Borough loads budget with projects

PALMER — Over the course of two days and more than 100 amendments, the Mat-Su Borough Assembly found money for trails, schools and numerous other projects residents are likely going to notice.

On Thursday, the assembly passed its fiscal year 2015 budget. In the end, the assembly managed to find enough money to drop the property tax rate from 9.85 this year to 9.66 for next year.

Trails

Assemblyman Jim Sykes scraped together money left over in various projects under the Community Development department to fund trail projects. With an assist from Assemblyman Steve Colligan, $251,398 will head to the Jim Creek Motorized Recreation Area. The initial idea had been to just prepare the site and get plans in order. Colligan said he’d like the additional $100,000 he added to the appropriation take the project further.

“I would like to see some motorized development,” he said.

Another Sykes project grabbed money to work on fixing the trial head used to climb Bodenburg Butte. The trail, quite possibly the most popular in the borough, has become a problem for neighbors who complain of overflow parking clogging area streets.

A couple more motorized trials, the Eska Creek Trail and the trail that crosses Puritan Creek, also got money through Colligan’s help.

Trails in another well-used borough destination, Hatcher Pass, also got an assist.

Assemblyman Jim Colver came to the budget meeting seeking $250,000 for Nordic ski trails up there.

“A quarter of a million dollars is a lot of flippin’ trails,” said assemblyman Ron Arvin, before he proposed and won a reduction to $100,000. Colver managed to pump it back up to $150,000.

Marketing

Speaking of Hatcher Pass, the assembly decided to try to jumpstart a downhill ski area there using the power of marketing. Initially, Assemblyman Darcie Salmon proposed $60,000 to market the idea of a downhill ski area.

“It was as ‘PFA’ number. That means it was plucked from the air,” Salmon said. “It’s a start, and we’ll see what that gets us.”

But the assembly apparently wanted to take another step further, adding $40,000 to that and expanding the mission slightly to add a focus on selling off land in the area for subdivisions.

Schools

Some of the more interesting bits of budget ju-jitsu was used to take care of the Mat-Su Borough School District.

The district had asked for and written into its budget a 3 percent increase in the amount of funds it got from the borough.

Instead of doing that, at the urging of Arvin the assembly allowed the district to keep all the money it had left over when this year’s budget cycle ended. The district is usually allowed to keep 75 percent, with the other 25 going into the borough’s School Site Selection Fund.

Arvin said the leftover funds would pencil out to be about the same as the 3 percent the district was asking for.

But Arvin wasn’t done with the school site selection fund. Next he pulled $1 million out of it to use to push forward plans to extend Trunk Road into an access route for Machetanz Elementary School.

He pointed out that, while the borough is building five schools right now, it’s already bought all the land it needs, so a fund to buy school sites isn’t a big priority. With all those schools coming on line, the borough won’t need to build more, at least not right away.

“We are settled for several years to come, so it’s not like we’re scraping money that we’re going to need next year,” he said.

The most wrangling over a budget item came with $350,000 the assembly found for pre-school. The school district had sought a grant from the state to continue its preschool program, but that fell through.

Assemblyman Matthew Beck tried to get an amendment through to grant the district $350,000. It failed 3-3, since Colver hadn’t arrived at the meeting. When he did arrive, he revived the move and it passed unanimously. The district got its pre-school money.

Other projects

Also included in the budget with help from the assembly:

Vern Halter won twin $75,000 budget items. One helps build softball fields in Meadow Lakes, and the other helps build a double-vault toilet at the Trapper Creek Community Center.

Sykes got the money he’d told constituents he’d fight for to get started on a grant application to get federal money to buy out properties suffering major flooding and erosion issues in the Butte.

Also — Salmon got money for the Sexual Assault Response Team. Arvin said he’d like to see charities or private donations take over the borough’s contribution to the team. He noted that last year the assembly had said it was a one-time grant.

Mayor Larry DeVilbiss said he didn’t think it would be a one-time grant, or even a two-time grant.

“I can promise you it will be there next year,” he said. “(Mat-Su) Youth Court started that way, and 15 years later it’s a permanent part of doing business. I’m just going to throw out my little gripe here.”

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