Borough revisits budget twice, drops taxes slightly

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough’s budget was finally put to rest Monday and Tuesday with a reconsidered vote and a trio of mayoral vetoes.

The 2013 borough budget was voted in last week with the borough assembly setting next year’s tax rate at more-or-less the same as last year’s.

“Relatively flat is not flat. It is math. It is simple arithmetic and it is money that can go back into the pocket of the property owner instead of into a reserve account,” Assemblyman Ron Arvin said Monday in explaining why he wanted to reopen the budget discussions by reconsidering his vote.

He said he found money in a trio of reserve funds to reduce the tax rate another fraction of a point — .2 mills, or, borough finance director Tammy Clayton, said, $47.99 on the average borough home valued at $211,400.

Warren Keogh opposed Arvin’s plan, saying it wasn’t necessary.

“That range including areawide and non-areawide (taxes) has maintained a range of $90 so we have maintained a rate that is essentially flat for the last four years,” Keogh said.

Arvin took the money needed to drop the tax rate from a fund for major maintenance and repairs, where he found $1.7 million, and $250,000 each from reserve funds for emergency response and capital projects, leaving $500,000 in each account.

“I think is a safe thing to do, it leaves sufficient balances in the accounts to deal with natural calamities if they happen,” Arvin said.

The assembly eventually passed Arvin’s change on a 4-3 vote with members Keogh, Vern Halter and Darcie Salmon opposed.

As for borough mayor Larry DeVilbiss’s vetoes, the assembly shot all three down Tuesday.

The biggest veto would have halved the $3 per hour raise the assembly gave to on-call emergency responders

“I’m sympathetic to the direction that we’re moving. I just think it was too big a jump for one year with no consideration to the mill rate,” DeVilbiss said. “I think it is a conversation that would be better had in the context of balancing permanent employees with temporary employees and having a coordinated comprehensive approach to it.”

The assembly disagreed.

“I might be inclined to agree with you Mr. Mayor, but as I recall from the public hearings this hasn’t been addressed for nine years,” Salmon said. “Maybe it should have been implemented step by step by step for nine years.”

The veto was overridden unanimously, with the exception of Keogh, who recused himself because he has a son who is a borough responder.

The second biggest veto by a hair would have dropped the borough’s contribution to Mat-Su Youth Court from $75,000 to $30,000.

DeVilbiss said he fully supports youth court, thinks it’s a great organization, but the request for borough funding was to plug a hole in the organization’s budget and that was a $30,000 hole, not a $75,000 one.

Assemblyman Steve Colligan said that, actually, his reading of the organization’s budget turned up an $80,000 hole. Salmon said the city of Wasilla currently pays quite a bit to run the program, which is not exactly fair.

“They would like the borough’s assistance in a very valuable program that serves all of the borough,” Salmon said.

The assembly overrode that veto 7-1 with Keogh in support.

And the smallest budget cut would have effectively resigned the borough’s membership in both the Alaska Municipal League and National Association of Counties. The fees for those groups cost $44,800 last year. And that’s just the membership fees, not the costs the borough pays to send people to AML and NACO meetings.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg. We spent more than that at one meeting last year and AML has three meetings this year,” DeVilbiss said.

Assemblyman Jim Colver said the costs to attend those conferences were high because the borough sends too many people. He said that he, too, would like to see those costs diminished.

“That doesn’t require a veto, that just requires the manager to deal with that accordingly,” Colver said.

Arvin backed the mayor wholeheartedly.

“I think that NACO and AML are fairly liberal and socialist organizations. I think we’re just throwing good money after bad,” Arvin said. “If you want to send a bunch of people down south to learn about the best way to implement a planning strategy to infringe on your private property rights, maybe we should remain members.”

Most of the assembly disagreed with his description of AML. Colver pointed out that AML was instrumental in getting the state to revive the revenue sharing program and did great work to keep public employee and teacher retirement programs from blowing giant holes in local budgets. Halter said he’d been to plenty of AML meetings.

“Every time I’ve learned a lot. It’s not a socialist organization, Mr. Arvin, I kind of object to that terminology,” Halter said. “I think that AML has done a world of good for us.”

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