Borough agrees to sell old Iditarod land to City of Wasilla

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough Assembly blazed through a 9-page agenda in an hour and 35 minutes on Tuesday night before going into executive session, but not before addressing a pair of key issues.

The first was the approval of the sale of the old Iditarod Elementary School grounds to the City of Wasilla for $1.5 million.

A pair of community members spoke in opposition to approval of the sale, citing concerns that school enrollments are bound to increase, and the borough should hold on to that land in the event it needs to build more schools.

Assembly member Barbara Doty requested, in absentia, that the vote to approve be put off until the next borough meeting so that she could vote, but her request was voted down unanimously and the ordinance to sell the property was approved without objection.

The sale enables the borough to cover the approximate $600,000 cost of demolishing the old school and bank the rest.

“I think it’s a good deal,” Borough Mayor Vern Halter said later in closing comments. “We were hoping to net a million dollars for the borough, and it’s not, but it’s pretty darn close.”

Wasilla Mayor Bert Cottle was on hand for the meeting.

“I think it’s great,” Cottle said. “We’ve been after this for about three years trying to acquire this property.”

Cottle said the acquisition still has to be approved by the Wasilla City Council, which will address the matter for the first time at Monday night’s meeting.

Assuming the purchase is approved by the council, Cottle said the plan will be to go to the voters with a 1-cent sales tax to build an additional Wasilla Police Department facility.

“We’ve outgrown the PD where we’re at. We need to come up with a new location, a new building that fits all of our needs,” Cottle said. “We plan to forward-fund it like we did with the library.”

That 1-cent sales tax would go to the voters in October, but Cottle said the city needs to have the language for the measure filed by July.

The other long-standing issue addressed by the assembly on Tuesday was funding repairs to the dock at Port MacKenzie.

Two funding requests sought approval — 17-034, which would award a bid of $532,357 to Sandstrom & Sons Inc. to fix the dock, and 17-013, which would appropriate $169,000 to repair the barge dock.

Assembly Member Jim Sykes asked why those ordinances, which both address dock repairs, were listed under separate ordinances. Borough Manager John Moosey responded that the smaller sum in 17-013 would go toward immediate ‘shoring up’ of the dock to protect it from further damage.

With $850,000 in total staring at the borough in dock repair costs, assembly member George McKee brought up the name of an old boondoggle that cost the borough dearly.

“I’m curious about how much more money we’re going to need for the port. Right now the port couldn’t pay back a nickel,” McKee said. “What do we have to do to stop it from being another MV Susitna? That’s my concern.”

The MV Susitna was the planned ferry from the port to Anchorage that never got off the ground and left the borough millions of dollars in debt.

Moosey responded that the port was an investment worth protecting.

“It’s an asset to ourselves and to the state of Alaska, and at this point, we’re trying to protect our investment,” Moosey said.

Moosey then commented on the fate of the port getting a new paying customer in Astoria, a wood-chipping company based in Oregon that has been considering moving into the port to ship products to Asia.

“I’d say that’s a coin flip, a 50/50 chance right now,” Moosey said. “If that goes through, the port will be able to pay operating expenses. That’s our best chance right now… Right now we’re viewing this as taking care of our investment.”

Sykes echoed McKee’s concerns.

“I appreciate what assembly member McKee said; I hope we do have a paying customer at the port,” Sykes said, before turning to Moosey, “Just in case we lose that 50/50 is there a plan in place to mothball the port for future use?”

“Yes,” Moosey replied.