WASILLA — With a new legislative session looming and budget season on the horizon, the borough assembly met Monday with the Valley’s state legislative delegation to talk priorities.

Not everyone who spoke from the state delegation gave a prediction for what this budget season is going to look like in Juneau. But those that did were gloomy in their prognosis. Which is to say the money on hand to spend likely won’t be much more than last year.

“I anticipate kind of a conservative year again, looking at the price of oil,” said Republican Rep. Wes Keller who represents Wasilla and the surrounding area. Republican Sen. Charlie Huggins pointed out that last year’s budget really only had capital projects in it by the grace of the federal government.

“We did not have a capital budget last year. It was all stimulus,” he said.

But the borough isn’t wanting for projects. Close to the front of the minds of most everyone assembled was the borough’s fledgling port, and among the upcoming port projects everyone seemed to be thinking about the rail line.

Borough Manager John Duffy said the next phase of the project that would extend railroad service to Port MacKenzie comes with a $56 million price tag.

“The rail spur is hugely important,” Huggins said.

But Assemblywoman Cindy Bettine said that in light of the cost, and given that the project would bring resources in the state’s interior substantially closer to tidewater, thus making them more economical to develop, the borough and the legislators should start taking a broader view when talking about the project.

“We’re going to have to sell this as a statewide project,” she said.

Republican Rep. Mark Neuman who represents the borough’s northern reaches, said what the project needs is for some of those coal mines, gold mines and other resource extracting companies to hop on board.  

“It is a statewide project but what we need to do is put together firm transportation agreements,” he said. “With the deficits that we’re facing it might be difficult but we could do it.”

Neuman said he would like to see an in-state natural gas line running from Prudhoe Bay down to the port. He said the line, in some ways, would be competing with other in-state line proposals and with the large-diameter line running gas to the Lower 48 — the line envisioned by the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act, or AGIA.

“The opportunity for Alaska to expand our opportunities to develop our resources is very good,” Neuman said. But what he wants to see is, “instead of a politically driven pipeline, a commercially driven pipeline.”

As for other projects, everyone seemed to be in agreement that the list of eight road projects borough citizens voted to sell $15 million bonds for in the October 2008 election should be somewhere near the top of the list. The bonds were to be sold to pay for 30 percent of the projects if and only if the state agreed to pay for the rest. But in the last state budget cycle, the projects mainly went unfunded.

Sen. Linda Menard (R-Wasilla) and Rep. Carl Gatto (R-Palmer) said they would like to see the Palmer Senior Center project finally get fully funded.

“They’re in a fire trap. I’m not kidding. They’re in a fire trap,” Gatto said.

And Palmer, with its Pioneer Home and senior housing has a good opportunity to become a destination for those seeking to live out their twilight years.

“Palmer will more than likely be a retirement community for people in the state,” he said.

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