The City of Fairbanks Community Service Patrol is helping more people since being expanded this spring. The service, which provides chronic inebriates transportation to care, used to focus on downtown Fairbanks streets, but was vastly expanded to cover the entire city in March.
The service is run by the Fairbanks Downtown Association, and director David van den Berg told the Fairbanks city council last week that CSP has more than doubled its numbers since going citywide. "We've done 110 percent more calls for service and 112 percent more transports," he said.
Van den Berg says the expansion has seen the CSP go from three to five full-time service officers, and from one to two vehicles, covering more streets during longer hours of operation.
The expanded service is being paid for with increased support from the city, new funding from the North Star Borough, and continued support from private donors, who account for half of CSP’s $380,000 budget this year. The legislature approved a $250,000 grant for the CSP this spring, but the funding has yet to be passed through to the program, and van den Berg did not yet know how it would be used.
