Assembly passes $400M budget

PALMER — Though the mayor said he might veto pieces of it and though it took two weeks and 42 amendments, the Mat-Su Borough Assembly Wednesday wrapped up its budgeting process.

“Is there objection to a $400 million question? I don’t hear any, so congratulations, that’s our budget concluded,” mayor Larry DeVilbiss said at the end of deliberations, receiving polite applause in return.

The final mill rate for next year: 9.852 areawide and .52 non-areawide. Some residents pay both of those, some just the areawide. Most also pay for some kind of road or fire service area. One mill is equal to $1 on $1,000 of a home’s assessed value. So, the average borough home, which the borough usually pegs at $200,000, would pay $1,970.40 in areawide taxes.

The tax rate is essentially flat over this past year, when the areawide tax was 9.691; however, assemblyman Ron Arvin pointed out Tuesday that without factoring in the money borough residents chose to tax themselves through school and road bonds, next year’s tax is actually 9.631.

But the assembly did manage to fund things they were looking for, things like a fire chief for departm ents north of Big Lake, a 3 percent increase in funding for schools, which are, as always, the biggest recipient of borough tax dollars.

“On behalf of our district and the students and the staff and the greater community, I want to thank the assembly for its work and promise to be a great steward of the public’s funds,” schools superintendent Deena Paramo said to the assembly.

Another note of thanks came for a much smaller budget line item to study how best to build a facility to treat the borough’s wastewater.

“I just want to thank everybody for passing it tonight. I’m getting old and tired, but at least it’s a seed planted and I’m going to stick around long enough to see it grow,” said Helen Munoz, who frequently testifies to the assembly on wastewater issues.

A lot of the funds spent on those items were created through cutting other parts of the budget. But the borough did bump up revenues through a nearly doubling of its tax on cigarettes and other tobacco products by $1 a pack to $2.20 a pack in tax.

The borough expects those increased revenues, even despite the likelihood some smokers will choose to quit when their habit gets more expensive, to bring in an extra $3 million.

As for vetoes, DeVilbiss said he has one in mind, but it won’t change revenue one way or the other. It has to do with how the borough distributes money it gets from the state as the local share of money generated from fees through the Department of Motor Vehicles.

The assembly chose to stop sharing that money with local cities like it used to and DeVilbiss said he thinks that will exacerbate problems in the way roads are fixed and maintained.

“I’m taking a look at that,” DeVilbiss said in a brief interview Thursday evening. “If I do veto that there will be a lengthy education on our road service areas.”

He has until 6 p.m., June 4 to file a veto.

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