Borough sets plan for 2013

WASILLA — With 2012 coming to an end, the Mat-Su Borough Assembly is compiling its list of priorities for the New Year.

Some of the items high on that list, which began taking shape at a Saturday assembly meeting, are relatively predictable — Port MacKenzie expansion, extending rail to the port and pushing for the state to build a Knik Arm bridge.

Borough Manager John Moosey said the rail project is on hold now while a lawsuit challenging the necessity of the project is resolved. The project will need more money in the next legislative session to keep it on schedule.

He said the port expansion is 10 years out, but the borough needs to start talking about it now. The idea is to make a larger dock and add another trestle to drive trucks out to it. In the short term, Moosey said, the borough is seeking money to protect the existing dock from scouring. The port has made progress since this time last year, he said.

“We have been doing very well. Since this time (a year ago), we have had two new tenants,” he said.

One idea on the borough’s priority list is an effort to address Matanuska River erosion.

Moosey said the state has expressed a willingness to issue the borough a permit, but he is reticent.

“I’m scared to death to go in there and do anything in that river,” he said.

The state has said that with the permit comes liability. Whatever the borough does, it’s liable for. And, Moosey said, when talking to river residents these days most can point to something up river that has caused problems in their neighborhoods.

But assemblymen Steve Colligan and Jim Colver seemed to be of the opinion that the borough must take action because the state hasn’t done anything to keep more homes along the Matanuska River from going into the water.

“We’re kind of the conduit to make things happen,” Colver said.

But he said he wants to make sure the borough does engineering and analysis before deciding to do anything.

Assemblyman Noel Woods said he doesn’t think it’s the borough’s issue.

“It really is not our problem because the state insists that it is our liability,” Woods said.

As far as roads go, the assembly would like to see the state move on expanding the Parks Highway from Wasilla to Big Lake Road — a treacherous stretch that has caused many fatalities — and the Glenn Highway out toward Cascade. Borough roads to prioritize include all the ones the borough sold bonds to build.

Items on the priority list that don’t constitute an infrastructure project include shoring up contacts in the Legislature and making sure the borough’s needs are taken care of. Woods seemed to see in the recently announced organization of the state House and Senate an indication that Mat-Su is in the driver’s seat this year.

“When (other areas) were in charge they got really major infrastructure, so let’s not be bashful,” Woods said.

Another non-project priority is improving customer service. Colver said he’d like to see the borough deal more gently with people who call up with, for instance, complaints about snowplowing.

The borough also would like to implement its economic development plan — something Colver noted Borough Economic Development Director Don Dyer is already working hard on — and change its ordinances.

Finally, the assembly wants to get rid of its ferry, the M/V Susitna. Colligan joked he’d actually prefer that wasn’t a 2013 priority.

“If it sticks around to 2013, we should have a high school welding project go and cut it apart,” he said.

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