Crowd gets polled on issues in Wasilla mayoral forum

WASILLA — In the past the Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce has asked candidates to hold up signs to attest to their positions on one issue or another. But for Tuesday’s Wasilla mayoral forum at the Grand View Inn, organizers turned the tables, asking the audience to vote their opinions by turning flags to the green side or the red in response to a question relevant to the one the candidates had just negotiated.

There were three spots on the forum table, but just two of the candidates — Kevin Baker and incumbent Bert Cottle — showed, with candidate Loren Means unable to attend, reportedly due to a conflicting work schedule.

Cottle got right after defending his first three-year term as Wasilla’s mayor, pointing to the campaign fliers he circulated in 2014 and the four bullet-pointed promises he made in them.

“I’m fiscally conservative, but I’ve yet to meet a candidate who doesn’t say they’re fiscally conservative. But other than that, are you fiscally responsible?” Cottle asked. “I believe I can say yes.”

Cottle pointed to ‘forward funding’ projects like the city’s new library and the proposed 1 percent tax to turn the old Iditarod Elementary School property into an expanded center for police as evidence of his being ‘fiscally responsible.’

“Forward funding works. If people in this room want something, we should pay for it and not pass it on to (future generations),” Cottle said.

Baker countered by saying he opposes all sales taxes — even the ‘forward funding’ sort — except when it comes to cannabis. There, he believes a goodly sum could be brought into the city’s coffers were it not for Wasilla’s decision to deny commercial marijuana sales in the 2014 election.

“I support legal cannabis and taxing marijuana rather than school supplies,” Baker said. “Asking to add a sales tax when we’re still subsidizing (the Menard) sports center is fiscally irresponsible.”

Cottle said that had the Menard Center been ‘forward funded’ like the library and the police expansion on Oct. 3’s ballot, it would have saved the city $3.5 million. He added that investments like the library, as well as road improvements in city limits help boost economic development, which is the only way the city can raise revenue, since it has not had property taxes in place since 2007. Cottle called the 1-cent sales tax to build the library and, he hopes, the police expansion to help accommodate the city’s already awarded contract to house the borough’s dispatch center, ‘turning a penny into chicken wire.’

“We’ve stretched it as far as it can go,” he said.

After each question raised by moderator and city council member Stu Graham, the audience on hand for the weekly Chamber of Commerce luncheon, held up flags green on one side, red on the other to indicate their personal feelings.

On the question of whether they prefer sales taxes or bonds to pay for projects, the crowd almost unanimously turned their flags to green in favor of sales taxes.

When the topic switched to public safety, both candidates expressed displeasure with SB91, a law which has greatly reduced incarceration rates in the state, but at the same time has let a number of repeat criminals back onto the streets. Though both were displeased they conceded there was little that could be done on the local level to overcome it.

“We catch ‘em, but we don’t clean ‘em,” Cottle said. “There needs to be a rewrite of SB91 to address these gaps. As a police department, no one wants to catch a bad guy and then they get home before you do.”

The audience was then asked the question of whether they were willing to pay for the expense of law enforcement in order to roll back SB91, a smaller majority of about two-thirds turned their flags to green in favor of that investment.

The final issue was the legalization of cannabis in city limits — one of the key issues for Baker, and the issue where the audience was most evenly divided.

“There are two different ways to look at cannabis — one is as a drug, and the other is as a natural resource,” Baker said. “I see it as a natural resource. The creativity in that industry is phenomenal; it puts a lot of people to work.”

Cottle didn’t give a personal opinion on cannabis legalization, but he did cite the 2014 ballot, which not only prohibited commercial pot shops in city limits by a vote of 52 to 48 percent, but also swept him into his first term as Wasilla’s mayor.

“People voted that way. If you want to change it, put it in an initiative or have two council members put it (up to the council for vote),” Cottle said.

In a final survey question, Graham asked the candidates whether they considered themselves, in a word, libertarian, conservative or progressive.

Somewhat interestingly, both said ‘progressive.’