Borough mulls economic development corporation

PALMER — There’s a lot unknowns yet about a proposal to spin off the Mat-Su Borough’s economic development department into a private or semi-private corporation or non-profit.

Here’s a few:

What form will this organization take? How much of the current department’s functions will transfer over? How will it relate to existing organizations doing that kind of work like, for instance, Mat-Su Resource and Community Development, the various chambers of commerce and the Mat-Su Business Alliance?

“That’s what this whole conversation is about is to figure out what those pieces are,” Assemblyman Steve Colligan, who proposed the idea, said in an interview Monday.

That conversation has taken up time at two assembly meetings already — most recently on Dec. 17 — and is planned to take up the bulk of a work session at the start of the year. The borough has brought on a consultant, Eden Lovejoy, founder of yourbusinesslifestyle.com

She said her plan was to spend January meeting with the borough assembly, borough staff and other communities, then gather input from the private sector in February. Part of that conversation will be finding out what kind financial commitments the borough could count on there.

“Should the borough decide to create an economic development corporation we expect that you would like to see how the private sector would support that,” Lovejoy said at the Dec. 17 meeting. “We will articulate to the private sector the concept based on the feedback gathered from all the parties at the front-end.”

Lovejoy said that in March she’d present a final report to the assembly.

Colligan said that part of the reason to create this kind of an entity is to get participation from the private sector. Right now, if an industry or a corporation wants to sponsor or donate to the borough’s economic development efforts they can’t.

“There’s no way a resource company or a manufacturing company to participate with the borough whereas if it was a non-profit they could make a donation,” Colligan said.

At the Dec. 17 meeting there wasn’t anything like an opposition to the idea but there was some talk of delaying the conversation.

Borough Manager John Moosey cautioned the assembly against delaying past March.

“Because of the deadline for the budget, if the borough is going to go forward with this action, we are going to be in deep budget talks in March and April,” he told the body.

Assemblyman Ron Arvin agreed that waiting wasn’t the best option.

“We should make a go/no-go on this issue instead of it continuing to drag on for some time. That’s not helpful for anybody,” he said.

In the end, Colligan said, he thinks that the borough has reached the limit it should be willing to spend out of taxpayer dollars for economic development. Talks of a $1 million budget for that department are what spurred on the idea of spinning it off.

“At the end of the day we’re spending about 400 grand of property taxpayer money on this right now,” he said.

Any increase there, he said, should probably come from the private sector.

“Economic development should be driven by business people, not politicians,” Colligan said.

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