Borough on track with trains

PALMER - It was a relatively short meeting, yet the Mat-Su Borough Assembly somehow managed to talk about the Alaska Railroad in two separate debates.

First on the agenda was the issue of setbacks. A setback is essentially the distance away from some sort of line that a structure has to be. In this case, it's the edge of the railroad's property line.

If the railroad is a public entity, that setback has to be 25 feet. If it's a private entity it has to be 10 feet. But the railroad is a state-owned corporation. The line between public and private is kind of blurry. The railroad considers itself private. The borough attorney in 2009 decided it was public.

"The issue came up because nobody every asked borough council is it a private or is it a public," borough attorney Nick Spiropoulos said.

That ruling has already caused some problems for a few people.

Eagle Crest Ministries in Sutton, for instance, wants to build on property board member Eileen Haines intends to give the organization. They'd been working to build a camp since before the 2009 ruling.

"One of our buildings is five feet into the 25-foot easement," Haines told the assembly. "It's really a frustrating snafu for us."

The ordinance the assembly was considering fixed the problem by circumventing the public/private distinction and just saying the railroad gets a 10-foot setback.

Assemblyman Warren Keogh, who represents the Sutton area, among others, urged his colleagues to vote in favor of the change.

The issue seemed to bring up more than just the setbacks. The borough is working with Alaska Railroad on an extension of rails to Point MacKenzie. Assembly members started wondering about what is going to be allowed within the corridor the railroad has planned out to get there.

"Well, this is very enlightening," assemblyman Jim Colver said. "We don't really know what the bundle of rights in that right of way are, and we better find out because we've got big decisions pending on our major project."

Assemblyman Ron Arvin agreed.

"I don't think it's something we can address today, but we need to address how is the borough going to control its interest in a 200-foot-wide easement going from the Parks Highway to Point MacKenzie and what we want to happen there in the long term," Arvin said.

Eventually, the setback change passed without objection. The second railroad issue to come up Tuesday had to do with Palmer and the contentious issue of tracks in the downtown area there. Debate over the question of whether or not they should be removed enveloped the city in 2009 and 2010.

The assembly passed a resolution urging the Alaska Railroad to rebuild the tracks into Palmer "and further north if necessary" to a usable state for passenger and freight traffic.

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