Mat-Su resident! Do not fear annexation!

A couple years ago someone in our newsroom was having a conversation with someone at the Central Mat-Su Fire Department.

The firefighter had been with the department a number of years and was talking about annexation. He said he challenges people opposed to annexation from the city of Wasilla to actually look at the numbers.

Usually, he said, people find they’d actually pay lower taxes if they lived inside city limits rather than outside.

It’s the same thing we heard this week when talking to city of Houston officials about why an Alaska Native corp. wants their land annexed into that city. Apparently, Knikatnu wanted to save some money on taxes.

Organizers of a potential city of Big Lake, meanwhile, make a similar argument. “We can probably save you tax money. Or at least provide better services for the same amount.”

This seems counter-intuitive. Another layer of government should require more money, right?

Usually, though, one government supplants the other. Taxes paid for road service, for instance, go to the city rather than the borough government.

And cities have other taxation avenues available. They can levy sales tax. In the case of Wasilla, the Valley’s main commercial center, that sales tax has been more than enough to keep property taxes in the city very low. Lower than the surrounding area.

So why is it that none of these cities can mention annexation without people getting up in arms?

It’s bad enough that a city like Palmer — which we would say is well-managed and provides good services — won’t even whisper the word annexation and is instead just extending out its services, contracting with the Mat-Su Borough to offer fire protection to a much larger area than its city limits and extending its water district with a big expansion on Trunk Road.

Some might rightly call this soft annexation. We honestly don’t know why it is this way.

If the argument is more government means more bureaucracy, we would argue that’s actually not true, either.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to conduct what business you have with the local government at a city hall just minutes from your home, rather than at borough headquarters an hour or more distant for many Valley residents? And doesn’t it seem appealing to deal with city officials who can offer you more time and attention since their job entails serving much fewer people?

We’re probably a long way from living in a community where “annexation” is a dirty word, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it.