Arvin picked to serve as deputy mayor

PALMER — From now until borough voters pick a new mayor on Jan. 11, Assemblyman Ron Arvin will be running assembly meetings.

Talis Colberg, who quit as mayor to take a job as director of Mat-Su College, picked Arvin at Tuesday’s assembly meeting to replace Lynne Woods as deputy mayor. Term limits prevented Woods from seeking another term in this year’s assembly election.

The list of candidates for mayor should solidify next month. The borough has set the timeframe for candidate filings as Nov. 8 through Nov. 19.

Colberg set his resignation date in order that he could replace Woods and the assembly would not have to go without someone to run the meetings. That decision had the added bonus of pushing the election for his successor back until after the borough’s regular election, where voters were asked if they wanted to change drastically the duties of mayor. Voters declined.

Meanwhile, the borough assembly is mulling over candidates to replace John Duffy, the borough manager who resigned in April.

The assembly has been slowly whittling away at the list of qualified candidates, which has been culled three times so far.

Most recently, the borough announced Wednesday that the list of candidates down to four:

• Gregory Young, City Administrator of Ferndale, Wash.

• Desmond Mayo, Director of Finance with Crowley Petroleum Distribution

• Don Baird, Town Manager of Granby, Colo.

• Robert Reardon, Director of Operations and Maintenance with Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority, Tampa, Fla.

Those four candidates will be interviewed Tuesday using video conferencing.

Also at Tuesday’s meeting, the assembly certified the regular election results. A board of volunteers spent five days counting absentee, questioned and special needs ballots.

In the end, none of the borough elections has changed from the initial, unofficial count released on election night.

To recap; that means the new assembly members are Warren Keogh and Noel Woods and the new school board members are Neal Lacy and Lynn Gattis. Susan Pougher won another term on the school board.

Keogh and Woods were sworn in on Tuesday, Gattis, Pougher and Lacy on Wednesday.

Elsewhere on the ballot, voters approved one set of school bonds but shot down the set that would have built new athletic facilities. They also shot down a change in the form of government to a strong-mayor system, a package of road bonds, and an attempt to exempt borough candidates from Alaska Public Offices Commission financial disclosure rules.

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