Mayoral hopefuls face tough issues

PALMER — Annexation, railroad tracks, city spending — the mayoral candidates’ forum Thursday had it all.

The forum is part of a series the Greater Palmer and Greater Wasilla chambers of commerce have been staging all summer long. Kevin Brown, Mike Chmielewski and DeLena Johnson met to discuss city issues at the Palmer Train Depot. The only no-show was Emil “Butch” Fondahn.

Moderator Stu Graham wasted no time getting to the controversial topics. One of his first questions to the candidates opened up what has lately been a sore spot in Palmer — what to do about the old train tracks running through downtown.

Johnson said she feels strongly about the tracks. As director of the Palmer Museum of History & Art, she is passionate about the town’s heritage. But she also thinks the tracks could be an economic asset for the city.

“The railroad rehabilitation project cannot be evaluated without a solid cost estimate from the railroad on how much it would cost to rehabilitate the tracks,” she said. But rehabilitation should be the goal. “Let’s bring a train to Palmer.”

Brown, who sits on the city council, said that as mayor his job wouldn’t be to decide what to do with the tracks but to implement whatever plan city residents come up with. If they want them rehabilitated, he’d go find the money to do it. If they want them torn up, he’d find that money.

He also took a jab at Johnson, while talking about the city’s “charrette” or working group of interested and concerned citizens formed to look at the issue.

“It was something the council was committed to and it’s something Ms. Johnson fought us on every step of the way,” Brown said.

Johnson said she didn’t oppose the charrette, just the $70,000 it was going to cost to run it.

For his part, Chmielewski said he’s worked laying rails before and these look like they would need a lot of work to get functioning again.

He said it’s a tough situation without enough facts on the table. On one side the Alaska Railroad says, “Tell us what you’d like to do,” and on the other side the city says, “Would you please tell us what you’re willing to do?”

When Graham asked the panel what the city could do to reduce taxes, Brown answered that he’d been waiting for that question all night.

He said that the city is working with the Matanuska Electric Association and the Alaska State Fair to build a power plant on fair property. The steam from that could be sent to the city’s wastewater treatment facility, thus greatly increasing its capacity to treat sewage and allowing the city to become a regional treatment center. The city could then charge pumpers and others to use the plant.

“Fees could offset property taxes completely in five years,” he said. “That’s why I’ve worked so hard to get good people elected at MEA, so that this could become a viable option for our community.”

Chmielewski said he was on board with that plan.

“I think that one of the most important things that we do is to be willing to look at those ways of doing things.”

For her part, Johnson said she didn’t think that was a viable option — she doesn’t think the law allows a city to reduce its property taxes using revenue from that kind of an enterprise.

In rebuttal, Brown said that yes, there is a way to do that within the law.

Johnson said that to reduce taxes she would instead build up the city’s commercial, manufacturing and industrial base. Doing that, she said, begins with an inventory of city assets and a hard look at where the city is lacking.

“It’s a one-step-at-a-time process. Not an easy answer,” she said.

Another question on a controversial topic, this one about annexation, saw the candidates finding some common ground — not one of them was willing to advocate for any expansion of the city any time soon.

In his closing remarks, Brown took aim at Johnson, in an effort to rebut claims she’d made on her website and repeated in her opening remarks.

Johnson said that the city has grown its spending 60 percent while revenue increased only 30 percent. One of the places she pointed to as being wasteful was the administration budget, which she said grew 250 percent over the last few years.

“Those expenditures happened on your watch,” she said to Brown and Chmielewski.

But Brown said that if she were to look deeper at the numbers Johnson would find a different picture. Yes, the city brought on new department heads. But those department heads saved the city money, Brown said.

Jon Owen, for instance, who was hired for a new position as the city’s head of public safety, found efficiencies and reduced city liability so much he saved Palmer $200,000 a year. Carter Cole, the city’s director of public works, fixed broken water mains that had sent a geyser through the pavement downtown and brought the project in $1.3 million under what it would have cost to bring in a contractor on such short notice.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.