Alaska Digest
Rural villages consider cuts in service, mergers
ANCHORAGE - Villages faced with dwindling state funding are considering deep cuts in services and new ways to remain solvent.
Since statehood, many local communities have relied on state grants to help balance local budgets and provide key municipal services.
Municipal Revenue Sharing grants, which helped fund a broad array of local expenses, and Safe Communities grants to fund emergency services have paid millions to buoy local governments.
Gov. Frank Murkowski vetoed the program in the last session of the Legislature in an effort to reduce the state's gapping budget deficit.
"We must take responsibility for prioritizing what our governments can do based on what we can afford," Murkowski said in vetoing those and a third program that funded local construction projects.
Municipal governments received some temporary assistance from Murkowski funded from a $15 million federal grant. But that funding ends in July.
Throughout Alaska this winter, city administrators and councils are coming to grips with the looming shortfall.
Huslia in Western Alaska is dousing its streetlights, Hooper Bay is laying off police and White Mountain is considering tripling its taxes.
A few villages are even considering merging their municipal operations with local Native tribes. Mekoryuk Mayor King said his Native village is considering such a merger.
Kiana and Koyukuk are also considering tribal mergers with more villages possibly following when municipal funding is gone, said Anthony Caole, a former Quinhagak city and tribal administrator who is now an Anchorage consultant.
The merger "is not an ideal arrangement," Caole said. It will create an unwieldy council of 10 to 14 members working in a gray area that is both city and tribe.
Cities bring little to the bargaining table except sales tax powers, and many tribes are already overwhelmed with work, he said.
In addition, the future of tribal funding is uncertain. Sen. Ted Stevens has said it is increasingly difficult to secure funding for Alaska's 229 federally recognized tribes and has proposed they consider some form of consolidation.
Ice hotel back on track after project freeze
FAIRBANKS - Construction of an ice hotel near Fairbanks is back on track, nearly a month after the Alaska State Fire Marshal put a freeze on the project.
Entrepreneur Bernie Karl has gotten the go-ahead to finish building the Aurora Ice Hotel at Chena Hot Springs Resort. The six-room structure would be the first ice hotel in the nation.
"I'm truly excited I'm getting the opportunity to build it and to let the test of time to be judge of this," said Karl.
The first guests are booked for Christmas Eve, Karl said.
The 30-foot-high Gothic palace is intended to be a tourist draw similar to ice hotels in Scandinavia and Quebec. Karl has said he plans to charge guests $878 for a two-person, two-night stay that includes Arctic-grade sleeping bags and other survival gear.
Plans call for the structure to have 8-foot-thick side walls of snow and ice, reinforced with laminated wood arches, metal bands, chicken wire and refrigeration lines.
The state fire marshal issued an order Nov. 21 for Karl to stop work on the hotel, citing building code and public safety concerns. At that point, Karl began referring to the hotel as a "work of art" and threatened to take the state to court.
But after a meeting with architects, engineers, ice sculptors and Gov. Frank Murkowski's office last Wednesday, the state agreed to let Karl go ahead with construction of the hotel.
Karl has agreed to monitor the structural integrity of the hotel throughout the winter and has invited ice experts and students from the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Engineering to help develop such a monitoring program.
Repealing emissions program could be costly
FAIRBANKS - A voter initiative to repeal a Fairbanks North Star Borough emissions program could have costly effects for the state and even local motorists, a federal official warned.
John Iani, head of EPA Region 10 in Seattle, outlined the possible sanctions in a letter to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
Environmental Protection Agency officials have already threatened possible sanctions such as withholding federal road construction funds if the borough disbands the program.
Several other consequences of ending the local program without EPA approval could include federal Clean Air Act lawsuits by local residents.
The letter also said cars could also be ordered off the road in order to get federal permits for a new industrial facility, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported.