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RSAC hears plan to revive road capital-project book; members question value without funding
Summary
Fairbanks North Star Borough staff described how the borough scores and ranks service-area capital projects and suggested producing a periodic project-request book. Committee members said the effort may be impractical while money is scarce and debated whether the Assembly Road Service Area Committee should continue.
Fairbanks — At a Jan. 13 meeting of the Assembly Road Service Area Committee, Michael Bradley, rural services manager for the Fairbanks North Star Borough, outlined the borough’s process for collecting, scoring and ranking service-area capital improvement project requests and proposed periodically publishing a project-request book to support requests to the Assembly and the mayor’s office.
Bradley said the borough last ran a version of the process in 2022 and that staff used to publish a project-request book (the last published in 2018). He told the committee the last state funding the borough received specifically for service-area projects was about 2013 and recommended the borough consider asking for projects and rescoring them every five years so the interior delegation and Assembly would have a compiled list to review.
The proposal matters because, committee members said, the committee currently has no discretionary funds and significant disparities exist among service areas. “It’s not like we’re being inundated by other service areas every time we have a committee meeting,” said Mr. Davies, a service-area commissioner, who pressed staff on how the committee should proceed without available money. Davies and other members noted that some service areas receive far more funding than others and asked how RSAC could be useful while capital dollars are scarce.
Bradley described the scoring committee that ranks projects as including a rural‑services service-area technician, a civil engineer from design and construction, and the community planning traffic planner; he said scoring emphasizes safety and access. He said when funding was available staff typically highlighted about five or six projects and included alternates in case additional funding was available. He identified the next project on the carryover list as the Chino Hills Road project for Forest Drive.
Several commissioners questioned the value of restarting a formal request book now. Mr. Roterman, a service-area commissioner who participated by video, said conflicts of interest could arise if RSAC members — many of whom chair or represent service areas that have projects on lists — began lobbying or helping prioritize projects. “A majority of the RSAC are chairs of a commission who probably have projects on the list,” Roterman said, adding that could create conflicts that the scoring committee currently avoids.
Davies and other commissioners suggested more fundamental changes, including dissolving RSAC or expanding its scope to take an active role in seeking funding or in the borough’s larger road-management discussions. Several speakers referenced recent controversy over a roughly $1 million appropriation for the Horseshoe Downs project, saying that allocation created resentment among other service areas. “I was told that they were next on the list, and here they didn’t even really know that they were going to get that money,” Davies said.
Others urged a less drastic approach. Mr. Hopkins, who spoke during committee comments, said he was more optimistic about future funding cycles and favored waiting to see how the new administration’s priorities develop before making structural changes.
The committee did not take formal action on the proposal to create a new project-request book or on changes to RSAC’s scope. Members agreed to consider the questions raised and to record comments for the public record; Bradley closed the presentation after questions and answers.
