1 of 4 DeVilbiss vetoes stands

PALMER — Expressed as a batting average, Mat-Su Borough Mayor Larry DeVilbiss swung a .250 with regards to a raft of vetoes before the borough assembly Tuesday.

Of four vetoes he inked, only one stood up to assembly scrutiny. But that was mostly his doing.

DeVilbiss withdrew a veto that would have stopped the borough from exercising eminent domain powers over land needed to extend Bogard Road and a second veto that would have stopped the second phase of a project to build access to ski trails in Hatcher Pass.

“Veto is one of the only powers I’ve got and I used my veto to raise a related subject, and that was the apparent absence of any intent to do anything but trails up in that area,” DeVilbiss said of the Hatcher Pass veto.

He said he’s not opposed to ski trails and doesn’t even necessarily think the borough has to open the area to development of homes.

“I’m not saying that that’s what has to go in there, but I want that open as a possibility down the road,” he said. “So the management plan will be drawn up with that as an option.”

The assembly will have a chance to go over that plan before it is enacted.

As for the Bogard extension, DeVilbiss said he didn’t mean to re-open old wounds over the process to choose the right route for the road.

“I still believe that the most economic answer to that is completing Trunk Road to the Fishhook segment,” he said. “I have never questioned that we need another road to Wasilla.”

He withdrew that veto, he said, because it’s too far along in the project to change directions now.

“The horse was out of the barn,” he said.

As for the one the borough assembly chose to overturn, it had to do with the rules governing changes to road service area boundaries.

“In 2008 I believe it was, (the state) gave the borough, gave all boroughs, the option of adjusting these service area boundaries without an election on both sides of the boundary,” DeVilbiss said.

It used to be that to change boundaries there had to be a vote of everyone affected. Everyone in an RSA had to agree to let someone in or out. The borough assembly, though, chose to pass an ordinance barring itself from using that state-granted power.

“Just because the assembly may not have the backbone to say no to somebody that wants in or out of a service area is no reason to throw the tool out,” he said.

Asked if the rule allowed the assembly carte blanche powers, DeVilbiss said that there are checks built into the system already.

“You would have to have some amount of reason or you would have the public all over you,” he said.

And the veto that stood? It had to do with, of all things, telephone books.

The borough had passed rules for how phone companies can deliver the books, who they can be delivered to, and where they can be left. It was an attempt, according to the ordinance, to reduce both litter and the amount of waste dumped in the borough’s landfill.

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