"Homer is pretty well organized as far as getting what you want, and that's good," said Congressman Don Young to Mayor James Hornaday at a Wednesday morning public meeting at the Homer Public Library.

"Just keep it up and we'll continue to get more federal dollars for you," added Young.

Hornaday was there to thank Young for his work in Congress to secure money for Homer projects he specifically pointed to the Homer Public Library and the Alaska Islands and Ocean Visitor Center and to ask for help with a slew of new projects.

Expansion of the city's deep-water dock, the most costly of the projects, has been through a preliminary design and is ready for the next phase a feasibility study and final design. The dock expansion is important not only to Homer, but to all of Railbelt Alaska, explained Hornaday.

Homer's dock would become crucial to the region, he said, if the Port of Anchorage, which handle's 90 percent of all Railbelt cargo, were to become incapacitated for any reason. The city has put in a capital request to the federal government for $10 million, or one-third of estimated construction costs.

Filling out the city's capital improvement requests for fiscal year 2009 are $1 million for design of a new water treatment plant, $400,000 toward the purchase of land in the Bridge Creek watershed area, $750,000 for completion of the Homer Spit trail and $400,000 for a feasibility analysis of expanding the Homer Harbor.

Young met with about a dozen members of the public at the Homer library at 10 a.m. and then headed off to the Homer Senior Center at noon. The previous evening, he spent about an hour with eight Anchor Point residents at the Anchor River Inn, at the invitation of the Anchor Point Chamber of Commerce.
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