CANDIDATE PROFILES: Borough Assembly incumbent Mayfield points to his experience

The only Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly candidate running for reelection this cycle, Dan Mayfield, assemblyman for District 5, is also the only candidate with past experience running for office. He’s put up signs, knocked on doors and talked with his current constituents.

Mayfield, 62, describes himself as a “fiscal conservative” and is hoping to make a case for returning to the assembly for a second and final term. He is running for the District 5 seat against Clayton “Mokie” Tew. Although the Assembly race is nonpartisan, Mayfield said he is an Independent.

A retired insurance adjuster, Mayfield and his wife have lived full-time in the Valley since 2008, and he has owned his home in Big Lake since 2003. He said his top priorities are public safety, infrastructure, education and increasing recreation opportunities.

After fiscal problems at the state level trickled down into tighter budgets in the Borough, the Assembly this year considered and then tabled for discussion later a pair of new taxes that would bring in additional revenue.

Mayfield said he opposes both of those measures.

Rather than institute a new sales tax to support the school district, Mayfield said he would like school officials to show a need while working with community members to come up with a solution.

“I did not support that because I felt like the school district needed to do a better job of communicating the need and also communicating that they are being fiscally responsible themselves in their work,” he said. “I think it’s going to take the community to weigh in on how we better fund education. I don’t know that any of us right now have the silver bullet for this.” Mayfield also said he opposes a controversial Borough-level plastic bag tax. Rather than pass such a tax, he said, he wants the cities to simply ban plastic bags.

“I don’t like plastic bags, but I felt that the bag tax was heavy handed,” he said. “I was not supportive of that. … I would like to see the cities of Wasilla and Palmer ban plastic bags.”

Mayfield’s district includes the Borough-owned Port MacKenzie, which in June required an additional $1.6 million in funding for maintenance, despite the fact that it gets little use.

What to do with that barge dock, he said, is a complicated issue. Had he been on the Assembly when the port was approved, he would have opposed it, he said. But since going back in time is impossible, the Borough needs to maintain it and work to keep it as an asset, if possible.

“If I was on the Assembly 16 years ago when the port was approved I would’ve stood up and shouted against it,” he said. “However, now we’re at the point where we have an asset. It’s an expensive asset that needs to be protected.”

Mayfield said one of the biggest concerns he’s heard from potential voters over the course of campaigning has been public safety. The Borough does not have a police force, instead relying on State Troopers in areas not patrolled by the Palmer and Wasilla city police forces.

Although he believes such a force is needed, he said surveys he’s conducted in his District have shown that his constituents are unwilling to pay for it. That means officials need to find creative ways to solve the public safety problem, such as instituting “police service areas” that are responsible for specific areas, rather than the Borough as a whole. But that option may also be too expensive.

“I’ve asked [the Borough manager] to give me some cost projections on what it would cost to look into police service areas,” he said. “However, I don’t see that’s an idea that’s going to float at this time … because of cost.”

Mayfield’s ties to Big Lake go back to the late-1960s when he first started snowmachining in the area with family. Since then he’s worked to maintain the area trails, including in his position as the current president of Big Lake Trails, Inc., which operates largely through grants and sponsorships.

He said his focus on bettering recreation in the area stems from his own enjoyment of the outdoors. He was the driving force behind a new law passed by the Borough this year restricting trapping near certain public recreation areas.