Mayor has work yet unfinished

WASILLA -- Sometimes the progress of government is decidedly slow. It's largely for that reason incumbent Mat-Su Borough Mayor Tim Anderson said he's running for re-election.

"There's a time issue involved," Anderson said. "Things in the government move slowly … three years is not enough time. You start programs and you want to see them through."

The borough has been working toward several larger projects in addition to bringing existing borough programs up to date, he said. Funding education, continued improvements to emergency services, and paving roads are all on his list of basic priorities.

Anderson moved to the state from Arizona in 1977. He and his family spent nine years in the Bush, in Bethel and Aniak, where Anderson was hired as Aniak's first city manager and later served as the city's deputy mayor. When his children were in school, Anderson said, the family moved to Talkeetna to give them a taste of life in a more populated area. After their children's schooling was complete, Anderson and then-wife Linda moved to Wasilla, where he began working as the executive director of the Wasilla Area Seniors Inc.

Anderson is wrapping up his first term as mayor and a decade of borough service.

"It goes back to 1990. Dorothy Jones approached me about being on the planning commission," Anderson said. "That led to seven years on the planning commission."

There, he said, he got well-acquainted with the inner workings of the borough. It was there, Anderson said, he saw the need for a new direction.

"I wasn't comfortable with what was happening in the government and I knew it could be changed," Anderson said.

Over the past three years, he said, he feels he's brought a more steady hand to the helm of the borough government.

"My tenure in this borough has always been controversial, but I've tried to minimize that," Anderson said, referring to recent wrangling about zoning and, now, contention over coal-bed methane drilling.

Despite hot-button issues or partisan politics that arise, Anderson said he feels the borough's first priority should be meeting the basic needs of residents.

"It's non-partisan and I wouldn't want it any other way," he said of the office. "We provide basic services. We have to provide those services -- fund education, fix roads … That's what I want to do."