There’s no question the number on our cover—$334,965,865—is pretty damn big. It’s the kind of number that, if it showed up on a bank statement, might prompt a person to immediately call the banker to inform them of the error. (Or call a travel agent and inquire about Brunei or Togo—any place the bank customer thinks they can’t be extradited from.)

That number comes from the pages of a city document with the title “Municipality of Anchorage 2010 State Legislative Program” on its cover. To strip it of wearisome bureaucratic argot we’ll just call it “the wish list.” It’s a list of stuff the Anchorage Assembly and the administration of Mayor Dan Sullivan will ask the Alaska Legislature to fund as legislators are hammering out the budget for the state’s 2011 fiscal year. The document is worth studying, at least for voters who can focus on charts and tables without dozing. It’s posted at www.muni.org under a front-page link that says “2010 Legislative Program.” It’s a handy tool to keep track of neighborhood road projects or new fire stations or any job a politician talked about the last time he or she came knocking at the door.

People at every level have a hand in this. Stacy Schubert, Sullivan’s intergovernmental affairs director, says neighborhood community councils are surveyed each year for their priorities and the city has been working with state legislators since October to gather input. “In many ways, [the state reps and senators] know their districts better than the mayor’s office,” Schubert says, calling the legislators’ role “absolutely” important when it comes to composing priorities. If that sounds overtly flattering, keep in mind it’s part of Schubert’s job to flatter the legislators. She’ll have some help this year from the lobbying firm Legislative Consultants, Inc., which is partly owned by former Fairbanks state Representative Joe Hayes. They get $100,000 for the job this year, Schubert says, adding the city cut $10,000 from last year’s contract with Hayes’ firm and dropped a second $30,000 lobbyist contract entirely. Budget cutting is a big priority for Sullivan, and Schubert says the cuts were not meant as a critique of last year's lobbying performance. “Essentially we’ve increased their work load and they’re doing it for less than they did last year,” she says.

Cynical readers should keep a few things in mind. Big Oil and the lesser state taxpayers won’t pay the entire bill. The federal government will pay much of it and the list includes no notes to help sort out those details. Anchorage expects to collect $238 million in local property taxes this year, a hundred million less than what they ask the state to approve. Also, there isn’t a single local government or school district in Alaska that doesn’t hold its hand out to the state and the feds, so don’t assume Anchorage is the only animal at the trough. And local governments almost never get everything they want. Schubert pointed this out in a brief phone interview.

One example on this year’s list includes a $6 million replacement for Fire Station 6 in Muldoon, a project previously vetoed by former Governor Sarah Palin using the governor’s line-item veto. (Don’t assume she wanted Anchorage to burn to the ground. Palin signed capital budgets that included $11 million in Anchorage fire station projects during her tenure.)

And that number we quoted up top is really only a back-of-the-napkin estimate. The Anchorage School District’s budget and wish list aren’t included here. They don’t exist in the document the city posted to its homepage last week. We’ve also dumped a $75 million request for a state crime lab on the theory it’s a statewide request that inflated Anchorage’s number. Then there was a $20 million request to further the expansion project at the Port of Anchorage. That didn’t seem like a fair way to describe a project that will cost about $700 million by the time it’s finished in 2014. (Tea-baggers can add those number back in themselves before calling talk radio to bitch about government.)

With those things in mind, here are a few items from Anchorage’s wish list, reported with the price city leaders want the state to pay. Some of them, like Anchorage Fire Department Station 6, have been on the list for while.

Fix a sinking building: $3,000,000

Of all the repair jobs on Anchorage’s “to-do” list, the 60,000-square foot heavy equipment barn atop the old Northwood Landfill is probably the weirdest. The job is notable because the building is only about eight years old and designed to stay upright even though it serves as covered parking for about 100 pieces of heavy equipment on top of a sinking landfill. The engineers who designed the project knew about the garbage underneath—there’s a methane recovery and venting system to keep garbage fumes out—and they knew the word “heavy” was one half of the couplet “heavy equipment.”

“All of those things were taken into account in the original design,” says Greg Jones, Mayor Sullivan’s director of community planning and development. Jones doesn’t like to second-guess his predecessors—it “just isn’t fair,” he says—but he has researched the sinking building. The foundation doesn’t sink, Jones says, because the walls and columns are on pilings driven to a level below the soft landfill—just the floor. Jones says architects and engineers redesigned the floor during construction. They cut about $1.5 million from the job by switching from a structural floor to a floating floor poured on gravel. Then they poured the floor with concrete, instead of asphalt.

“They decided to do the floating floor, and then a decision was made to put in a rigid floating floor, instead of the more flexible asphalt floor,” Jones says. “They probably took, in essence, what was a calculated risk—and they lost.”

A grid of steel underneath the floor ties the building together and is failing as the concrete sinks, although Jones says the building isn’t expected to collapse anytime soon. The floor needs to be removed and replaced with a structural floor more similar to the original design. Jones had one piece of info that made the floor job sound simpler than building anew to replace a tool shed of such Brobdingnagian proportions.

“You can fit a pile driver in there,” he says.

Fire stations: $11,000,000

Two fire stations, Station 6 in Muldoon and Station 9 on Huffman Road, rose to the top of Anchorage Fire Department’s list. The Muldoon station was built “circa 1970” according to the city priority list. It “faces constant septic, water and electrical problems” and a fire engine that parks inside it has “about one-inch of clearance,” the city says. I visited Huffman’s Station 9 a few years back to get a look at how firefighters live while on duty (they like ice cream, and there’s no beer in the fridge). There are no private sleeping quarters in Station 9 so women firefighters weren’t stationed there. The city says the calls for Station 9 have increased five-fold since it was built in the 1980s.

Cop stuff: $13,250,000

The Anchorage Police Department wants a tactical training range, and needs about $13 million to make that wish come true. Department spokesman Lieutenant Dave Parker says the range would likely be used by all the police departments in Southcentral Alaska and operated by a consortium of police departments. This is not your gun club’s firing range. Parker called those “square ranges” and says they are not appropriate for some of the skills cops need to drill. The tactical range would be suitable for practicing hostage scenarios and other cop-versus-bad-guy scenarios with live rounds.

“We want to be able to do our thing in an environment where it is law enforcement only, and where we can build and control our own environment,” Parker says. “It’s set up so you can safely do shooting-on-the-move and cover-and-concealment, and things you just can’t teach on an ordinary range.”

APD also wants a quarter million for backup air-conditioning in its dispatch and computer room. The cooling system needs backup, the legislative program report says, because if it fails, the report says, “room temperature will reach a critical point within two hours” and important stuff like the 911 call center, police radio dispatch and APD’s mobile data system all begin to fail. The city has an emergency operations center near downtown, and Parker says dispatch workers would use the EOC in the event computers start overheating at the cop shop on Tudor Road.

“Not to my knowledge has that actually happened, but the potential is there for such a thing to happen,’ Parker says. “They have put ours down for maintenance before and moved the essential operations—the 911 and such—over to the EOC.” But he added that the EOC doesn’t replicate all APD computer needs. “We’re not talking about functionally operating only the 911 center, we're talking about functionally operating the entire police department,” he says.

Roads: $261,369,000

An auto-centric society costs a lot. The city’s 24 highest priority road projects account for $139.9 million of this tab. $10 million is being requested solely for “pavement rehab” and the city budgeted an equal amount as a local match. A $12.7 million project would rebuild part of Lake Otis Parkway between DeBarr Road and Northern Lights Boulevard. The list also includes a $1.25 million request for a turn lane at Mile 79 of the Seward Highway, near Portage Creek and the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center.

The ol’ Opry House: $732,000

The Alaska Center for the Performing Arts is the gift that keeps on giving. Not just for concert fans, but for roofing contractors, too. The roof had major repairs three years ago. The funding requests says: “problems remain with parapet capping” and some of the remaining funds will replace fire curtains and upgrade security cameras.

Heavy-duty maintenance shop: $5,000,000

The city leases a shop for fixing big stuff such as road graders and backhoes and the like. Buying the existing facility on Bering Street is one way to get out of that lease. The diesel mechanics and hydraulic specialists won’t even have to move.

Indoor sports subsidy: $2,150,000

Alaskans love their hockey barns and Anchorage’s Sullivan Arena is the biggest and best in the state. Anchorage says it needs $1.6 million from the state for a variety of projects including a new heat and air system, new water lines and more bracing for its sprinkler system. Dempsey Anderson Ice Arena also needs repairs: $250,000 worth. Ben Boeke Ice Arena needs refrigeration repairs on one rink. The city wants $300,000 for a bunch of repairs at Ben Boeke, and gently reminds the legislature it serves “10 youth hockey teams, two figure skating clubs, four adult hockey associations, 116 adult recreational hockey teams” and open skate and learn-to-skate.

Water rescue and search-and-rescue: $222,000

Anchorage Fire Department’s 26-foot Cook Inlet rescue boat is out of service and needs major repairs. The department has smaller watercraft, including an inflatable raft for the lower parts of Eagle River where rapids make it too dangerous for the department’s custom-built powerboat that can rescue people in trouble upriver. AFD wants $100,000 for a second, lighter Cook Inlet boat and repairs to their out-of-service boat. The inlet’s technically out of their service area, but they’ve become primary responders over the years (firefighters are good like that). The department also wants $22,000 for two jet skis, a trailer and a floating “rescue board” that a water rescue team can use to bring injured people ashore, plus $100,000 so they can continue training for and responding to backcountry emergencies in Chugach State Park (also technically outside the department’s service area).

Dirty dirt clean up: $750,000

It sucks to find out an old underground fuel tank has soiled the dirt underneath your property. There are rules about this stuff, the sort of rules that can keep a closed gas station property off the market for years and then attract backhoes to dig up every last bit of full-contaminated soil. The city says it owns four “major underground sites” that need remediation. They’re at: the Bering Street fleet maintenance property; Brother Francis Shelter campus; People Mover’s maintenance shop; and, Z. J. Loussac Library. City Hall wants Brother Francis Shelter to receive priority over the other three.

scott@anchoragepress.com