You are hereA million dollar bus stop and hotel
A million dollar bus stop and hotel
By Dan Fagan
Publisher
The Alaska Standard
I don’t care how you spin it, there is no justification for using $875,000 of precious taxpayers dollars to build a bus stop. A lousy bus stop!
The new bus stop located outside the Anchorage Museum illustrates the absurdity of the criteria politicians now employee when deciding what projects make for good use of taxpayer money.
I could care less this bus stop is 72 feet long, 9 feet wide and brightly lit. Don’t tell me about the fancy architects who designed it. So what if the sidewalks to and from it are heated. Big deal passengers waiting for their taxpayer subsidized rides can see exactly where their bus is via a high tech screen before it arrives.
All that is dramatically overshadowed by the plain, clear, and simple fact this is a bus stop, a damn bus stop and it cost hard working Americans $875,000.
People Mover estimates approximately 700 passengers a day will use the $875,000 bus stop. People Mover counts passengers twice, once in the morning and then again in the evening so the $875,000 bus stop will only see about 350 people a day. Only in America will we spend almost a million bucks of taxpayer money so a little more than 300 people can walk on heated sidewalks and see exactly where their bus is real time on a big fancy screen.
You would think for almost a million bucks the thing would at least be heated. It isn’t.
I don’t know about you but if I were going to build a million dollar structure in Alaska, I would at least want the thing heated. But officials say they can’t heat the thing because then the homeless move in.
But don’t worry about the homeless. We would never ask them to live in a lousy $875,000 bus stop. A plan is in the works to use taxpayer money to buy them their own Anchorage hotel.
A non-profit group wants to use your hard earned money to buy the Red Roof Inn in Fairview and make it a shelter for the homeless.
But the genesis behind this plan wants to let the drunkards keep drinking while staying there. Oh yeah, this is a good idea. A hotel where drunks stay for free and can drink while staying there. I wouldn’t imagine there would be much need for police to respond to this place.
Have you noticed there are no homeless in the Mat-Su Valley? Ever wonder why that is? It’s because there is no Beans Café and homeless shelters out there.
Most of these chronic homeless have made a conscious decision to drop out of society, live by their own rules, and just spend their lives getting drunk everyday. Opening up a hotel for drunks removes some of the consequences of their lifestyle choice. They can beg for boos during the day, eat healthy meals at Beans Café and other places, and soon they will have their own room in a hotel to enjoy the boos the bought after begging all day. This is the last thing the chronic drunks need.
But there is good news for the taxpayer when it comes to the “Drink All You Want” hotel. This scheme will only cost you a million. That’s right, taxpayers get an entire motel for only one million dollars. And guess what, unlike the million dollar bus stop where the homeless are not welcome, the hotel is heated.
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.....or a Buck stop. Look how silly that is and someone actually submitted drawings and said ,"this is what its going to look like for $875,000?" and someone approved it? Embarrassing.
They play whit us. I don t belive that thing. They are silly. piese auto import I don t know what to say. I have no more words.
875 grand for the most lavish public toilet in Anchorage history! Begich originally asked for 2 million. At least the homeless will have a heated sidewalk to sleep on.
Yep, we got this shelter because of baby-killing felon* former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens.
From yesterday's Anchorage Daily News:
"[C]ity officials turned to then-Sen. Ted Stevens for funding to upgrade the People Mover stop in front. Stevens wangled a $1.5 million earmark through the Federal Transit Administration."
One of those "city officials" was Mayor Dan Sullivan, who came to power in part thanks to an endorsement by infant-slaughtering felon* former Sen. Ted Stevens. Sullivan was impotent at stopping it when the appropriation was approved while he sat on the Anchorage Assembly, and failed at stopping it despite becoming Mayor more than six months ago.
Thank goodness we have that blood-soaked, child-murderering felon* Ted Stevens representing us in the U.S. Senate.
*Felony convictions overturned on technicality; Bush-era prosecution abandoned before retrial by merciful Obama Justice Department
disgusting human being!
Hey Moonbat, ODonel, Black and Mild, and the rest of the Libs - You should feel very proud of your Lib Soul Mate here.
Again - what life experiences drive someone to write this type of post ????
Val old friend - these are your bedfellows as you champion your Social Liberalism. Let us know how that works out.
he's off-topic, sounding completely crazy, over the top.
it would have been enough to simply say that stevens provided the funds for the bus stop via earmarks.
without any of the rest of that B.S.
You make a good point, a person should be embarassed to completely agree with Dan Fagan about something.
Curse you, pre-toddler slaughterer felon* former Senator Ted Stevens! Will we never be rid of the dirty money you procured for us at Dan Sullivan's insistence???
*******************************
*Felony convictions overturned on technicality; Bush-era prosecution abandoned before retrial by merciful Obama Justice Department
A SUPER SIZED BUS STOP AT THE MUSEUM MAKES NO SENSE!
I GUESS IT WILL BE USED BY SOME OF THE 5th Ave Mall Rats.
SO IT WILL BE A FREAK SHOW WE CAN PUT ON A LIVE VIDEO LINK.
It would be a great idea to send all street bums to Vancouver just in time for the 2010 Olympics. Just seeing all those talented white people in one place would surely be the catalyst to make them change their hard-drinkin', hard-druggin' ways. It would be so, so, '10s! You know, the 'eighties were so Ronald Reagan; so regressive. Street bums aren't bums. They are just like you and me. In fact, if it weren't for people like Ronnie and W, they'd be out at Kincaid park, flexing their gluteals and flashing their clean white teeth! Yes, use tax money to build a flophouse in a poorer neighborhood. To those whose idea that is, "That's real white of ya'!" Oh, the big cities in Canada are full of homeless, street gangs, guns, and daily murders. It's just that the blood congeals a little faster.
As for the bus shelter, hey, it's not your money. It's somebody else's. You know, it's only going to cost maybe, uh, one latte a month. That seems to be the currency of tax raising liberals. If you forgo two or three lattes a month, soon the school district will be able to spend a billion dollars a year. Now that is progress, I tell you!
Housing First is a concept that has been used in Canada for years. It has been shown not only in Canada, but also in Seattle to save the tax payers lots of money. The use of extra police, detox, ER, and clean up outside or even a stay in the jail compared to a cheap room in a hotel saves thousands and helps heal broken people. Not only does it save money, it keeps people out of the parks and on the streets. It was discovered that giving people a home first decreases the amount they drink. This often starts them on the road to a better life. Many on the streets are mentally ill or physically ill and are self medicating with drugs and alcohol. Services can be offered right at the facility and activity in the buiding can be monitored closely. Just being on the streets or even living in shelters causes use of more chemicals because it is a miserable life.
Some people always have to have someone to look down on and seem jealous of less fortunate people getting help. Homelessness can happen to anyone. You never know where life can take you, illness, accident, getting laid off, or addiction from taking pain pills from an injury or illness. It happens to the best of us. To think that people consciously want the lifestyle of living in the streets is thinking from the 1980s. Do you ever read? The plan is not for them to stay free, they have to use any benefits they get such as SSI to pay for the room. Those who go to work will then be paying rent. You are an uninformed man with a shriveled soul.
Your logic and reason will find few takers here.
No way will you convince these knuckleheads to abandon their prejudices, they love their bigotry too much to be swayed by the sort of common sense you possess.
"Homeless bad! Government bad! Fire hot! Argument over!"
i'll give you the bus stop -- that's a little tough to defend, like the $600 coffee pot on the fighter jet.
the motel, i don't know. it might be time for such an experiment. even the mayor was sounding somewhat malleable on it. homeward bound has a treatment program that allows residents to continue to drink, under certain conditions. they have demonstrated better rehabilitation outcomes, compared to programs that require cessation of alcohol intake as a condition of admission.
[packing up the drunks and shipping them out isn't a real option, as much as some of you would like it to be the 1950s again.]
moves in there better be HBO.
Dan, I think you're absolutely right about the various social services enabling street alcoholics.
Here's my plan for dealing with street drunks: Do what they did in Anchorage in the 1940s, ship them to out of state.
Back in the 1940s a(nd I think 1950s) Anchorage had a program called "The Blue Ticket Special".
What this amounted to was that Anchorage Police would arrest street drunks for whatever reason related to their public drunkenness. The drunk was then given this choice: face the charges in court which would be vigorously prosecuted OR accept a one-way ticket from the city to Seattle and all charges would be dropped. They were also pointed in the direction of Seattle's generous charities aimed at bums.
The program worked like a dream.
I suggest a similar program updated for the 21st century. Alaska should certainly build this hotel, but only if it's somewhere in the lower 48. Preferably as far away as possible. Florida perhaps. And of course one way tickets provided. Some details would have to be ironed out, like only accepting Alaska residents and policing the hotel down in Florida so Florida drunks don't take it over.
This could work. To paraphrase Obama: Social policy I can believe in!
It comes from the folks who allowed the 33 million dollar budget excess that is causing us in Anchorage so much concern. What can you expect? Do we have a Nancy Pelosi want a be here in town. We all suffer from the powers that be who want to use public money and help a few instead of a bunch.
But, who will be paying the utility bills?