Assemblyman Felix Rivera hit the nail on the head at the November snow response meeting when he pointed out that when compared to 25 years ago, in addition to the current vacancies at Street Maintenance, we are 24 people short of where we were. And that’s not even adding staff for all the new roads, sidewalks, and trails added during those years. These metrics alone account for a 25% reduction in staffing without extra staffing for all the new infrastructure. Of course Mayor Dave Bronson isn’t solely to blame for this, but he has the power to change course for the future.
As a past Street Maintenance employee (2004-2007) I am perplexed by any comments made to basically insinuate that any substantial new staffing would result in a bunch of people sitting around in the summer time.
This is an absolute insult to anybody who works in that department, as they do a tremendous amount/variety of work and are never sitting around with nothing to do. These men and women perform spring sweeping, concrete projects, crack and chip sealing roads, small paving projects, brushing, small drainage projects, storm drain cleaning, pothole patching, road grading maintenance/oiling, and any other projects being championed by the administration.
Bottom line is, these past two years have really shown Anchorage residents how important street maintenance is and how valuable those skilled operators are. So, it really comes down to the level of service the taxpayers expect. Assemblyman Zac Johnson is also making great sense. When there is an emergency situation, everyone is looking to contract out to the same and finite amount of qualified contractors. As he said, there are tradeoffs with contracting out because you then don’t have your own resources available to call on.
— Jason Alward
Vice President, Local 302 Operating Engineers
Anchorage
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