Celebrate Borough’s 50th anniversary

Just this weekend one of our reporters drove past a sign celebrating Alaska’s 50th anniversary. The sign is, by our reckoning, nearly six years out of date.

Then, last week, the Mat-Su Borough e-mailed us about its own 50th anniversary. Strange timing there, but it’s still pretty interesting: the borough is just six years younger than the state. And it’s not even the oldest municipal body in the Valley. The city of Palmer holds that distinction, having incorporated in 1951.

The Frontiersman has been publishing since 1947. The Matanuska Electric Association is even older, dating back to 1941. And Matanuska Telephone Association marked 60 years in business in 2013.

We guess the point in recounting this is just to say that we, as a state, are still relatively young. There are plenty of folks still around who remember the bonfires celebrating statehood. We became a state under the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower, not during the days of the founding fathers.

What’s on the ground here — a hospital, schools, fire stations, roads, a university — is all the more remarkable for our short 50-year time span. And the borough itself is responsible for quite a lot on this list.

Whatever your opinion of the Mat-Su Borough as an entity, here’s a few things the body takes care of for all of us:

• Education. The borough oversees a school district that educates 18,000 students at 45 sites. The district defines a “site” as everything from the tiny — Beryozova K-12 school in Willow — to the gigantic — Wasilla High School. The local school district just keeps growing, too, with a high school under construction and more than one elementary school in the planning stages.

• Solid waste. The Frontiersman tends to only notice the Mat-Su Borough’s central landfill when things go wrong there. That we check in so infrequently, we think, means it does a fair job of collecting and disposing of the countless tons of garbage we toss out each year.

• Road construction. We got to the point this year where we had to prioritize ribbon-cutting ceremonies because there were just too many for us to send staff to all of them. This is a sign of the road construction booming in Mat-Su recently, and it’s easy to appreciate the upgrades and the borough’s role in this.

• Emergency services. The department boasts the largest roster of employees in the borough outside of the school district. The Mat-Su’s mix of urban — car crashes — and rural — wildfires — keeps this department hopping through the winter and the summer. We can’t say enough good things about the dedication of these professionals.

• Planning. The word can sometimes get stuck in the throats of some among us, but few can argue that the Mat-Su can afford to let development proceed unencumbered. Planning is about protecting property and keeping developments from conflicting. It’s a much-needed service.

So, if you have a minute, maybe stop by the borough Thursday for the 50th anniversary bash. From 6-8 p.m. there will be music, cake, crafts and, we’re told, a giant birthday card for signing.

Or, if you can’t make it, find a planner or a firefighter or a landfill employee and say thanks. We’re sure they’d be glad to hear it.