Full boat of candidates

WASILLA — Candidates for Wasilla City Council filled the stage in the theater at the Alaska Club Thursday as they introduced themselves to voters.

Wasilla has three city council seats open this year. Nine candidates have filed to run. Thursday, eight of them showed up.

Wasilla elects its city council members at-large, meaning every resident gets to pick his or her favorite for each seat.

In the race for Seat D — a one-year spot to fill out the term Nancy Hall didn’t finish when she resigned — two names are on the ballot: Gary Hale and Colleen Sullivan-Leonard.

Asked about what he believes are the biggest issues Wasilla would face during that year, Hale said there seems to be controversy brewing over ATVs in city limits and over plans to build a shooting range near the city’s sports complex.

“There are not many people that are ambivalent on the issue,” he said of ATVs. As for the shooting range, Hale said he’d vote against it as currently proposed, despite his enthusiasm for shooting sports. “There hasn’t been enough thought behind it.”

Sullivan-Leonard said she would not vote for a budget that contains a hike in the sales tax. Asked how the city could better plan for its future, Sullivan-Leonard said Wasilla should just put it on paper.

“The comprehensive plan is a fantastic tool to have” to direct changes in zoning and in a city’s economic structure, she said.

The race for Seat E has two candidates and the only incumbent seeking a return to the council. The challenger, Mike Carson, did not attend the forum, but the incumbent, Dianne Woodruff, did.

Woodruff was asked about plans for a new library in the city. She said she supports the idea of expanding the library.

“It’s a very over-utilized and undersized facility,” she said. “It really makes you wonder what more our staff could do if they just had a little more space.”

The other five candidates on the ballot are all seeking election to Seat F. They are Patrick Brown, Glenda Ledford, Steve Menard, David Nyberg and Jeff Ward.

Brown, who is mostly blind and advocates for the blind, was the first one asked a question — what kind of transportation problems does the city have?

Roads are an issue, Brown said, but as a blind person he relies heavily on the MASCOT public bus system, which he finds lacking.

“They need greater resources to get out and about in the community,” Brown said. Other communities have had to subsidize their bus systems. Wasilla should look at that, too, but “the long-term solution is that it needs to become self-funding.”

Ledford went next. She was asked how the city was going to manage its growth.

“We are going to have to figure out how are we going to maintain what we have and how are we going to grow,” she said. That’s going to mean cutting the budget, something she’s not afraid to do.

Menard was asked what city issues are driving him to run for the council. He mentioned his work trying to clean up Lake Lucille and Wasilla Lake.

“It took me five years to get some funding so we could do some cleanup and some weed removal,” he said. He also called the library one of his passions and said the council has “talked about (it) for 20 years and we’re still waiting.”

Nyberg was asked about how city hall treats Wasilla’s small businesses.

“It seems like the little businesses just come and then they go,” he said. “A lot of mom-and-pops are no longer here in business because of the influx of the big box stores.”

Ward was asked about what he would do to make Wasilla an attractive place to raise a family. He replied that he would make sure new buildings are built in such a way as to be pleasing to the eye. He said he would also endeavor to keep the city safe.

“I grew up in Anchorage and the crime rate has grown so much,” he said. “I don’t want to see that happen to Wasilla.”

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