Conflict halts land sale

PALMER — After its sponsor declared a conflict of interest, a controversial Mat-Su Borough Assembly all but ordering management to buy land for use as a school died without discussion from the Mat-Su Borough Assembly.

“I’m also going to pull this,” borough mayor Larry DeVilbiss said Tuesday after allowing Assemblyman Noel Woods to recuse himself due to his conflict of interest. “Because of the conflict, the process is tainted.”

The parcel in question was first considered as a school site for the facility that became Machetanz Elementary School. It is on the Springer system of roads in Palmer and is currently used as farmland.

After the Machetanz site election process wrapped up, the assembly passed a resolution asking the borough manager to buy the land if he could from owner Kevin Sorenson. But he bought it from a family trust of which Woods is a trustee, hence the conflict of interest determination.

Almost everyone who testified about the land deal at Tuesday’s assembly meeting spoke against it.

“Mr. Sorenson has not been able to get the price that he wants for his land, otherwise he would have sold it by now,” Michelle Church said. “He has a very odd sense of entitlement to maximizing his property using public money.”

Church took a seat on the assembly just as the Machetanz site selection process was wrapping up. That site selection process has come to be seen as flawed, spurring changes that were supposed to fix the process. Church said that at the time there was grumbling about the process almost immediately.

“One of Mr. Sorenson’s complaints to the assembly back in 2007 was this appearance of a conflict of interest, this lack of transparency,” Church said, referencing complaints that the developer who donated the land for Machetanz to the borough — Rex Turner — was too cozy with officials.

Matthew Beck, testifying before Woods recused himself, urged him to do so.

“Your reputation here is very positive as one of hard work and dedication to the Valley,” he said. “Many people who hold that opinion are reconsidering it with respect to this ordinance.”

Lucille Frey was the only person to speak in favor of the ordinance. She said that, in a way, by not buying the land the assembly was subverting the will of the voters who approved bonds to build an elementary school in south Palmer. Most people consider the Machetanz site to be in South Wasilla, though it’s not actually in either city.

“We did vote a bond issue for that school and it got built elsewhere,” Frey said. “There have been a number of people that were very unhappy about it going elsewhere and they still are.”

Church had a different view on the will of voters. She pointed out that the most recent school bonds passed at the ballot box were sold as a five-year package. Voters were promised then that there would be no more school borrowing for those five years.

“This is four years too early,” she said.

The only assemblyman to speak to the issue was Steve Colligan. He said he thought that some of the testimony he’d heard was somewhat hypocritical.

“People who come up and testify also have special interests they aren’t stating in farmland preservation and also to the other land owner,” Colligan said.

He called for a different process, one that at least kept the assembly completely out of it by not having any assembly members on the selection committee, but maybe even a “totally independent body” tasked with site selection.

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