Hello Fellow Salchans,

The message below was sent to us from FNSB community activist Mike Prax; if you'd like to contact him regarding this, his e-mail is mprax@acsalaska.net.

Sincerely,
Wayne and Nikki

From Mike:

Your help is needed.

The borough assembly will be considering a resolution to approve a Memorandum of Understanding between the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation and the Fairbanks North Star Borough for Air Pollution Control at this Thursday’s regular assembly meeting. This M.O.U. has been available to the public for less than two weeks. It is a 15 page document that appears to commit the borough to accepting significant new responsibilities for air quality monitoring and regulation of emission sources including solid fuel burning devices such as wood stoves.

This memorandum could place us on a path to implementing another expensive and intrusive air quality program similar to the IM program that we have endured for the past 20 years. The MOU is purposely vague, it isn’t even clear whether the IM program will be eliminated as the administration has intimated, it could also include restrictions on using wood to heat our homes and other drastic requirements to solve a problem that is primarily the result of local climatic conditions! The vagueness of the memo is itself a problem that must be resolved.

The assembly should move to postpone voting on this resolution until the public has had adequate time to review the document and understand exactly what they are proposing to do. Unfortunately, the current assembly has a poor record of exercising their responsibility to diligently review what the administration proposes to them and has instead pretty much simply taken what ever the administration hands to them. Because this is a resolution, the assembly hasn’t even scheduled a public hearing for it. They probably will just pass the resolution unless there is a public outcry to do otherwise.

Therefore, is vitally important for you to let the assembly members them know that you are concerned about the implications of this Memorandum of Understanding and ask them to postpone action on the resolution approving it until such time as the public has had adequate opportunity to review and comment on it.

You should at the very least send an email to the assembly to ask them to postpone action on the resolution until the public has had time to review and comment on it. The merits of the proposal can be debated later, but we need time to have the debate. This is the assembly’s email address: assembly@co.fairbanks.ak.us . Click on the link and send them a short message right now.

You should also make it a priority to attend this Thursday’s assembly meeting at 6:00 to demonstrate your concern. There is no point in complaining about the result six months from now if you didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to make your voice heard at the appropriate time. (Which is this Thursday.)

If you do attend, please wear a navy blue shirt to demonstrate our unity of purpose. There might only be a few minutes allotted for testimony, so a visual message might be our only opportunity. This is also why we want to focus on postponement rather than the merits of the proposal.

This is a link to the assembly agenda for those who want to review the resolution and memorandum before commenting: ftp://co.fairbanks.ak.us/Assembly%20Agenda%20Packets/RegularPackets/2009/07-16-09.pdf

You can also find it on the borough’s website under the ‘assembly’ link on the home page. (The memorandum starts on page 109 of the agenda.)

This resolution is important to all borough residents regard less of whether you heat your home with wood.

yOU WERE ON IT A DAY BEFORE ME, i HAVE IT ON THE SITE NOW, AND LINKED IT ON THE nEWS mINER.... ha... sorry about the cap lock.

They think passing legislation and laws will control nature while putting the burden on the community tax payers. That would be like taxing us every time the river comes up... Oh... FEMA and Homeland Security already does that.