Assembly passes borough budget

PALMER — After deliberating the Mat-Su Borough’s budget for two three-hour meetings this week, the Mat-Su Borough Assembly passed a budget on Thursday with a 10.322 areawide mill rate and .511 non-areawide mill rate, effectively reducing the mill rate from last year despite the additional cuts to School Bond Debt Reimbursement handed down by the governor.

Of the more contentious cuts that passed last year, Assemblyman Jesse Sumner proposed an amendment to leave the Alaska Municipal League and save over $40,000 in dues to AML. Sumner’s argument was that if the Assembly left AML last year and rejoined halfway through, the Borough received the full benefit for half the cost.

While Sumner did not see the value of being a part of the AML and Assemblyman Ted Leonard noted that he believed the Borough’s lobbyist and membership in AML were redundant, the budget amendment could not muster the votes to pass.

“Last year I kind of tolerated this vote but it was the wrong direction to go,” said Mayor Vern Halter.

On Thursday, Sumner’s Amendment 11 failed with Sumner, Leonard and George McKee voting in favor. Sumner offered a number of amendments in an effort to reduce the borough budget, including two aimed at the animal shelter. Sumner noted the disproportionate amount of animals brought in by residents from Palmer and Wasilla compared to the fees paid toward the animal shelter by each city government.

“I don’t think that it’s responsible for us to grow any department’s budget by more than 10 percent per year consecutively and I’m just not sure what metric we’re measuring that is going to be vastly improved by 10 percent down there by adding two new manager positions,” said Sumner.

Deputy Borough Manager George Hays detailed the long plight of the animal shelter and recent turnaround. Sumner’s amendment 3 failed 5-2 with Sumner and Leonard voting in support. Sumner’s amendment 4 aimed to flat fund animal care in the borough, which failed with only Sumner voting in support. Sumner did have success in passing an oral amendment on Thursday. Noting that the first quarter tax revenues for marijuana dispensaries was nearly two times what had been projected, Sumner moved to increase the Borough’s marijuana tax revenue from $900,000 to $1.3 million after seeing the drastic increase in sales over the last few months.

“Everybody was high last quarter,” joked Halter.

Sumner’s amendment to the marijuana tax revenues passed with Assemblyman Dan Mayfield, George McKee and Assemblywoman Tam Boeve voting in opposition. Before the borough budget was set, Mayfield made a separate motion to leave the mill rate higher than it was ultimately set. Mayfield’s motion would be to set the mill rate at .387, arguing that the monies set aside during last year’s budget process for protection from further School Bond Debt Reimbursement were well used and would be wise to do so again. Sumner argued that the Assembly should make their best effort to set the mill rate accurately and that those monies would be better served in the pockets of Valley taxpayers than sitting in a borough bank account awaiting need. Ultimately, Mayfield’s amendment failed 4-3 and Tim Hale’s motion to set the mill rate at 10.322 passed without objection.