agree that the bus stop must fit in aesthetically with the museum's $75 million expansion project. In fact, the museum has offered to help design the bus stop.
The museum's architects want the bus stop to be compatible with the exterior building materials that will be used for the expansion - glass with a pattern that gives the impression of looking through a thin curtain.
Also, they do not want it to spoil the view of the street that museum visitors will have when they stand in what will be a miniforest of 350 birch trees whose lower branches have been cut away.
If done right, the expanded museum and improved bus stop could anchor a new eastern edge to the downtown area, drawing more tourists to the museum, more shoppers from a nearby mall, and more workers from the federal building, said museum director Pat Wolf.
That is what Stevens had in mind when he got the $1.5 million, said his spokeswoman, Courtney Boone.
"It is supposed to be a lot more than a bus stop," Boone said. "It needs to have a way to smoothly transition all these people."
For sure.
Next year, the mayor promises to provide bus service for the showpiece bus stop.
It should named the "Ted Stevens Bustop", to follow the example of the former KKK Klegle, aka Senator Robert Byrd, who's named every pork-barrel project he could squeeze through for West Virginia after himself.
LOL!
This sounds like a plot for a B movie which goes from post-production to video sales to write-off in two weeks.
Nope, Ted already has the local Taj..errr, make that airport/train station/tourist chute named after him.....that said - if he quits (gasp) or even passes away in office (horrors!) Alaska will be very poor indeed. In more ways than most folks can think about.
ugh!
The darned guy is worried about seeming "ungrateful" to the legislator who took the money from the taxpayers-- Ted Stevens.
Meanwhile, countless people work hard for their money, only to have it taken and spent by these politicos of both parties.
My family's federal taxes are very low due to the child tax credit, so I am not the victim. But other taxpayers are getting screwed for this pork barrel spending.
I am sure that the lady standing there at the cash register for long hours, processing countless transactions each day, is proud to have her entire year's taxes, and those of many other folks like here, go to pay for this one posh bus stop.
No one sends her a thank you note for working several months to pay for a chunk of this bus stop. But Alaskan politicos will bow down and kiss some legislator's butt and beg for more pork.
up there in Anchorage, for instance, conditions are different than they are elsewhere. Heated sidewalks don't seem like a very practical idea where there is little snow or ice, or winter is a short season, but in Anchorage, where there can be snow on the ground for 7 or 8 months of the year, they are a very practical consideration for a public waiting area.
ping
Just name it the Robert C. Byrd Memorial Bus Stop and suddenly there won't be enough money for it.
$500,000.00
Maybe they'll draw 'em all out and they won't return.
So is Senator Stevens envisioning a high speed rail system stretching across alaksa connecting all igloos together ?
Officials in Sioux Falls spent that much for a park entrance. In three years of "planning" no one thought about how people were going to get into the park since the only access was across an active railroad track. When the railroad balked at a grade crossing, the city just spent $1.5 million to build an underpass...including $400,000 of cost overruns. Needless to say the planners of this fiasco were not reprimanded or fired.
http://www.ozarkwarriors.com/frame_pages/cuba.htm
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