Borough Mayor Vows to Fix Leaks at Fairbanks Library

Mayor Luke Hopkins said he’ll look to tap public savings for a permanent fix at the Noel Wien Library, where a leaky roof has grown progressively worse over two years.

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By Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

Story Created: Jul 4, 2011 at 10:13 AM AKDT

Story Updated: Jul 4, 2011 at 10:13 AM AKDT

FAIRBANKS — Mayor Luke Hopkins said he’ll look to tap public savings for a permanent fix at the Noel Wien Library, where a leaky roof has grown progressively worse over two years.

The borough has a roughly $10 million investment account for “major projects” such as a proposed roof rebuild at the downtown library, Hopkins said.

The account holds principal collected from the sale of commercial land, dubbed the “Bentley trust” property, in northeast Fairbanks.

A new roof at the library would cost about $2.5 million.

Gov. Sean Parnell last week vetoed a $6 million grant that would have covered that cost and funded other maintenance work at the library, but Hopkins said he wants to “get going” instead of waiting another year for state aid.

"We patched last year and we patched the year before,” he said. Public engineers have finished construction plans that position them to rebuild the roof next year, he said.

The new roof will be extremely energy efficient, he said.

The Borough Assembly had placed the Noel Wien project and a proposed North Pole library rebuild near the top of their wish list when approaching state lawmakers this winter. Hopkins said his administration will update the assembly on the latter project later this month.

Contact staff writer Christopher Eshleman at 459-7582.

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Chillywilly said on Monday, Jul 4 at 10:41 AM

For some reason I'll bet this roof was installed by the highest quality UNION LABOR

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