Members of Palmer City Council and Board of Economic Development share thoughts during joint meeting

PALMER — The Palmer City Council and Board of Economic Development met in a joint meeting to discuss goals for the coming year.

In anticipation of heightened construction on the Glenn Highway entrance into Palmer, Mayor Edna DeVries brought up the future zoning of the frontage road that will go along the main highway. Councilman David Fuller stressed that the city should act fast on the new zoning because much of the property is undeveloped.

“So you’re talking about annexation without saying the word,” DeVries asked Fuller.

Both members of the Council and the BED stressed the importance of how the new frontage road will look in representing the ‘welcome corridor’ to Palmer. BED member Barb Hunt stressed that signage must be prominent and visible, and Councilwoman Linda Combs wanted to reiterate the use of “Palmer: Alaska at its best” on the signage. Councilman Steve Carrington reminisced back to the last time Palmer took up the possibility of annexation. Carrington argued that the city needed direction and not do perform a ‘propeller annexation’ moving down the major highways.

“We need to have our borders bigger. That’s what we need to do for us to be able to protect and develop how we want it,” Carrington said.

The last attempt at annexation in 2007 failed.

“I have no fear of the word annexation at all and so I think we really just need to direct the manager to move forward with that. We don’t have enough of that space to make it worth it to try and make that frontage road look nice without annexation, so I think we really need to pursue that,” Councilwoman Sabrena Combs said. “I think it would be a considerable economic boom to our town the frontage road coming in.”

Any action toward annexation would be a long process, as explained by city manager Nathan Wallace. Ultimately, the decision would be up to the boundary commission, but if the council were to annex south on the Glenn Highway, a series of public meetings would have to be held first to determine who would be interested. If there is strong opposition, consultants would have to be hired for presentation to the boundary commission, as that is larger than the scope of work the city staff can provide looking into the economic impacts of potential annexation. If the result of the preliminary public meetings was positive, the application to the boundary commission would become much simpler. BED Chair Dusty Silva noted that there are positive things to sell potentially annexed business and homeowners about being within city limits.

“It is part of our strategic plan to talk about annexation and it seems to me that that area that you’re talking about, those landowners would be highly interested in being annexed into the city because that is going to attract a level of business that needs the city services that are provided,” Silva said. “There certainly are a lot of attractive things to being within the city especially for those who sit right outside of the city.”

BED member Kelly Turney argued that instead of taking one single attempt at annexation of the entire area, approaching industrial and commercial landowners first.

“We’re looking at the empty land, the vacant land, the industrial, commercial land. Why don’t we address those property owners as opposed to the residential neighborhoods. Why not take control of those components first which will have the greatest impact financially with sales tax and how it looks coming into our town as opposed to a neighborhood that’s been sitting there for 30 years,” Turney said. “You can swing for the fences or you can take a nice double i don’t know I’ll take a nice double.”

Contact Frontiersman reporter Tim Rockey at tim.rockey@frontiersman.com.