24 years of Mat-Su service: John Moosey reflects

John Moosey is a career public servant and he believes pubic officials – appointed and elected – should keep a laser-like focus on providing effective services to citizens with efficiency and the lowest cost. Anything apart from that, like being dragged into culture wars, distracts from the core mission.

More than anything, Moosey believes in economic development, the creation of jobs and an economic base to support local services.

Moosey retired as Palmer’s city manager June 17 and reflected in an interview over 13 years as manager of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough from 2011 to 2020, and as Palmer’s city manager until mid-June.

He loves Mat-Su and particularly Palmer, where he continues to live with his wife, Michelle. After the Mooseys moved to Palmer they persuaded their two adult children, Becki and Jake, to move north also. Lots were purchased on the same street in Palmer where John and Michelle live, and there are house building plans in the near future.

Soon the cul de sac will be busy with grandchildren. There are already seven of those, which will keep things busy in retirement.

John grew up in Canton, Ohio, receiving his Bachelor of Arts at Bluffton University. He received his Masters of Public Administration at Kent State University.

John and Michelle met at Bluffton.

“She was a sophomore transfer student. It’s been us since the first date,” he said.

The movie was “9 to 5” with Dolly Parton and Lilly Tomlin, a famous comedy about gender equality in the workplace. As a budding city administrator, it was good training.

What did Michelle think of uprooting from the Midwest to Alaska”

“You’re crazy,” Moosey recalled her saying. “She wasn’t too keen on moving to Minnesota either. Now she wouldn’t leave Alaska.”

Palmer embodies Moosey’s vision of good government at least cost, he believes. The city has maintained its modest three-mill property tax and three percent sales tax for 30 years, and shows no signs of changing. The city’s council and Mayor Steve Carrington seem set to carry on the tradition.

There will always be periodic bumps, however, and Moosey has seen his share of them. He has always been a municipal manager. For eight years prior to Alaska he was manager for Chicago County in Minnesota and before that in small cities in Ohio.

Minnesota offered Moosey’s first experience of a bump, with a crash in local property values in 2006. “We had to undo four years of our work,” in building the county. It was disheartening but it also prepared him for things to come in Alaska.

By 2010 he was ready for change and the Mat-Su Borough manager’s job came open with the retirement of John Duffy, the previous manager.

Minnesota had had its disappointments but the job in Alaska was exciting. Mat-Su’s borough covered an area the size of West Virginia and the region was growing rapidly.

As Moosey arrived in 2010 a pro-development borough assembly, and former manager Duffy had launched ambitious economic development projects including a cross-Knik Arm ferry paid for by federal funds, development of the borough-owned Port MacKenzie and an extension of the Alaska Railroad, those paid with state funds.

A highly-effective cadre of state legislators from Mat-Su were working closely with local officials. That included Charlie Huggins, a Senate President, and Bill Stoltze, a cochair of the House Finance Committee.

An ambitious state-led plan for a Knik Arm crossing, a bridge spanning the northern arm of Cook Inlet, was in the advanced planning stage, too. It had been talked of for decades.

Mat-Su’s population was growing rapidly, which posed new but exciting challenges for local leaders.

There were local initiatives too, particularly in building roads and trails to serve a growing population. There was state money available. Then-Gov. Sean Parnell was very supportive of Mat-Su.

Voters were supportive, too. Population growth posed special challenges, although they were good ones. Mat-Su voters built six new schools and borough voters approved a $216 million in bonds to pay for them. The state pledged to pay for half of the borough’s debt service on the bonds, which gave local voters confidence.

The state later reneged on its promise, which left Moosey and other Mat-Su leaders scrambling to cover half the costs of the bonds. That was after Huggins, Stoltze had left the Legislature and Parnell had left state government. This was the first real jolt for Moosey as borough manager, and it reminded him of what had happened in Minnesota.

At that point the world had changed for Alaska. Oil prices collapsed in 2016, leading to sharp cuts in state funds and money previously available to Mat-Su and other Alaska local governments.

Projects like the railroad extension were suddenly stopped. The rail link itself as two-thirds built (and still is). Mat-Su had to scrape together local and federal funds for the port, which was itself linked to completion of the rail spur.

On 2014 Bill Walker was elected governor, replacing Sean Parnell. The new governor was supportive of Mat-Su – no governor could ignore its fastest-growing region – but Walker his hands full keeping the machinery of state government intact with oil revenues a fraction of those prior to the 2016 crash, and no other sources of revenue.

Also, Walker had a North Slope natural gas pipeline as his priority, and though that would greatly have benefited Mat-Su it also became a preoccupation that diverted attention from local needs.

Things changed as the effects of the oil price collapse rippled through the state, including Mat-Su. State funding for projects dried up as the governor and Legislature drew down state funds to sustain vital services like schools and public safety.

The failure of the state to meet its commitment to back local school bond debt hit hard. The borough was responsible for making the full payment and with the state funds absent Moosey remembers scrambling to find several million dollars in days to fill the hole.

Mat-Su was still growing but the state could no longer be generous in helping fund local needs, like roads, to serve a larger population.

Borough elections in 2018 also brought in an assembly that seemed less focused on economic development. The assembly’s priorities seemed to change, and there were efforts to cut spending as state funds continued to tighten.

Some of this may have been caused by disappointments that the borough’s big development initiatives did not progress. The reasons for this were easily seen: State funds to complete the railroad had dried up. Without the railroad, the borough’s vision for Port MacKenzie was clouded.

Earlier, opposition by the Municipality of Anchorage to the cross-Knik Arm ferry led to that city’s refusal to allow a ferry terminal to be built on its side of the Inlet, which made the ferry problematic.

Cuts to Mat-Su’s economic development program were particularly discouraging. “The development budget was cut from $1.5 million yearly to $1 million, then $500,000, and then zero is the span of two to three years,” Moosey said.

Palmer and Wasilla kept development initiatives going at a local level and Palmer’s efforts with its city-owned airport and in encouraging annual events like the Great Aviation gathering, which attract thousands of aviation enthusiasts, have been very successful.

Crystal Nygard, now deputy city administrator at Wasilla, is also launching local initiatives, building on the work of the nonprofit Mat-Su Business Alliance, which she headed before taking on her Wasilla city job.

Wasilla is now working on developing its airport in parallel with Palmer’s initiatives, but the focus there may be on commuter aviation such as air passenger service to Anchorage. Palmer’s airport has found its niche in serving general aviation as well as support of aerial firefighting in summer and emergency medivacs year-around.

In 2018 Moosey was feeling worn down from the demands of managing the borough amid the ongoing budget pressures, and he began to think about finding something less crisis-driven to fill out his career until retirement.

“Being borough manager is a 24-hour job seven days a week. There are no days off,” he said. This is something Mike Brown, the present borough manager, knows well.

As luck would have it, the Palmer city manager job came open at that time. Moosey applied and got it.

Moosey already lived in Palmer with his family and he liked the slower pace of a long-settled small town with its community-minded local businesses, local arts and events like the “Friday Fling,” which hosts local crafts. At Palmer he could devote energies to supporting city workers in local services like street maintenance and snow plowing.

Not that there weren’t challenges, such as the big windstorm that swept Mat-Su two years ago and the collapse of the roof of Palmer’s public library. Plans are now underway to rebuild the library.

Recently there has been a lot of cooperation between the borough and its major cities of Palmer and Wasilla. Funding for a water-sewer link between Palmer and Wasilla is a prime example. The borough is helping to pay for that and it will enable both cities to continue to meet public needs, because Mat-Su’s population is still growing.

Moosey is encouraged about those things. Despite the periodic bumps he sees a good future for Mat-Su.

It’s why he and Michelle will stay. Of course, there is all those grandchildren, too.