Mat-Su voters shoot down pot prohibition

WASILLA — Mat-Su Borough voters, as well as Wasilla and Palmer city voters took to the polls on Tuesday with big issues before them.

The hottest ballot issue was the Borough’s Proposition B-1, which sought to ban all commercial sales of marijuana outside of the cities.

According to unofficial results Tuesday night, the proposition was on its way to falling by more than a thousand votes.

When the last of the votes trickled in Tuesday night No had defeated Yes 8,704 to 7,271.

Curiously, Wasilla, which had banned commercialization of marijuana in its city limits, said no to borough-wide prohibition by a margin of 285-263 at one polling spot and 321-296 at the other.

The seemingly contradictory Proposition B-5, which asked voters to place a 5 percent tax on marijuana sales, passed by a better than 5 to 1 margin on Tuesday. The final tally on that was 13,266 to 2,536.

The biggest ticket item on the docket was the borough’s Proposition B-4, in which voters had the opportunity to make improvements to Wasilla and Palmer swimming pools, the Brett Memorial Ice Arena, and a number of trails at a total cost of $22 million.

Despite the price tag and budget deficits, voters approved the improvements by an unofficial total of 8,605 to 7,224.

In the lone contested race for an Assembly seat in District 1, Jim Sykes appears to have hung on for a second term, holding off challenger Brian Endle.

Riding his home turf in Lazy Mountain, where he distanced himself by 38 votes, and taking Butte by 79, Sykes brought in 1,430 votes to Endle's 1,327.

In the race for the lone contested Mat-Su School Board seat, Ray Michaelson edged sitting board president Susan Pougher 1,040-1,001.

Wasilla City Council

Two seats were up for grabs on the Wasilla City Council.

For Seat E, current council member and deputy mayor Gretchen O’Barr appears to have narrowly survived a challenge from local business owner Debra Barrett.

In unofficial results, O’Barr finished with 479 votes, just 16 ahead of Barrett at 463 with 43 write-in ballots and 222 ballots yet to be reviewed by the canvass board.

For the other seat, James Harvey retained the seat he won via interview back in July, taking 294 votes, or 30.7 percent of the vote to 257 for Glenda Ledford and 246 for Christopher Anderson.

These results will be ratified at Monday's regular city council meeting.

Palmer City elections

Palmer held city-wide elections as well on Tuesday.

For city council, four ran for two slots, which, as yet unofficially, went to David Fuller with 331 votes, and incumbent Steve Carrington with 302, holding off Sven Johnson by 10 votes for the last spot.

Edna DeVries ran unopposed for mayor and collected 703 of 753 votes cast.

The lone ballot proposition, allowing the city to take on a $5 million bond to improve its wastewater treatment system passed by a margin of 681-222.