Combs passes gavel after 10 years

PALMER — After 10 years serving the city, John Combs said he’s heading back to work.

“I tried to retire once when I was 50 and took two years and went to the beach and went to the mountains and went to the lakes and went fishing and everything else and I just got bored. I was 50 years old and I was bored out of my skull,” Combs said.

He decided last year he wouldn’t run for a third term. Six years as mayor and then four before that on the city council were enough for him. He had a good run. In that time, Combs said, the city has accomplished quite a bit.

“When we got on the council I think the main thing that faced us as a council member was the fact that we had very limited zoning and land use ordinances in place,” he said.

There were, for instance, just two residential zoning options; one for single family homes and the other for everything else.

“It kind of came home to roost when there was a 36-plex put up right between two single family homes on South Alaska Street,” he said.

So they added a bunch of zones; the codes go up to R-4, which is the kind of zoning needed for an eight-plex. Anything bigger has to go to the council for special approval.

Another thing he’s proud of is working with Fred Meyer to get a store in Palmer that wasn’t an eyesore. The council worked with Fred Meyer to figure out what shape the parking lot should take, where the landscaping should go and things like that.

“The thing about Fred Meyer, they were really good neighbors about it. They didn’t just plunk down a cinderblock warehouse-looking thing,” Combs said. “They were very cooperative. They didn’t have to be.”

That led to some changes to commercial zoning, changes of which he is likewise proud.

He said that one of his priorities in running for office was street paving. Pavement, he said, is easier on cars, easier to maintain, and doesn’t kick up dust and gravel. It just makes sense for a city.

“I don’t know how many streets got paved while I was mayor but it was a lot,” he said.

And then there’s the skate park, one of the bigger projects he shepherded through during his time as mayor. He said before the park was installed, kids were skating in streets and parking lots, racking up tickets and getting their boards confiscated. When a high schooler came to him and explained the situation, Combs said, he got involved.

“I just felt this wasn’t right and I wanted to do something about it,” he said.

With $27,000 seed money from the city council, Combs and the kids started a non-profit to raise funds.

And, he said, the community stepped up. Companies donated the paving and the materials, a labor union did the excavating work, the group that built the Amoosement Park donated $20,000 of the $30,000 leftover from building that park.

“I’m proud of the community that they would come through with something like that,” Combs said.

Along the same lines, Combs said, he’s proud to have, during his time on the council, worked to put together a neighborhood parks program. The idea came to him while out campaigning in the Brittany Estates subdivision, when he saw toys and bikes in the street.

“It’s like you were winding your way through a playground there right on the street,” he said.

The ordinance that experience inspired says that subdividers have to come to the city to pick out a piece of land to use as a park. Builders are charged a fee that is put in with city money to buy the land and build the park.

As mayor, he also started working as the city’s lobbyist in Juneau. When he signed on, then-city manager Tom Healy just didn’t have the time to go down there. Combs said that in each of his five years traveling to Juneau he helped bring in an average of $8 million from the state.

Then, in 2009, having just brought in $12.5 million in 2008, the council asked him not to go and hired a lobbyist instead. The money that year, he said didn’t crack the $1 million mark.

Combs said he was the reason that Palmer has the motto “Alaska at its best.” He said there were probably a half dozen slogans in use. There was “heart of the Matanuska Valley,” “Gateway to Hatcher Pass,” “Alaska’s best kept secret,” “a growing frontier,” and “home of Tommy Moe.”

“We had all these signs and they were stuck all over the place like we had an identity crisis,” Combs said.

So he had the city attorney trademark “Alaska at its best” and as the city used it more and more it kind of stuck.

Combs said he probably enjoyed 95 percent of his time as mayor. The 5 percent he dismisses as speed bumps he hardly remembers. He said through it all he asked himself one question: Is this going to be best for the people of the community and the city of Palmer?

“If it didn’t pass that test I’d go in a different direction.”

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