Borough passes roof repairs for Wasilla Pool and Brett Ice Arena

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough Assembly approved the replacement of roofs on Brett Memorial Ice Arena and the Wasilla Pool at their regular Tuesday meeting. Ordinance 21-037 had been introduced in April and postponed to gather more information.

“I was on both roofs and I do believe they need to be replaced,” said Assemblyman Jesse Sumner.

The appropriation of $694,170.28 for the roof replacements passed without opposition. The Assembly also passed Ordinance 21-019 to exempt signs from setbacks to rights of way and property lines.

“The ordinance before you will exempt signs from the setback regulations allowing them closer to the pub right of way and adjacent lot lines side and rear. They will not allow them within the public right of way, though. This ordinance was put forward at request of assembly member Sumner however it was on our radar to bring forward eventually. Our department has identified a vast amount of setback violations,” said acting Development Services Manager Mark Whisenhunt.

Assemblywoman Stephanie Nowers questioned Public Works Director Terry Dolan if the signs would be permitted within the setback but not the right of way.

“The correct procedure is if you’re going to have your private property in the borough right of way, you need an encroachment permit in general. Now there’s engineering standards for how close a sign can be to the road just for the visibility type of issues so that when people come out of their driveway for example they can see left and right and be seen,” said Dolan.

Ordinance 21-019 passed without opposition.

“The biggest thing about this is that if you drive around the borough and you look, I think there’s so many violations of this that it is just not practical for us to ever actually enforce this. I mean I think you could try but you’d have hundreds of people down here that are small business owners and so you know I think that very few of these are really a large issue and might as well just allow it within the setback,” said Sumner.

Ordinance 21-042 came before the Assembly to extend the deadline for capital projects. Borough Manager Mike Brown said that 69 projects were not renewed, of those 30 were directed by administration.

“The stance we’re trying to take is anything that’s 10 yrs or older, we want to close those things out. In some cases we’ve had projects that extend for that period of time so we’re trying to rein that in just a little bit,” said Brown.

A handful of projects are awaiting survey results from the Department of Natural Resources and are not able to be completed within a year or two.

“Those we want to keep in place with hope that we’ll get those instructions and be able to close those projects out at some point. So that’s kind of a quick summary but we are looking at trying to pare that list down and especially age off the older projects if they haven’t been completed,” said Brown.

Ordinance 21-042 passed without objection. Ordinance 21-043 came before the assembly with properties that had been foreclosure on due to nonpayment of taxes. Land Disposal Foreclosure Specialist Lisa Gray provided a staff report.

“This ordinance is for the tax and LID foreclosure sale for October of this fall. Currently there are 37 properties on this list. Of those 37, 36 were foreclosed on for non payment of taxes,” said Gray. “The clerks deed for this 2014 and prior taxes and then 2015 LID was recorded in February of 2019, so that is when the borough became the owner of these properties. The former record owner does have repurchase rights and so the Alaska statute says that the former record owner has repurchase rights for 10 years from the date of the clerks deed or until the time the borough sells the property. So it’s been 2 years and that’s kind of what the status is of these properties. So the former owner can still repurchase all the way up until the night before the sale, so the sale is scheduled for October 30 they have until October 29 at 5 to repurchase if they choose to do so.”

Ordinance 21-043 passed without opposition.