Here we grow again

WASILLA — Wasilla Mayor Verne Rupright and Mat-Su Borough Mayor Larry DeVilbiss were betting the Valley’s population had grown to at least 92,000 over the past 10 years, and weren’t far off the mark.

The much-anticipated 2010 U.S. Census figures released this week show Mat-Su’s population jumped about 50 percent since 2000 to 88,995 residents, an increase of nearly 30,000 people in the last decade.

The swell is so unusual for any one area of a state that Mat-Su was even featured in Wednesday’s USA Today newspaper.

“Alaska residents are flocking to a bedroom community outside of Anchorage … while small communities that have relied on fishing and logging are losing population,“ the USA Today story begins.

Compared to the national growth rate of 9.7 percent, Alaska’s overall population grew by 13.3 percent to 710,231, with the Valley accounting for about one-third of the total increase, according to U.S. Census Bureau summaries.

To local officials and residents, however, this isn’t stop-you-in-your-tracks news.

“Mayor Rupright thought the population would be over 100,000 and I said it’d be closer to 92,000,” DeVilbiss said Thursday, adding they didn’t have any money or beer on the line, unfortunately. “One thing this will do is give us more legislative representation for this area and we’ll also see some major shifts on how the borough assembly seats are drawn.”

However, DeVilbiss cautions the Mat-Su Borough School District against pushing to build more schools based on the population increase because he said he would hate to see the borough later struggle to get those schools paid off for lack of a tax base to support them.

Commercial and residential construction has slowed down in the last couple of years, he said.

“All indications are that our huge growth spike that happened three or four years ago has leveled off,” said DeVilbiss, a longtime Palmer farmer who recently won the mayor’s post, but who has served on the borough assembly and school board in the past. “We were in exactly the same growth cycle when we built the two Colony schools off Bogard, then had a reversal in the population because of the oil industry and ended up boarding up those schools until the bonds were paid. So it’s prudent to hold back at this point.”

Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development Economist Neal Fried disagrees with DeVilbiss on his assessment of the population leveling off. Fried said his estimates show the numbers did slow “ever so slightly” in 2009, but he doesn’t believe that trend will continue.

“None of us knows what’s going to happen in the next 10 years, but most forecasts are dependent on what happened in the past,” Fried said. “In previous decades, the Valley has grown fast as well, but even more so now.”

The fastest growth in the Valley has been in the Knik-Fairview area between the Parks Highway and Point MacKenzie, which experienced a 111 percent spike since 2000. Its 2010 population of 14,923 is greater than that of Palmer and Wasilla combined, Borough Public Affairs Director Patty Sullivan points out on the borough’s website.

As the fastest growing region in the state for the past 15 years, the following areas saw the largest increases from the 2000 to 2010 Census:

• Meadow Lakes + 2,751.

• Gateway community near the Glenn-Parks highways interchange + 2,600.

• Fishhook community near Hatcher Pass + 2,649.

• Wasilla + 2,362.

• The Lakes communities + 1,658.

• Palmer + 1,404.

• Big Lake + 715.

• Houston + 710.

• Butte + 685.

• Rural Point MacKenzie + 418.

To Fried, the most interesting figures were found in the Valley’s increase in ethnic diversity since 2000.

The Valley’s Asian population grew by 155 percent, its African-American numbers doubled and its Hispanic population more than doubled, Fried said.

“Overall, the Valley is about 85 percent white now, compared to 88 percent 10 years ago,” Fried said, adding that the Valley’s increase in health services, consumer goods and affordable housing continue to attract more residents from Anchorage, as well as from smaller communities and villages. “The Native population also went up by over 50 percent.”

Contact K.T. McKee at kate.mckee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.