Borough mayor revives racetrack regulations with veto

PALMER — Saying he thought the legislation didn’t get enough of a chance, Mat-Su Borough Mayor Larry DeVilbiss has revived proposed changes to the way the borough regulates racetracks.

“This legislation is deserving of being considered on its merits and then voted up or down. It had unanimous support from the planning commission,” DeVilbiss wrote in a Feb. 11 email announcing his veto.

The veto, and a possible vote to override it, is on the Mat-Su Borough Assembly’s agenda for Tuesday evening. In an interview Monday, DeVilbiss explained his reasoning.

“I don’t have an axe to grind or an opinion on the racetrack ordinance,” he said.

The regulation changes were proposed as a way to prevent ice races on Big Lake from running afoul of the law. The races pre-date the legislation and didn’t stop when it passed, but many in the community, including Bill Haller, a member of the borough’s planning commission, worried that they were now all of a sudden out of compliance and the borough could step in and stop them.

Haller described those changes as bringing common sense to the issue. One change would bring parity to borough code that currently holds racetracks to different standards than other businesses in terms of the amount of noise they are allowed to make. Another took out a bit about lighting requirements, the reasoning being that racetracks can’t operate at night, only operate in the summer and thus there’s always enough natural lighting to cover them.

DeVilbiss pointed this out in his veto email.

“It turns out that this was not just about snowmachines on Big Lake. This deserves being judged for its merits and not just shelved forever,” he wrote.

He went on to say that he wants the assembly to get away from the practice of tabling a measure indefinitely and would prefer to see legislation given a straight up-or-down vote.

While a motion to table legislation indefinitely can often involve a vote, it is a vote on whether or not to postpone the issue, not a vote on the whether the legislation is a good idea.

“I would rather see them voted on their merits … up or down. That was the main point of my veto,” he said.

Racetrack regulations have been a sticky issue in the borough, the subject of numerous hearings when they were initially passed. Racetracks in the Butte and near Trunk Road have sparked controversy.

DeVilbiss pointed out that the current raft of changes passed unanimously at the planning commission, but nobody who was in favor of the measure showed up to talk to the assembly about it.

“We did have other parties that were involved in the development of that ordinance and I don’t know where they were when this came to the assembly,” he said, noting that he hopes they will show up for Tuesday’s hearing on his veto. “I expect they will have woken up.”

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