Assembly balks at farmland proposal

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough Assembly has balked at the mayor’s proposal to work with a nonprofit to manage its farmland.

The borough owns farmland and has interest in farmlands, but borough Mayor Larry DeVilbiss asserts in a memorandum that some of those lands aren’t in compliance with covenants and the borough isn’t addressing that.

“I’m just concerned right now that we are doing nothing and we’ve got land that should be on the market, we’ve got other lands that have simply not been managed at all,” DeVilbiss said in his regular podcast.

His resolution envisioned working with Alaska Farmland Trust to come up with a plan.

“Ideally, the mayor believes that the best resolution would be one where the borough transfers management authority, agricultural rights and development rights over borough-owned agricultural lands to the trust and the borough can focus its efforts elsewhere,” reads the memo accompanying DeVilbiss’ resolution.

But the assembly seemed confused about DeVilbiss’ intentions at its regular meeting Tuesday.

“So farm out borough land to the farmland trust? To what end?” Assemblyman Ron Arvin said.

He described the trust as a group with a mission to preserve farmland from development into housing or something besides farming.

“It is the Mat-Su Borough Assembly’s responsibility to protect and to decide what is the best use of land that is owned by the public,” he said. “We are embarking on a slippery slope here to hand over or even discuss the option, explore the option, for an outside entity to manage lands in the borough.”

Assemblyman Steve Colligan described the plan as a sole-source contract. He said he would like to see a broader discussion than one between the mayor and the trust.

Assemblyman Jim Sykes objected to how much of the plan seemed to be based on what the mayor believed.

“I don’t think that that’s good public policy,” he said. “You can believe whatever you want, Mr. Mayor, but you may not be mayor forever and this is public policy.”

He said that a move like this would be “the biggest change in our borough code in 40 years.”

Assemblyman Vern Halter spoke in favor of doing something about managing agricultural lands.

“I’ve been on this assembly five years now. It’s the first time we’ve actually taken a shot at this,” he said.

Eventually, the assembly tabled the proposal, directing DeVilbiss to sit down with Arvin and Sykes and, as DeVilbiss explained in his podcast, “bring forward some language and some rationale or justification for doing something.”

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