Borough sets guidelines for payments to cities

PALMER — Reacting to concerns from the three Valley cities raised during the debate over a sales tax, the Mat-Su Borough Assembly set down a list of rules for payments to the cities from the borough.

The ordinance that passed 6-1 Tuesday night says all agreements where money flows from the borough to the cities should have a payment schedule. If the schedule isn’t met, the cities need to write to the borough’s finance director. If the finance director doesn’t respond in 15 days, the cities need to write to the borough manager. If the borough manager doesn’t respond within 15 days he has to go to the borough assembly and say why the bills weren’t paid.

During the debate over the sales tax, which passed the assembly in July — and overrode a mayor veto Aug. 4 — will be put to a vote in October. Palmer City Manager Bill Allen has told the assembly that the borough has a bad history of missing payments to his city. Most recently, late payments for emergency dispatching services threatened to put the city in dire straits.

“Shortly after I became acting mayor this was a critical issue that came to my attention,” said Assemblywoman Lynne Woods, who filled in as mayor between the death of Curt Menard and the election of the current Mayor Talis Colberg.

Assemblyman Mark Ewing, eventually the lone dissenting vote, said he didn’t think the ordinance went far enough.

“What should be in here is a penalty,” he said, and proposed a 3 percent per day fine for late payments from the borough.

“I think it would make us accountable,” he said.

But his plan didn’t get much traction, failing with only him in support.

“Initially I was interested in penalties,” said Assemblyman Pete Houston.

But after talking with the city of Palmer and other folks, he decided the best place to specify a penalty was in the document that forged the agreement — a lease, a grant, a contract — which necessitated the borough’s payments.

Woods backed up Houston.

“The purpose of our legislation is to insert the communication that has been missed before,” she said, agreeing that fines would be better delineated in leases and contracts and the like.

Ewing said he thought it was just a matter of fairness.

“If you’re five minutes late paying your tax bill here you’re going to get hit with a fine,” he said.

He brought up the sales tax, which he voted against. If voters approve the tax in October, the borough will be making a lot more payments to the cities and will be in charge of collecting the taxes that the cities depend on for large portions of their budgets.

Assemblywoman Michelle Church disagreed.

“This isn’t about the sales tax,” she said. “I think (penalties would be) adding another layer of government that doesn’t need to be there.”

She also pointed out that it was odd the assembly was only recently hearing about the problem of late payments.

“They have an opportunity twice a month to come before the assembly and say, ‘Your administration is not paying us,’” she said.

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