Fix road service area double standard

To the editor:

Amended Mat-Su Borough code, 5.20.005 (G), shows a road service area double standard: “(4) to a change in the boundaries of a road service area to exclude a subdivision or parcel that does not rely on the use of roads maintained by the service area for the subdivision’s or parcel’s only access or for access that is required by the subdivision plat or by other regulation or ordinance.”

The state law controlling special service road powers was changed and the borough code amended three years ago with borough ordinance 08-039. This change made it easier for properties to be excluded from the road service area when not receiving the benefits of that road service area. The intent and purpose for setting up special service areas is that a specific group of properties will receive a specific benefit. That benefit must be similar and equal for all in that designated area.

We have now brought it out into the open that many owners of properties in this borough are paying a road service tax, yet they neither live on those special roads nor do their properties access these roads. But they are paying the same tax as those who do live and access their property from these roads. The following article is what I spoke to the assembly when it voted to defeat the ordinance, which was to exclude our properties.

Road service area in this borough is a special service power. Lazy Mountain Road Service Area 19 is a “special service,” not an area-wide power. It is a limited service for a limited number of people in a specific location. Special service area means that all in the area receive and pay for that service.

The service provided by an RSA is that a specific agreed upon number of roads receive maintenance and upkeep. These roads provide access to properties for certain landowners. An RSA is exclusively for those properties that access the roads being maintained in that area. The real road service area is proven by where the money is being spent.

Those who should be paying the RSA tax are only those properties accessed off those roads. The road service area tax is a form of access fee for those living on and accessing from those roads. Those people not living or accessing on those roads do not qualify as being in the road service area, therefore should not be charged this tax. Using “color of law” to make it appear as though all properties on Lazy Mountain are in the road service area doesn’t change the fact that many are non-served properties and non-maintained roads.

This borough is practicing a double standard with road service areas. It collects the tax with a broad and excessive standard, yet spends those same road service area taxes with a specific and exclusive standard. It is this inequity that was to be corrected by the change in state law in 2007 and change in borough code in 2008.

These properties in ordinance 11-053 qualify to be “excluded,” in accordance with borough code 5.20.005 (G) (4). I encourage this assembly to approve ordinance 11-053.

The editorial in Friday’s Frontiersman spoke of the need for the borough assembly to fulfill its promise to fix this taxing problem. I am not only skeptical, but also sarcastic about the assembly’s ability to correctly resolve this inequity, since it has rejected the solution the state Legislature provided.

As I told them afterward, with the present belief system and leadership the cure will be worse than the disease. We have experience with borough promises in the past. In 1981, with ordinance 81-47, by administrative ordinance the borough annexed more non-served properties than served properties into RSA 19, the borough clearly promised that the state would continue to pay the maintenance for the road service area roads in RSA 19.Ten years later the non-served properties, those of us not on the designated road service area roads, became the deep pockets for the other RSA properties.

So much for assembly promises.

Ray DeVilbiss

Lazy Mountain