Generations will pay for the borough's schemes

Today may be one of the most important dates in your great-grand children’s future: the Mat-Su Borough Assembly may meet for the annual planning meeting.

Perhaps it is time we tell these folks where to get off giving away our great-grandchildren’s money to people who don’t even live here and perhaps never will. Come to the assembly building ask your questions and be heard.

Of course, borough planning might seem an oxymoron. You know, with the port, where millions of dollars just disappear every year? Or the rail spur the railroad wouldn’t build because it would never show a return on investment in a “million years?” Our borough just went ahead indebting generations and placing, through state agency, a monkey on the Alaska Railroad’s back. Or that ferry, how about that boondoggle? Or the prison — one of the most expensive to operate in the world and on the state’s cutting block we hear? Maybe the train to Port MacKenzie will be cut, too?

Remember, the whole Port MacKenzie scheme started out as a Bill Allen/VECO scam.

We are led to believe that this is good for us, you know, good for business, this diversion of funds from our communities to these meant-to-fail projects. These “pass throughs” from our property taxes to folks who haven’t even moved here at best, and at worst, may be unnamed crooks. Good for “monkey business” but not capitalism or the growth of our communities or our children.

Our assembly under Mayor Larry DeVilbiss and Deputy Mayor Ron Arvin seems to operate more like an old Soviet Politburo than anythiang reminiscent of American capitalism. There is even a preponderance of “secret” executive sessions just like we would read about Russian communists when we were kids.

And while the subject has popped up, what’s with this place now called “Point MacKenzie townsite?” A planned collective, even stratified just like an old fashioned Soviet planned community. Once again the government is proposing to do what private industry won’t do because there is no money in it. In a normal world a developer would submit a plan for purchase and subdivision based on market forces. In our Soviet style plan, the borough comes up with a scheme to pay development costs to allow a few realtors to make a lot of money at the expense of our existing communities. There is absolutely no documentation on how our money will show us a return on investment. There is no legitimate documentation on how any of the borough’s schemes will ever show a return on investment to the people, the taxpayers who have invested in these schemes.

But there is documentation on how generations will pay dearly for them.

Stopping these projects will cost some money, but nothing like the millions and millions of dollars in deficit spending that the borough radicals have brought on us, our children, our grandchildren, and now they wish to put our great-grandchildren in bondage as well.

What should be happening? The borough is known for shirking its real responsibility, for ignored projects, ignored chronic crises, and health and safety priorities. Our borough should be turning its attention to issues like sewage and a sewage treatment plant, or perhaps a real and enforceable subdivision code, or light rail into Palmer, (a real solution to Glenn Highway traffic and emergencies not a pie in the sky bridge) and especially homeless and hungry children. There is also erosion on the Matanuska River, underfunded emergency services, the bare contribution to our schools — so many real and unaddressed problems of the people who live here.

These are many things our communities, existing communities, could use and borough planning should be addressing. The last thing the folks who live here need is the empty, costly and false promise of Port MacKenzie.

Our borough needs an ethics code, our borough needs the Risk Management Commission, our borough needs a strong Planning Commission. We need a strong school board and a strong school site selection committee, too. Our borough needs to follow process and ordinances. Our borough needs to stop writing blank checks and backing methods that may or do lead to corruption.

More folks should be aware of this ordinance, unchanged from 1985, when one talks of bondage of our great-grandchildren:

3.16.030 COVENANT.

“The borough irrevocably covenants with the purchaser of the notes, or any holder of the notes, that it will levy and collect taxes upon all taxable property within the borough without limitation as to rate or amount, in amounts sufficient, together with other funds available, during the period ending June 30 of the fiscal year of issuance to pay the indebtedness evidenced by the notes. The full faith, credit and unlimited taxing power of the borough are pledged for the payment. Each note shall contain a statement of the covenant and pledge as it relates to the note.”

Come to the assembly meeting. See how your elected officials operate and raise your questions.

It is your future, your children’s, your grandchildren’s and your great grandchildren’s future at stake.

Greg Gusse lives in Palmer.