Lukewarm on bonds

In the next borough election you will be asked to decide whether tens of millions in proposed projects are worth hiking your own property taxes to fund.

We believe some of them are.

The school district has sold us on the need for its bonds. They failed to pass muster at the ballot box last year but by the narrowest of margins. The electorate seems conflicted. Perhaps watching as the nation’s economy caught fire swayed many into deciding now was not the time to be spending a lot of borrowed money.

But it’s not as if the school is asking us to approve bond money to build something it doesn’t need. These aren’t bonds to build an aquarium or a skateboard park. We’re talking about basic safety here — replacing fire alarms for which parts are no longer available and fixing a whole lot of roofs, many of which hide asbestos that should probably be removed.

These are the type of projects districts simply can’t budget for, especially considering that upwards of 80 percent of the district’s budget is consumed by fixed costs like payroll, benefits and utilities.

It’s the type of one-time, big-ticket project for which the state government usually comes through. And in this case it already has, to a degree. The state has already agreed to pay nearly three fourths of the cost. The taxpayers are liable only for the remaining quarter. A smaller raft of bonds from the school district seems less of a no-brainer. We might have trouble checking the box that approves $9 million for school athletic facilities.

Turf fields make sense, we suppose. A number of Alaska communities are heading that direction. Our harsh climate is murder on our athletic fields, which become unruly and nearly impossible to maintain. Bad fields lead to nasty falls and more player injuries. But we’re not so sure that three turf fields are needed. If a school’s booster clubs are behind the upgrade, perhaps they help make their project happen without burdening all of the districts’ taxpayers.

At any rate, we’re glad the athletic bonds aren’t tied up in the same package as the roofing, flooring and fire alarms. We would like to make those choices independent of one another.

This brings us to the borough’s road bonds.

Forgive us for saying so, but we have a tough time swallowing $33 million worth of road bonds. Perhaps it’s bad form for us to think the state should pony up some dough for these projects. Maybe Mat-Su voters should pay for their own roads. Maybe we’ve gotten too accustomed to state money.

But it seems to us that the borough assembly members who voted to put these bonds on the ballot are assuming there will be no road money next year and are therefore jumping the gun. Maybe there will be road money next year. Who’s to say?

And we’re not certain that proving Mat-Su can do this on its own would loosen, rather than tighten, the legislature’s purse strings.

Don’t take our hesitance the wrong way. We’ve looked at the projects on the bonding agenda and find all of them to be worthy. We just aren’t quite sure the state has hit the wall when it comes to road money. There may yet be some honey left in that pot. And if we do, as some are predicting, in the very near future reach a point where there is no way to get a road built but to go it alone, our hope is that bond packages can be put together with a little bit more deliberation. The borough assembly followed its process to the letter on this one. But this package was generated almost entirely at the assembly/borough administration level.

We’re not sure what the proper mechanism would be. But if the borough is going to get into the road building game for the long term and in a serious way, we would like to see a whole lot more voices contributing to the process and prioritizing that list.