JUNEAU DAILY NEWS MINUTE

By Chris Burns - kiny@ptialaska.net

Thursday, February 1, 1996 (c) Alaska Juneau Communications
*In a split decision, the Borough Assembly Finance Committee voted 5 to 4 last night to fund a $70,000 visioning project for the downtown area. A consulting firm will be hired to hold public meetings, generate computer-aided scenes of what downtown may look like in the future, and produce a short video depicting those scenes. Plans also call for linking the visioning project to the C.B.J. World Wide Web site.
*Hundreds of people are attending the state's first major conference on communications technology. COMTECH 96 opened this morning and runs through Saturday at Centennial Hall. Organizer Susan Favro says the event has been a success past everyone's wildest imaginations.
*Juneau Representative Kim Elton says his mother always taught him to eat his vegetables before dessert. That's what he told his colleagues on the floor of the House yesterday before they passed a bill to transfer $1.1-billion from the Permanent Fund's earnings reserve to the principal. Elton says the transfer may be a good idea, but not before a long-range fiscal plan is adopted.
*January was a cold, dry month. The average temperature was 16.6-degrees, which was 7.6-degrees below normal. It was the 9th coldest January on record, but the coldest since 1982. Despite the cold, no daily records were set. Though the beginning of the month averaged 5-degrees above normal, the final 20 days of January averaged just 9.5-degrees, some 15-degrees below normal. Precipitation for the month was only half of normal, 2.26-inches of liquid equivalent. Snowfall was nearly 21-inches, or 9-inches below normal. A new record was set for winter season dryness as we went 19 straight days without any precipitation. That is the third longest dry spell for any season.
*Former Fish and Game Commissioner Carl Rosier says if anybody had told him 40 years ago that Southeast Alaska salmon fishermen would be fighting for every chinook salmon, he'd have thought they were crazy. Rosier -- who now sits on the board of the new Alaska Salmon Coalition -- believes allocation struggles will continue this year and in the seasons ahead.
*Juneau's award-winning Alaskan Brewing Company introduced its 3rd year-round beer today. The new brew -- Alaskan Frontier -- has been produced as a seasonal offering in the past, but will now join the company's Pale and Amber beers on local liquor store shelves all year.