Ewing sees big possibilities for Borough, assembly

PALMER — Mark Ewing may be running unopposed for the Mat-Su Borough Assembly, but he doesn’t talk like he’s a shoo-in.

“I’m going to run this campaign just as if I was running a campaign against Abraham Lincoln,” Ewing said.

Although the deadline for candidates to get their names on the ballot has passed, Ewing said he expects someone could mount a write-in candidate campaign against him — and he’s going to be prepared.

Ewing is a Borough planning commissioner and former Wasilla City Council member. He sees himself as something of a political maverick in the Mat-Su Valley, pointing to unpopular votes he made as a city councilman he said were aimed at saving residents money.

“When you get involved and you rattle the cages, there are half the people that love you and half the people that hate you,” Ewing said.

Ewing is running to replace Mary Kvalheim, who holds the District 4 assembly seat representing Wasilla and surrounding areas. Kvalheim isn’t seeking re-election to the assembly, but instead is stepping down to run for Wasilla City Council. Ewing is one of two unopposed assembly candidates on the Oct. 7 ballot. District 5 incumbent Cindy Bettine is also running for re-election.

Ewing said the issue he most wants to address is getting big projects moving at the Borough.

“I get a little tired of watching my money get spent on things that never happen,” he said.

One example Ewing cited is the ski area at Hatcher Pass.

“Thirty years ago when I was a kid we had a rope tow up at Hatcher Pass,” he said. “We had buses that left from Palmer and Wasilla every Friday and Saturday. Here it is 40 years later and we’ve got nothing.”

On the Borough end, according to a recent press release, the Hatcher Pass project is moving forward. Scientists are conducting an environmental study of the area and a new, scaled-back proposal is due to be presented to the assembly later this month.

Still, Ewing said initiatives could, and should, be moving faster, and the ski area isn’t the only big project bouncing around in his head. Ewing said he’d like to do something to address concerns of commuters, hundreds of whom travel daily from homes in the Valley to jobs in Anchorage.

“What used to become a commuter’s paradise has become an expensive commuter’s nightmare,” Ewing said.

He wants to beef up share-a-ride programs, identify large parking lots throughout the Valley — the Wasilla Multi-Use Sports Complex and Alaska State Fairgrounds are two possibilities — and then partner with the Alaska Railroad to run trains into Anchorage.

On the Anchorage end, he envisions commuter vans driving people the last few miles to work. Large employers could set up their own shuttle systems, smaller employers may rely on private sector contractors, he said.

Ewing also wants to create more jobs in the Valley; jobs with healthy paychecks. He cited the timber industry as a possibility. The Valley could be a good location for producing wood products. Timber and wood are now shipped out of Port MacKenzie to foreign factories to be made into finished products.

“What we’re doing is we’re selling off for pennies on the dollar our natural resources and transporting them abroad to have them come back at five times, 10 times, 20 times the amount to have them come back as pressboard furniture that we buy at local stores,” Ewing said.

Holding a seat on the Borough assembly was always Ewing’s plan, he said. His last bid for a Wasilla City Council seat failed mostly because his heart wasn’t in it, he said. He had his sights set higher, on a Borough seat where he feels he can get more done.

If that was the case, why did he wait until the last minute to file his paperwork to run for the assembly?

“I don’t tip my hand, buddy,” he said.

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