The waterfront in Kake on Kupreanof Island (KFSK file photo)
Alaska’s governor this fall said there’s no change to the status of large state road projects, including one on Kupreanof Island near Petersburg. Governor Bill Walker in 2016 said the state would be pausing eight highway road projects until the legislature approved a fiscal plan with a balanced budget.
Walker was in Petersburg in mid-November as the legislature neared the end of the fourth special session of the year without approving new revenue sources to fill a state budget deficit. The projects are state funded and they include a proposed road link across the northern side of Kupreanof Island between Petersburg and Kake. More than a year later, Walker explained no fiscal plan’s been approved and those projects are still on hold.
“You know we’ve seen 14 billion dollars of our savings being used that should have been used for projects exactly like that,” Walker said. “So we have got to have a fiscal plan in place before we can decide what we’re going to build.”
The other paused state road projects are in Fairbanks, the Mat-Su Valley and Anchorage.
