Assembly overrides mayor on fire station

PALMER — An override of a Mat-Su Borough mayoral veto clears the way for a new fire station near Mat-Su Regional Medical Center.

The station will serve a number of purposes. It will act a warehouse, training center and ambulance bay for the borough’s emergency medical services. It will also house firefighting apparatus, including the borough’s biggest truck — an aerial platform-style ladder truck bought to protect the hospital and buildings in the area.

Borough Mayor Larry DeVilbiss objected to the way the fire station is to be funded. Instead of seeking voter approval to borrow the $9.25 million needed to build the facility, the borough assembly opted for so-called “certificates of participation” that allow the assembly to borrow without voter approval. Certificates of participation were used to build the Mat-Su Borough Animal Care and Regulation Shelter after voters shot down a ballot proposition for that facility.

“I believe it is inappropriate to encumber public indebtedness for 20 years without a vote of the taxpayers,” DeVilbiss said simply in his veto memorandum.

But the assembly disagreed.

“I do not support COPs for everything other than essential services that the population expects their government to provide,” Assemblyman Ron Arvin said in proposing to override DeVilbiss’ veto. “That would not include, by the way, an animal shelter.”

Arvin said at a previous meeting he worries that if the matter were put to a vote it would fail and leave the borough obliged to provide services, but without the ability to provide them.

Assemblyman Steve Colligan pointed out that if the station isn’t built, the ISO rating for the Central Mat-Su Fire Department could drop. ISO, or Insurance Services Organization, is a company that ranks fire departments. Those rankings are then used to calculate insurance rates. A negative change in that rating usually almost immediately results in a rise in insurance rates for homeowners across the entire service area.

“Everybody in the community will be paying for it one way or the other,” Colligan said.

Assemblyman Vern Halter expressed yet a third reason to override DeVilbiss’ veto.

“I think your veto is solid, put it to the vote,” Halter told DeVilbiss. But, he said, if “I don’t override your veto, with all due respect, we’re going to set this project off for two years.”

Currently, a rented fire station covers the hospital. The aerial platform is housed far enough away from the hospital that it doesn’t count as being able to protect it in ISO ratings.

The current storage facility for ambulance medical supplies is in a fire station on Seward Meridian Parkway. The stuff used to be in a relocatable building on the property, but that building had to be removed when the road was expanded. Now it’s all packed into a training room and tends to get in the way, blocking hallways and creating potential occupational safety hazards.

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