Assembly should respect citizens’ work

What a difference a word makes.

In this case, it’s the difference between respecting hours, months and years of community members’ times and the pure, raw abuse of power at the Mat-Su Borough Assembly table.

This is a troubling pattern with the assembly of late where members who don’t like the recommendations of citizen boards, panels and committees ignore it entirely, or erase months of consensus-building with the swipe of a pen.

We’ve lost track of all the boards, ordinances, school site selection recommendations and other plans the assembly has revised on its whim, wiping out countless hours of work from residents.

Why ask our neighbors to give up their personal time to do the homework necessary to sit on a local board, to attend meetings and to answer questions from the public if all this is only busy work?

Further, to make matters worse for the people who live here, now Mat-Su Borough Mayor Larry DeVilbiss is stacking advisory boards with people who have testified to sharing his point of view, and with industry representatives who will serve business interests ahead of ours. And many local boards and commissions at the borough level are missing members and can’t meet for lack of a quorum.

All of this shows a clear lack of respect and value for the public and the public process.

How disrespectful to ask a committee to meet for months and draft a Jim Creek Master Plan, and then with the stroke of a pen to add the word “motorized?”

This word, this modification to the plan by Assemblyman Ron Arvin, hijacked the public process.

With this end run, Arvin thumbed his nose at all the people in the borough who volunteer their time sitting on boards, committees and community councils. Why read the packet, show up to meetings or cast hard votes if all that work can and will likely be undone when assembly members vote?

The Mat-Su Borough is 25,000 square miles of mostly wilderness. Surely that’s plenty of room for all of us to kick up our heels as we see fit.

Specifically, we have no issue with motorized users or with designating an area or trail systems that are set up for motorized use. However, we do prefer respectful users of all sorts to those who destroy trails and roar through salmon streams with no regard for other users or salmon stocks.

More than that, we abhor the disrespect the assembly has displayed for every person who participates in our local government process. By adding the word “motorized” to this title, the assembly voted to erase hours and hours of consensus-building among user groups in favor of its own agenda.

At the same meeting where this vote was passed, a large contingent of neighbors showed up to oppose the purchase of a school site in a questionable deal involving Assemblyman Noel Woods.

That so many of you showed up and spoke out gives us hope that at long last the assembly has awoken the sleeping giant in the Mat-Su.