Borough spends savings to ‘reduce’ mill rate

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough Assembly on Thursday passed its fiscal year 2015 budget, which dips into savings to reduce the property tax rate slightly from last year.

When the meeting gaveled out at around 9:30 p.m., the assembly set the area-wide mill levy at 9.662. The non area-wide mill levy — a tax only some borough residents pay — was an additional .529. Last year, those numbers were 9.852 and .52 respectively.

A mill is equal to $1 per $1,000 of a home’s assessed value.

The process isn’t quite finished yet. Any assemblyman can move to reconsider the budget before 5 p.m. Friday.

And then there’s the prospect of mayor’s vetoes, although Mat-Su Borough Mayor Larry DeVilbiss indicated there would be none.

“I’m going to cut you a lot of slack for coming in under 10 (mills),” DeVilbiss said. “There are a few things that are a little sideways in my craw, but I will live with that.”

The assembly seemed pleased with the process.

“I think there was some balance and compromise that happened this year, which was new, it was refreshing,” Assemblyman Ron Arvin said.

The assembly kept the tax rate flat in a couple of ways. First, it reduced slightly the amount of money the borough was going to keep in reserve. At the start of the budget cycle, staff had recommended keeping that at 25 percent of the borough’s funds.

Assemblyman Vern Halter proposed knocking that down, first to a flat $25 million, not tied to any kind of percentage, then instead settling on 22.2 percent, which penciled out to about $25 million in reserve.

“I think a $25 million reserve is an adequate reserve considering our budget,” Halter said.

The assembly also tinkered with sources of borough revenue besides property taxes.

Assemblyman Steve Colligan pushed for, and won, a bump in the taxes people pay on their phone bills. The assembly intends to bank the money and use it to eventually combine the dispatch centers in Palmer and Wasilla.

One of the major potential trouble spots in the budget — finding money for seven new full-time responders for the ambulance service — ended up not being so troublesome when Director of Emergency Services Dennis Brodigan asked for and was granted an increase in ambulance fees to offset the cost of the change.

Another helpful change — the amount of money the state granted to the borough for revenue sharing – was up this year by $1.2 million.

Because of the extra revenue sharing and the savings in the reserve, and by hunting down and scraping together funds, the assembly was able to pay for all sorts of things. Pre-school programs, ski trails, ATV trails and the Mat-Su Sexual Assault Response Team will all benefit from funding, as will work on a grant to buy out flood-prone properties.

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