Mid Hillside and Hillside East Community Councils

Minutes 9 February 2004

John Weddleton, President MHCC, convened meeting at 7:03 pm. Attendees included 9 MHCC, 1 HECC, and 3 others.

Stewart Osgood of DOWL Engineers reported on the ongoing activities for upgrading Abbott Rd. and connecting to Tudor Rd. They are currently collecting geotechnical data. The project is funded from $37.5MM of a State bond approved in 2002. Construction would occur in 2005-2007. The current plan calls for two major bridges, one 200 ft. and the other 700 ft., which will provide wildlife corridors at the same time. Current traffic is 3,000 cars per day. With a connection to Tudor this is projected to be 8,000 per day, growing to 13,000 by 2013.

The legislative Call-in featured Representatives Bob Lynn, Mike Hawker, Kevin Meyers, and Senator Con Bunde. Items discussed included changing the calculation of available earnings from the Permanent Fund to “Percent Of Market Value”, a spending cap, senior health care, and serious deficits in the Workman’s Comp and Retirement accounts.

The Assembly Report by Dick Tremaine discussed the upcoming bonds proposals, the lease for Rainbow Connection, dedication of park land and LRSAs.

Mr. John Seawell presented information about the Alaska Zoo’s plan to redo their parking and reconfigure the entrance. A motion to support the new parking plan passed unanimously.

The Anchorage Police department has requested feedback, positive and negative, on their performance. We agreed to send the APD the following comments:

a. Three areas where APD IS meeting your expectations

1) Polite and positive officers.

2) We see more police than when the State Troopers covered the area
3) Continued support for the Crime Watch program.

b. Three areas where APD IS NOT meeting your expectations
1) There's a general impression that police coverage on the Hillside is thin resulting in slow response times and insufficient traffic speed enforcement.
2) Illegal snowmachining continues.
3) Too expensive compared with previous coverage be State Troopers.

While pondering the questions, we generally agreed that we don't know what kind of coverage we should expect and we don't know what calls APD has responded to. Without knowing your constraints, we can only evaluate you based on our high expectations. We'd like to see APD join the Fire Department at O'Malley Fire Station when they have their annual open house.

Comments are invited on the proposed rewrite of Title 21, covering Zoning. See: http://www.muni.org/planning/prj_Title21.cfm

More detailed maps for the proposed O’Malley upgrades were available for review.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:55 pm.