On Tuesday night, the Anchorage Assembly approved the LaFrance administration’s request to purchase $3.75 million in new snow-removal equipment, aiming to improve the city’s response to heavy snow dumps that have snarled streets in recent years.
The purchase — ten snow-plow pickups, a sander truck with a belly plow, a vacuum truck and three motor graders — was made possible after the LaFrance administration discovered millions of unspent dollars in the city’s equipment maintenance fund. City officials said some equipment will be deployed this winter, while others will arrive next year.
The money was found while closing the city’s 2022 financial books, which the former Bronson administration left uncompleted in a historic delay. LaFrance was critical of Bronson’s failure to close the books on the campaign trail — something he chalked up to significant turnover — warning it could be concealing big problems for the city.
At least when it comes to snow removal, it turns out it was hiding good news.
In comments to the Assembly, Chief Administrative Officer Bill Falsey likened it to balancing a checkbook and finding out you had more money than expected.
“This is a good news consequence of working as hard as we can to get our house back in order,” he said. “We could, for the first time, see the (available money) in the fleet fund.”
At Tuesday’s meeting, it was unclear why that money wasn’t spent. The cash in the fleet fund account is collected from various city departments to maintain and replace city equipment. Falsey said it’s possible that some of the money went unspent because of pandemic-era supply issues, but they would continue to investigate the matter.
“This is not new money that was brought newly into the municipality,” he said. “This is us being able to finally be able to see our bank statement.”
The state of the city’s snow removal fleet has been the subject of many discussions in recent years, as large snowstorms overwhelmed city and state crews, leaving streets unplowed for several days at a time.
“We’ve seen a systematic lack of investment in our core infrastructure, including snowplowing equipment,” said Municipal Manager Becky Windt Person. “Closing the books and bringing snow removal equipment to Anchorage is a win-win for our city.”
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.
