Some Fairbanks City Council members want more transparency from a group tasked with discussing the future of the Polaris Building site. But others say it’s not the right time.
At a Tuesday morning work session, the council took up a resolution backed by members Valerie Therrien and Crystal Tidwell that calls for making all Polaris Working Group meetings open to the public.
The group formed to fundraise for the demolition project and help plan for future development. Over the course of the building’s demolition, the group has been meeting behind closed doors, with updates delivered primarily through intermittent reports from Fairbanks Mayor David Pruhs at city council meetings.
Councilmember Valerie Therrien said she thinks community interest in the site’s future is picking up now that the old high-rise in the center of downtown has been reduced to rubble.
“And so I felt that it was important from now on for the meetings to be publicly noticed and open to attendance,” she said.
The resolution also reasons that the site is city-owned property, and that the demolition required a lot of city resources.
Councilmember Lonny Marney said he’s on board with the measure, and that he finds the purview of the group mysterious.
“I’ve been on council for five years, and it’s still a mystery what this group does. I don’t know when it meets, or where it meets, or who’s on the group. It’s just kind of a mystery, not real transparent in my mind,” he said.
But others didn’t exactly share those concerns, or thought other considerations outweighed them.
Councilmember Sue Sprinkle, who’s a member of the group, said they sometimes handle confidential or sensitive financial information.
Councilmember John Ringstad, another member of the working group, agreed. And he said that while having more regular updates at council meetings would be a good move, too much input while the group is hashing out details or drafting documents could get in the way.
“I don’t know that we need public involvement every time we have a discussion,” he said. “That becomes cumbersome, to me.”
Mayor Pruhs added that the group is almost done with a letter meant to gauge developers’ interest, which will be available for the council to review before it’s released. He said that will be out for 90 days and will be followed by a formal request for proposals.
“You’ll be seeing it,” he said. “You’ll be involved in it, as you have been the whole time on the Polaris site itself.”
He offered a different resolution Tuesday that would name the working group as an ad hoc committee of the Fairbanks City Council, with members selected by the mayor. But he said the meetings still wouldn’t be publicly noticed.
Pruhs also identified the current members of the group as himself, Sprinkle, Ringstad, City Engineer Bob Pristash, City Chief of Staff Michael Sanders and local architect CB Bettisworth.
Neither resolution moved forward Tuesday, since the council doesn’t take final votes during work sessions.