MAT-SU — Though a number of the races are still pretty close, if the vote totals from Tuesday’s election hold, borough taxes will stay the same but the borough assembly will have several new faces.

    The borough says that 12,323 people turned out to vote, but absentee ballots have yet to be counted. There were 1,423 absentee ballots issued in the election and voters have until today to hand them back in. Also outstanding are questioned and special needs ballots — there are 534 of those. With slim margins in some races, there are pieces of the election that appear to be still up in the air.

    One of the tightest races is in District 6 where Rob Wells, a long-time farming advocate and a partner in the Matanuska Creamery, appears to have lost his seat. But the question of who won it — surveyor, school board president and former Assemblyman Jim Colver or convenience store owner and former Assemblyman Jim Turner — hangs on less than 70 votes. Wells took 258, Colver took 849 and Turner took 781.

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Borough Clerk Lonnie McKechnie said 203 absentee ballots were sent out in that district. She didn’t have a district-by-district break down, as of press time, for the questioned and special needs ballots.

    Thursday afternoon Colver said he was confident those numbers would hold.

    “I expect to pick up 45 to 50 percent of the ballots outstanding,” he said, noting that, in his experience, the breakdown of absentee ballots tends to closely mirror the breakdown of the votes cast at the polls. “I think when the count’s over I’ll have at least a 100-vote lead, just in analyzing the data.”

    He said he’s ready to get to work and hopes to lessen the size of borough government.

    Another squeaker is Prop. 2, which would raise $31.7 million in bonds to repair floors and roofs and conduct other large maintenance projects at area schools. On the propositions, all of the outstanding ballots are potentially at play. The margin on the school bonds is just 483 votes. Votes in opposition totaled out at 6,297 while 5,814 people voted to support it.

    The other races aren’t quite as tight.

    In District 7, representing Willow and Talkeetna, Vern Halter leads. Tom Kluberton vacated that seat when he did not run this year. At last count, Halter had garnered 1,049 votes and his competitor, Doyle Holmes, had taken in 864.

    Halter is an attorney and dog musher and has served on the Mat-Su Borough Planning Commission. Holmes owns True Value Hardware in Willow and previously served three terms on the assembly.

McKechnie said 280 absentee ballots were sent out in District 7.

    In District 3, representing the area between Trunk Road and Seward Meridian Parkway, Michelle Church took in 660 votes, which, for now, isn’t enough to beat Ron Arvin, who took in 929.

    Church was running for her second term on the assembly. She is a case manager at Alaska Job Corps. She’s an ardent supporter of Valley Community for Recycling Solutions and advocates for sustainable development.

Arvin directs international business development for NPI, the main tenant at the borough’s Port MacKenzie. The borough and the firm have been in court since 2007, battling over timber. NPI shipped wood chips out of the port until, the company claims, a borough moratorium on logging stopped its operation. Since then the company has imported concrete and done other work at the port. As of Thursday, court records showed the case was still pending and that Superior Court Judge Vanessa White had set aside the month of February for trial.

    Arvin said that when NPI issues come up at the assembly, he will sit those votes out. That should take care of any conflict-of-interest issues. He said most elected officials in the state have day jobs and have to do the same thing.

    “There are examples every day in this community where a member, from time to time, every one of them finds themselves in a situation where they do recuse themselves,” he said.

    Arvin said he wants to get to work fixing problems he sees in the economy of the borough and getting more jobs that provide a decent wage that can support a family.

    “What I hope to accomplish sitting on the board is sending a message — to the world, quite frankly — that the Mat-Su Borough is a good place to start a business,” Arvin said.

    McKechnie said 216 absentee ballots were sent out in District 3.

    As for the sales tax, despite all the heat it generated leading up to Election Day, the measure appears to have failed. Resoundingly.

The ordinance would have levied a 3-percent tax on items sold boroughwide and, in return, offered property owners a 7.3-mill cap on their taxes and an exemption on the first $20,000 of a home’s assessed value. When the dust had settled, 2,805 vote were cast in its favor while 9.401 were cast against it.

    On the school board end of things, so far incumbents seem to be ahead. Sarah Welton, a current member and former president of that board, leads her nearest challenger, Robert Doyle, 4,898 to 4,159. Erick Cordero, appointed to fill a seat vacated when member Brian Sullivan resigned this summer, took in 4,016 votes. His nearest competitor, Julie Collins, garnered 3,291. The widest margin so far is in the race for the seat Colver vacated. Mike Dunleavy holds 4,972 votes while his nearest competitor, Adam Boyd, has 3,279.

    Of course since school board seats are all at-large, all of the absentee, special needs and questioned ballots are still potentially a factor in each of those races.

    But one place where they won’t seem to make much of a difference is in the race for borough mayor. In that competition, incumbent Talis Colberg — history professor, attorney, former state Attorney General and former borough assemblyman — took in 9,001 votes. His only opponent, John Leiner, a Palmer farmer engaged in a long-standing dispute with a local gravel mine he says flooded his property and with the borough for its handling of the issue, trailed far behind with 2,207.

    The borough plans to have its election certified Oct. 20 during a special assembly meeting an hour before the body’s regular meeting.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.