Borough beset with options

Is anyone else starting to get confused about recent goings on at the Mat-Su Borough?

A recent series of unrelated events have somehow combined to create a perfect storm at the top levels of the organization.

If anyone needs a recap, those events were set in motion when longtime borough manager John Duffy resigned. Next, the borough assembly decided to put a question on the ballot asking voters whether the borough should switch to a strong mayor form of governance. If passed, that change would hand most of the responsibilities of the manager over to an elected mayor. And last, but not least, Borough Mayor Talis Colberg is resigning to take the helm at Mat-Su College.

So, the upshot of all this is that we have no idea of who is going to be running the show a few short months from now or even if that person is going to be an appointed or elected official.

All of this is not really any one person’s fault. Were Colberg to have stayed in place — and we’re not saying he should, we wish him well in his new job and believe he made the right choice — the way the ballot initiative is written, his duties would have changed.

Being a strong mayor is not the job he signed up for and not a task voters selected him to do.

The sponsor of the initiative, Assemblyman Mark Ewing, said that, by law, the ballot measure had to be written a certain way. We have no reason to doubt that.

On the other side of things, the assembly is continuing its manager search, despite the uncertainty the ballot initiative inspires. It’s tough work, especially since the search is now for someone who may only be on the job for a handful of months before the position is eviscerated or eliminated.

But there does seem to be a way forward, one we saw almost immediately when talking with the borough clerk Monday. The clerk, being an apolitical borough employee, did not express an opinion as to which was a better option but she outlined two.

The first choice would be to compress the schedule to lump the mayoral election in with the borough assembly and school board election October 5. We find this option to have many shortcomings. Voters in this instance would blindly decide who will be mayor, not knowing what type of job they are hiring that person to do.

The second option, the clerk said, is to hold a special election after the regular election. This, we think, is the better of the two choices. A special election is costly but the question of how the government is structured will be settled before voters are asked to decide who should fill the spot.

As for the manager position? Well, that’s a stickier wicket. The assembly can’t very well stop looking for Duffy’s replacement just because a change is on the ballot. This type of search takes time and to begin it anew if the strong mayor initiative fails would leave the borough rudderless for far longer than we would find acceptable.

In Duffy’s absence the government is churning along with the assistant manager stepping up to take on some of his duties. We have no reason to believe it’s anything less than the same quality of work being produced before Duffy left. But in any organization it’s hard for a temporary person to make big decisions with lasting impacts.

Our hope is that the potential pool of candidates is an understanding and flexible lot and that this big uncertainty doesn’t scare away too many of the most qualified among them.