8 Sept 2025
The board has contacted our service provider and arranged for the LRSA roads to be graded. To save money, they will ONLY be graded and not compacted, but will result in smoother roads for a few weeks. Please, drive slowly since fast driving destroys our work more quickly.
2 July 2025
Community, we just paid an invoice for $16,590.88 from our service providers. We began the year with $62,603.00 and now have $16,590.88 in our yearly account. This is 26.5% of our budget remaining, and we've spent 73.5%. As we have mentioned several times, this money must be repaid to the fund balance by paying from next year's budget. We have done our best to balance the need for summer work with the terrible reality of starting next year having $6-7000 less in available sfunding. And here we are.
7 June 2025
We have paid the latest invoice from our provider. The invoice includes the grader work performed later in May. The invoice was for $1,140.00, and brought our expenditures to 65% of our annual budget. We have 35% of our budget for the next 6 months, since our fiscal year aligns with the calendar year. Road work will necessarily be less than we could wish.
17 May 2025
drive.google.com/file/d/1e2wwGnqJglzp05s7foQmH_MVDxEKe7NW/view?usp=sharing
The link above will show you the estimate that we mentioned below. Our provider estimates a total cost for the summer work to be $22,450, money that we simply do not have. Our provider is fair and reasonable and his estimate is reasonable. The board will have the entire road graded again, including the heavily-rutted sections, and have the culvert that's south of Brewsters Drive lowered and re-buried. We have the entire summer before us, then a fall season of unknown severity.
10 May 2025
There is a large mud puddle on Kings Way just south of Brewsters Drive that has not been graded and no part of the LRSA south of that "Y" has been graded. Our provider will complete grading when that puddle is dry. The provider and board agree that, until the area dries, a 42,000 pound grader will do more damage than good.
With our budget constraints (documented below), the board members have submitted a request for proposal for summer work that necessarily will be more restricted than is desirable. The work will include specific brush removal that affects grader use and any brush that restricts drainage. Very limited ditch renovation will also be done, most on lower Snow Bear, and Kings Way, some on Kings Way south of Brewsters Drive. Both of these areas were the sites of bad overflow and the current mud puddle. A map showing the extent of requested work for summer 2025 can be found here.
7 May 2025
As mentioned below, our service provider sent a crew to grade the roads that could be reached without sinking into mud. The "Bear Roads" in the upper LRSA were all graded and Kings Way was graded to the Y with Brewsters Drive. The south end of the valley will be graded when the deep and extensive mud puddle just south of the Y has dried sufficiencly to grade, then Kings Way and Paine will be graded. Your board is meeting with the service provider to drive the LRSA and plan summer operations. Yes, we're still on emergency funding.
5 May 2025
Good news! We've arranged for our service provider to begin grading the LRSA. We will monitor the progress but we do not expect the still-muddy sections to be graded. As those sections dry, we'll get them graded.
14 April 2025
The Anchorage Assembly has approved our LRSA Board's request to access our emergency funds. The Fund Balance, as it's called, is 20% of our total yearly budget ($62,603 for the 2025 fiscal year) that's set aside for just this kind of use. The downside is that the funds must be repaid from next year's budget "off the top", so we'll be starting 2026 with $12,520 fewer than usual. Let's all hope for a less-expensive year!
As soon as the 2.4 miles of our road system are dry, we'll request a major grading project for all roads. Currently, we have 3 major mud area in our roads, and drying will take a week of drying, at least. Naturally, this last dump of snow lengthened the time needed to dry our roads.
Your board drives the same roads as do you and we appreciate your patience.
Monday 7 April 2025
We have officially drained our quarterly money. (For details on our budget, please see "How Does the Money Work" section on this site.) Last week, I requested that the Assembly vote to approve our accessing our emergency funds, a step required by law. We also have 5-6 inches of new snow and that will, at best, make a mess of our roads but the moisture might get us through green-up and prevent the ignition of our forests. We can only hope. We have requested our service provider to clear roads for the morning commute.
Thursday, 3 April 2025
Greetings on a lovely spring day. Your LRSA Board just approved two invoices from our service provider: one for $3,865.00, the other for $11,771.50. Our remaining budget is $23,503 for the rest of 2025. So far, we have spent 62.5% of our yearly budget in 4 months. Obviously. we will be drawing on emergency funds that we have laboriously saved for the past few years.
The costs were split among several uses. Much was in E-chips (refers to the range of particle size in the aggregate) for traction improvement on our roads. In the most recent invoice, many hours with the Cat 140M grader and 946 Volvo Grader performing ice ripping in the valley at $110/hour. There were also major line items for steam thawing, as you might remember. This work required traffic control as well. It's been a very difficult winter for us all.
We've stated this for over a month, but until we see some drying on the worst of the mud, we can't grade the roads. We appreciate your patience.
Sunday, 30 March 2025 Supplement
After texting our service provider on Sunday, 30 March about grading roads in the LRSA, I received this response:
"I went up yesterday afternoon graded what I could of the roads. Most of them are still mud and real soft. Grading the mud will only make them worse. Some roads still have ice in them. Once it dries up more we can do a better job grading. The main road kings way has large logs coming thru road bed will need to address that."
This confirms my earlier comments that having heavy equipment on our roads would do more damage than leaving them as is. I regret the conditions but we must wait. Your road board drives the same roads that you do.
Sunday, 30 March 2025
Residents driving Bear Valley roads the past few weeks are now aware of the underlying problems that we have: organic matter under the roads, poor ditching, no road crowning (to help drainage, road surfaces are higher in the middle than on the sides), and the list goes on.
Both current members of your road board were out-of-state the past two weeks, so we appreciate the informational texts and emails that we received. All were thoughtful, many included photos, and all were polite. Thank you.
As you know, our roads (as of this writing on 30 March) are suffering from melting ice layers below the roads, as well as meltwater from the sides. Until the ice melts and the road surfaces dry a bit, we can do little to create a better surface. Please reduce your driving speeds and when the roads get too bad, let one of your road board members know. Be aware that our finances might prohibit an immediate call to our service provider.
Monday, 17 March 2025
In our opinion, the snow that fell on Sunday and Monday (16-17 March) did not warrant calling our service provider. The roads had been heavily traveled and there seemed no obstacles to safe travel, which is our primary concern. When this snow melts, our roads will be a mess again, of course, and we'll do what we can, but major road work must await drying. The very expensive work to keep roads safe through the overflow problem put a severe strain on our budget.
Although it's weather dependent, the MoA places a Seasonal Weight Restriction on all Anchorage roads, with our LRSA roads limited to no more than 50% until the restrictions are lifted. The MoA website explains it this way:
"Weight restrictions for legal axle loads may apply to all vehicles over 10,000 GVW (Gross Vehicle Weight). These restrictions are normally required from March/April through May. The duration of the restrictions are dependent upon the weather and temperature. The purpose of these restrictions is to reduce pavement damage to roads during spring breakup."
These restrictions include all vehicles so even our service provider can't be on our roads while the restriction is on. Our roads are all dirt with some RAP, so we fall under these rules: Gravel, RAP, and Chip Sealed Streets - 50%. Weight restrictions are stated as a percentage of legal allowable weight and shall be applied to the maximum axle loading. As a specific example, a dual-tired, 2 axle trailer is rated to carry 38,000 pounds and for our roads would be reduced to 50% of that or 19,000 pounds. The MoA has not yet determined the start for the Seasonal Weight Restrictions, but as soon as they do, we'll post them here.
On the bright side, the extra snow so late might limit the wildfire hazard in our valley
Sunday, 9 March 2025
To those residents who are angry about the condition of our roads, please understand that until the underlying ice has melted and the roads are drier, there is very little that can be done. Whatever work is done on one day will be undone the next by the continued melting of subsurface ice. The lack of snow, as we've explained previously, has allowed the ground surface to freeze and force the subsurface water to flow above ground (overflow) and under our roads. The subsurface of our roads is full of brush, trees, and whatever material was pushed under by the dozers that created the roads, rather than the carefully-layered, frost-free materials that are laid down for city roads.
We just paid a $12,500 invoice from our service provider so we are now "in the red" for this quarter, and will be borrowing from our emergency balance.
We did request that our provider do what he could to grade out the worst spots, but obviously that's a very short-term fix. As our roads try a bit, we'll have our provider work on road surfaces and drainage as we have the money.
Monday, 3 March 2025
Our newest invoice (3/1/25) for road work was $11,771.50. An analysis of the invoice showed that we owed for salt and its spreading, gravel and its spreading, a fair amount of grader time to remove ice, and some steam time to clear culverts and carve channels for water to drain from the road surfaces. We also paid for traffic control while the steaming was done. We now have $39,139.50 remaining for the remainder of the year.
We are as sparing with our money as we are because we cannot know what odd weather conditions will plague the LRSA during the winter. Be aware that we are far from done with winter, so we cannot know what we face in the months to come.
Sunday, 9 February 2025
There are two severe overflow locations. One is on the first 0.3 miles of Kings Way, north of Cinerama Terrace. The second is on Kings Way, south of the Brewsters Road fork. From our service provider, we have requested a steam-generating truck for Monday, 10 February, to redirect the overflow into a more controllable path and try to drain some of the water that's building.
We've also requested a grader to reduce the thickness on that and the southern area of bad overflow. We hope that both areas get controlled tomorrow.
1 Feb 2025
The board just approved an invoice from our service provider for $9177.00, most of which was for spreading gravel on icy roads. We also spent $870 on salt for the worst of the overflow areas. So far, we have spent $about $12,000 on gravel and grading.
31 Jan 2025
Your board spoke with our service provider this afternoon as he was driving around the LRSA to see for himself what we faced. By the way, that inspection tour was done on his own initiative and his cost.
The previous map and note summarized what our overall plans are for the LRSA overflow problem. Our provider suggested these additions to the overall plan.
Nothing can be done about the seepage sources, as mentioned. There might be need of bringing in the ice rippers, but temperatures are predicted to warm a bit on Monday. At that point, our provider wants to bring in some steam equipment and cut some channels in the ice to allow the water to freely move off the road surface and stop building on the road. In the meantime, he will spread salt and gravel on the overflow areas.
He suggests, as we mentioned, a "wait and watch" strategy, but if any residents see deep potholes forming in the various overflow locations (see map from yesterday), that the resident contact a board member with the location of the problem. We'll evaluate and might decide to request help from our provider.
Our LRSA does have a website of our own, and have had for many years. If you wish to know more about how your road tax money is spent, please visit:
https://sites.google.com/site/bearvalleylrsa/bear-valley-limited-road-service-area
or you can simple search for "Bear Valley LRSA".