Senior Voice -

There are exciting, innovative, interesting events happening in Anchorage this spring.

Voting for Proposition No. 3, an Areawide Facilities Capital Improvement Project Bond is not one of them. This bond provides ordinary, but important safety fixes and major maintenance repairs to facilities that are significant to readers of the Senior Voice who live in Anchorage, Chugiak, Eagle River, Mountain View and Girdwood.

Proposition 3 on this April’s vote by mail ballot includes repairs for the Anchorage and Chugiak Senior Centers, the Anchorage Memorial Cemetery, libraries and more.

I have about as many friends in the Anchorage Memorial Cemetery as I have out. My wife and I anticipate that we will be spending more time there in the future. In Anchorage we share a pleasant graveyard populated with heroes, too many young people and an increasing number of our friends, co-workers and neighbors. Together they built this city. Visiting there you notice the need for paint, landscaping, rebuild of community grave markers, a decent flagpole, and repair of walls, fencing and the Columbarium.

The Anchorage Senior Activity Center building has served this city for 36 years. The center has good bones, but it like me needs of some immediate TLC. A tarp is not a good long-term solution for a leaking roof. The restrooms need upgrades to meet current ADA standards and like me not everything mechanically works as well as it used to. The garage needs renovation so that our oversize passenger van fits inside. Someone miscalculated and ran out of money before we ran out of floor to carpet. This bond should finish the job.

The Chugiak Senior Center provides residential and non-residential services. They need upgrades to their carports that protect the seniors from the harsh winter conditions. They too have safety concerns and need to replace carpeting. There are also parking lot upgrades to address safety issues.

We come from a generation that knows the value of libraries. For our grandparents that is where they improved their language, learned about this country and courage of its peoples. Many of us grew up with story time or even took our kids there for reading time — a place of refuge for those kids who didn’t have friends who understood. Then there was that librarian who knew just the book that would be special for you. Neither librarians nor libraries look like they used to, however the Loussac, Girdwood, and Mt. View libraries are still places of magic and an entryway to worlds of reading for new and old generations. Proposition 3 will bring repairs to the Loussac elevators, landscaping for Mountain View and HVAC repairs for Girdwood.

Alaskans face uncertain fiscal times. We face the challenge — do we maintain what was given to us or let it decline into disrepair and disrepute? We have the advantage of experience. We have seen this before, and we heard this before. I listen to “the little man” that advised Governor Wally Hickel. “What good would it be,” Governor Wally asked, “If one owned it all and left emptiness in passing? In reality, one has but a lease on ownership during one’s lifetime. The success or failure of how something is used depends upon how it is left.” Leaving a legacy better than you found it – this is your opportunity to vote “Yes”. With proposition 3 we can choose yes for success — let’s leave it better than we found it.

The Anchorage Senior Activity Center Board asks you to vote yes on Proposition No. 3 when you vote by mail this April.

Gordon Glaser is the President, Board of Directors, for Anchorage Senior Activity Center.