Fate of borough economic development remains murky

PALMER — For all intents and purposes there isn’t an Economic Development Department at the Mat-Su Borough.

Instead, there are two open positions, one for a director and one for an assistant. Mat-Su Borough Manager John Moosey took time out of the assembly’s agenda Tuesday to ask them what they would like to do with that department. Essentially what an economic development does is facilitate business development and expansion, he said. They attract offices of big corporations to the borough, talk to business leaders about obstacles to business the borough might be able to clear away.

But its history at the Mat-Su Borough has been fraught. Moosey summed some of that up Tuesday.

“Two years ago we had economic development it did not meet the satisfaction of the assembly and they wiped it out,” he said.

Soon after, the assembly revived the department.

“The assembly was not satisfied with the results,” Moosey said.

The assembly paid to study the possibility of spinning the department off into a private organization with borough funding coupled with private money. That idea has yet to gain traction. So Moosey wanted some input.

“At the end of the day do we want to be in economic development? Do we not?” he asked the assembly.

He didn’t get a clear answer to that question. Nor did the assembly agree to schedule a workshop to talk about it, instead opting to schedule a meeting to talk about things that are related to economic development — port development, infrastructure projects and beefing up public information campaigns to get the word out about the work Mat-Su is doing building schools and roads and Port MacKenzie.

What Moosey did get, though, was a lot of hints that the assembly is very reticent to try to direct the way business develops in Mat-Su.

In his regular podcast, Mat-Su Borough Mayor Larry DeVilbiss said that he sees the assembly moving toward a focus on building infrastructure that will, in turn attract business.

“I will say that almost to a person the assembly felt pretty much that economic development was not the direct responsibility of the assembly,” DeVilbiss said. “I think there is consensus on the fact that we need to focus on developing our port and our leases and as that develops it is going to attract a lot of other business.”

Assemblyman Vern Halter in Tuesday’s meeting agreed.

“Our main mission is just what we’re doing — we’re building a lot of roads in the borough. Five schools going up right now,” he said. “We should deliver the services we’re doing. We seem to be getting pretty good at it.”

Assemblyman Ron Arvin said he didn’t think the borough should be planning out how business develops.

“The government’s role is not to formulate a road map for economic development in a community. That’s the private sector’s role,” he said.

DeVilbiss said that borough business plans also made him queasy, pointing to a major borough economic development study completed prior to his arrival in office.

“I’ve got to tell you I had some trepidation when I pulled out this big study that I inherited and I didn’t think it was something we should just wade into without a lot of soul searching but it just kind of took a life of its own and then we appointed an economic director who took that book as his marching orders and I think he created some false expectations.”

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