Anchorage Daily News

The city is set to decide in the next few weeks what to do about the golf course at Russian Jack Springs Park in East Anchorage -- leave it alone, upgrade it, or both upgrade it and expand it.

The course is marginal, and should be upgraded to make it more usable. There's no point in having a bad golf course. The city should also carry out planned improvements to a sledding hill to make the hill safer.

But expanding the golf course -- the proposal is to add a driving range and "learning center" -- would not be good use of this park.

There's little enough natural parkland in northeast Anchorage. It makes no sense to clear half a dozen acres of trees to put a driving range into the middle of a woodsy park.

If the city wants a driving range for children, it should build one somewhere else -- maybe in a gravel pit.

Russian Jack, 320 acres, is a community park. Neighborhood residents use it, but people also come from across the city to ski or ride bikes.

The park is a mix of woods and developed areas, including ball fields, picnic areas, ski trails and the golf course. Large sections of it are peaceful woods, even though the park is surrounded by busy roads.

Woods like those at Russian Jack, here in the heart of the city, are becoming in shorter supply as Anchorage develops. The remaining woods should be treasured.

In 2006, city voters decided to grant a 10-year, part-time lease of the golf course to a nonprofit group that would make the improvements at Russian Jack. The group, First Tee, teaches golf to children, but focuses on low-income youngsters.

But no one said at the time of the election that the project would entail clearing a sizeable chunk of woods.

The city's first version of the plan, unveiled several months ago, proposed clearing an even larger area, 23 acres. That idea caused an uproar.

To its credit, the Parks Department came back with a smaller proposal, and is now considering tearing down only seven acres of forest at most.

But that's still too much.

The park's 1997 master plan and 2002 revisions never said anything about expanding the golf course or adding a driving range. This is just the sort of ad hoc deal that good planning is supposed to avoid.

For those who care about this issue, there's a public hearing at the city Parks Commission on Dec. 11. Then the proposal goes to the Urban Design Commission, where there may or may not be a hearing.

No other approvals are needed, says city parks director Jeff Dillon.

It's a scary thought that bureaucrats and unelected commissions can make such a big decision. The public should come out and demand a proper balance between sports and nature in Russian Jack Springs Park.

BOTTOM LINE: The city should not build a driving range where now there are trees in Russian Jack Park.

Auto bailout

Murkowski joins skeptics

When Big Three auto executives rode their corporate jets into Washington, D.C., to seek more multi-billion dollar loans from the federal government, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski was not sympathetic to their tales of woe.

"Throwing more money at the situation doesn't make these companies more sustainable; it just delays the inevitable," she says in her constituent newsletter. "Before any taxpayer funds are even considered, the industry needs to put forward a responsible business model that provides for a long-term fix."

That would be a good start. The Big Three were essentially asking for a blank check to conduct business as usual.

It's hard to feel much sympathy for an industry that has done so much to prompt its own demise. American automakers relied on cranking out high-priced, high-profit gas guzzling trucks and SUVs, while using their political clout to ward off tighter energy efficiency standards and clean air rules. They were aided and abetted by auto worker unions, which enjoyed high wages and generous benefits for work that doesn't even require a high-school education, let alone college.

Such comfortable arrangements are only possible when competition is weak and profits are easy to come by. That era ended with the first energy crisis of the '70s. Foreign brands capitalized on Detroit's ineptitude to grab market share. Foreign firms offered American consumers higher-quality, more fuel-efficient cars often built in plants right here in the U.S.

Having left Washington empty handed, GM, Ford and Chrysler will work up the plan demanded by congressional leaders and the incoming Obama administration.

The Big Three need to get out from under high-cost union contracts. They need to pare back executive salaries and perks. They need to show their survival doesn't depend on making vehicles that overload the air with pollutants, speed up global warming and feed our nation's addiction to imported oil.

If the Big Three present credible plans to do that -- with or without a trip to bankruptcy court -- they might be worth some kind of short-term aid from taxpayers.

BOTTOM LINE: Multi billion-dollar relief is a tough sell for industry with self-inflicted wounds.

FIND PROPOSALS FOR RUSSIAN JACK SPRINGS PARK: At muni.org/parks (go to park projects). A public information meeting is scheduled from 6:30 to 8:15 p.m. Monday at Begich Middle School. A public hearing will be held Dec. 11 at 6 p.m. before the city Parks Commission at Spenard Recreation Center.

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