More blatant GOP corruption............and "let them eat cake"!
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Anchorage given a cool $1.5 million to build bus stop
By Mary Pemberton
The Associated Press
ANCHORAGE — Tom Wilson is faced with a problem many city administrators would envy: how to spend $1.5 million on a bus stop.
Wilson, Anchorage's director of public transportation, has all that money for a new bus stop outside the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, thanks to Republican Sen. Ted Stevens — fondly referred to by Alaskans as "Uncle Ted" for his prodigious ability to secure federal dollars for his home state.
The bus stop there now is a simple steel-and-glass, three-sided enclosure. Wilson wants better lighting and seating. He also likes the idea of heated sidewalks that would remain free of snow and ice. And he thinks electronic signs would be nice.
"It is going to be a showpiece stop," Wilson said.
He acknowledges the money has put him in an awkward position. "We have a senator that gave us that money, and I certainly won't want to appear ungrateful," he said. At the same time, he does not want the public to think the city is wasting the money. So "if it only takes us $500,000 to do it, that's what we will spend."
That is still five to 50 times the typical cost of bus-stop improvements in Anchorage.
The money was contained in a $388 billion spending bill passed by Congress last fall.
City and museum officials agree that the bus stop must fit in aesthetically with a museum expansion project being funded with $75 million in public and private money. The museum has offered to help design the stop.
The museum's architects want it to be compatible with the exterior building materials used for the expansion: glass with a pattern that gives the impression of looking through a thin curtain. And they do not want it to spoil the view of the street that museum visitors will have when they stand in what will be a mini-forest of 350 birch trees.
If done right, the expanded museum and improved bus stop could anchor a new eastern edge to the downtown area, drawing not only more tourists to the museum but shoppers from a nearby mall and workers from the federal building, said museum director Pat Wolf.
"It is supposed to be a lot more than a bus stop," said a spokeswoman for Stevens. "It needs to have a way to smoothly transition all these people.
"Sen. Stevens does not believe the money that he is able to work diligently to secure at the federal level is pork. He considers it infrastructure development for a very young state."
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