Big Lake 1 step closer to city vote

BIG LAKE — With 200 signatures turned in Thursday, the residents of Big Lake are about a year away from getting to vote on whether to form a new city.

The man who handed in the signatures to the state was Jim Faiks, who considers himself a convert to the city of Big Lake cause.

“I was very much opposed to that plan,” he said at a press conference Friday about his initial reaction to the notion of incorporating the Big Lake area into the Valley’s fourth city.

Mostly, Faiks said, he didn’t want his taxes to go up. But then he started looking at the numbers.

“I was quite surprised what I learned,” he said.

The numbers as he broke them down are pretty simple. Currently, the Mat-Su Borough collects $1.3 million in road taxes in the Big Lake area. That goes to road maintenance, but the maintenance contract is for $600,000.

The proposed city would do just roads and possibly parks. The $700,000 not going into that contract could easily pay for an administrator and the costs of holding council meetings, supporters say.

“We can do a better job for less money,” Faiks said.

Seems like a lot of trouble, though, just to get better road service but that’s not the only thing being a city would accomplish.

Ina Mueller, president of the Big Lake Chamber of Commerce, said the current plans for state development is to send traffic heading north out of Port MacKenzie and even from the proposed Knik Arm Bridge straight through Big Lake on Big Lake Road.

“Our goal by incorporating is to keep it from running right down the middle of Big Lake,” she said of efforts to build a highway route capable of handling that kind of traffic.

Big Lake sits in a potentially precarious position. The Mat-Su Borough is building up its port operations in Point MacKenzie. Most people agree the rail line being built to serve the port will be what finally touches of a boom there. When the Knik Arm Bridge opens, Big Lake will overnight find itself 15 minutes from Anchorage.

“It’s going to happen,” Mueller said of the changes coming down the line. “Either we become proactive, work with the developers, or it’s reactive.”

Proactive is certainly what Bill Kramer, president of the Big Lake Community Council, would prefer. He said the vote of the council to support incorporation wasn’t unanimous, but it was a thumbs-up. And it was a vote the council considered for at least six months.

“We’re not forming this city to oppose development,” Kramer said. However, some of the area’s largest current road projects all seem to end right at Big Lake’s boundaries.

“If we don’t do something, there’s going to be upwards of 20,000 vehicles coming down through Big Lake,” he said.

Traffic numbers like that are on the same level as downtown Wasilla.

Mueller and Faiks pointed out that Big Lake has a lot of things that you would associate with a small town. It has a small airport, a chamber of commerce. There’s a library, elementary school, fire station, post office and shopping center all kind of clustered around a downtown core.

Mueller said that even now Big Lake Road is kind of a hindrance to that sort of walking core of downtown the area’s comprehensive plan calls for. Kids at the elementary school can’t cross it to go to the fire station, for instance, because the road has a 45 mph speed limit.

The community council is seeking ways to fix that, but those efforts would be for naught if the road is converted into a highway.

Second-class cities can actually grown to take on other services. Houston, for instance, runs the local fire department. Mueller said that it will be up to residents to decide whether they want the city to grow into those new areas.

The bottom line is that forming a city, electing a city council that would then select a mayor, would give the city of Big Lake a seat at the negotiating table, supporters say. It would raise the volume of the area’s voice when it comes time to decide things like highway routes.

Just like the mayors of Palmer, Wasilla and Houston are advocates for their respective cities, so would be the mayor of Big Lake. And, say what you will about any of those cities, they have a stronger voice than unincorporated communities like Sutton, Willow, the Butte.

“Or Big Lake,” Kramer said.

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