4 vetoes for DeVilbiss

PALMER — At 5 p.m., Tuesday, two new Mat-Su Borough assemblymen will take their seats. At 6 p.m., they’ll be part of a meeting to decide what to do with Mayor Larry DeVilbiss’ four latest vetoes.

Issued a week ago, the vetoes target four items passed before the assembly:

• An ordinance that would have begun the eminent domain process to seize lands and homes from the last remaining holdouts in the way of the planned Bogard Road extension.

• A resolution amending the plan to build the second phase of a road project in the Hatcher Pass area. The changes were mostly due to changes in the amount of money included in a federal grant for the project.

• An ordinance restricting which homes phone companies can deliver the yellow pages to and how they can be delivered.

• An ordinance that would let the borough assembly change road service areas in places where the roads maintained are the only roads available to access a subdivision or parcel or provide access required by borough rules.

DeVilbiss penned veto memos with each stroke of his veto pen. For the memo accompanying the Bogard Extension veto, he took the unusual step of driving three routes from Palmer to Wasilla and timing them.

DeVilbiss said he drove 13.6 miles in 17 minutes by taking the Parks Highway, drove 11.4 miles in 23 minutes on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway and drove 14.9 miles in 23 minutes using Palmer-Fishhook, Trunk and Bogard roads.

The Bogard Extension has been billed as an alternative corridor to alleviate overcrowding on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway. The process to figure out a route on which to build the road spanned several months and dozens of hours of public meetings in 2008.

“I have yet to meet a human being that preferred that route. At the same time, I don’t believe a less expensive alternative was even considered,” DeVilbiss wrote. “A simple upgrade of Palmer-Fishhook and its intersection with the Glenn would be less expensive and less invasive to current development.”

As for the Hatcher Pass veto, DeVilbiss again objected to the way the project was moving forward.

“Before we start carving up our Hatcher Pass property I want to see a designated area for resort/residential development in the future. I fully support the Nordic (ski trails) concept but believe that the economic impact is going to be negative for a very long time,” he wrote.

His veto memo for the phone book ordinance was very short.

“I do not like big phone books in my driveway either, but I do not think borough legislation is the solution. The big stick of the law does not fit the magnitude of the problem,” he wrote.

The final veto memo was also short and to the point.

“This ordinance removes a very useful power that was granted by state legislation and is a useful alternative to the cumbersome and often impossible alternative for changing RSA boundaries. The loss of power is a loss of effectiveness in serving the public interest.”

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