Moosey picked to be Palmer's Manager among four other candidates

PALMER — After interviewing five candidates at a special meeting called on March 31 and attended by videochat, six members of the Palmer City Council selected current Mat-Su Borough Manager John Moosey as the next manager of the city of Palmer.

Current Manager Nathan Wallace announced his resignation in February to pursue a job with the Bureau of Land Management in Wyoming. The Council interviewed Serena Bemis-Goodall, John Ardaugh, George Zoukee, Moosey and current Community Development Director for Palmer Brad Hanson on Tuesday night at the special meeting.

On Wednesday morning at the press conference concerning coronavirus, Moosey announced that he had accepted the offer and Assistant Borough Manager George Hays would take over for him as Interim Manager while the borough Assembly opens the process to hire a new manager. Each candidate was asked seven identical questions to allow for a level playing field between candidates.

Each of the five candidates were asked to described their management style, the role of city government, an approach to the continued hunker down mandates due to the coronavirus pandemic, how citizens can be well informed on government matters, relationships with state and federal lawmakers, how each candidate would handle a theoretical situation wherein the council rejects their plan and each candidate was allowed one open ended answer to describe further details about themselves or ask the council a question.

The first candidate to be interviewed by the council was Bemis-Goodall, who called in from Maine to interview and mentioned her relatives that live in Palmer. While Bemis-Goodall was not selected by the six council members who participated in the executive session, she was not unwelcome.

‘Say hello’

“Some of the people you noted are close friends of mine so if you get up at least stop and say hello,” said Mayor Edna DeVries.

Moosey began answering the question about his managing style by noting that he has 34 years of experience as a local government manager.

“I view my job as boro manager and city manager where I’ve been in the past is to hire good people, give them the training and tools they need to do their job, and then as manager knock down the road blocks for them to do their job,” said Moosey.

Moosey said that he has employed all different types of management strategies based on the people he has to delegate to and the job at hand. Moosey answered the question about local government’s role in keeping the cost of government down while providing essential services to citizens with data from his time as borough Manager.

The mill rate

“For the Mat-Su Borough, 11, 12 years ago we were at 10.5 mills. Today we are at 10.34 mills,” said Moosey. “We’ve been able to keep the mill rate lower than what it was 12 years ago.”

Prior to asking questions to candidates, the six council members who attended telephonically selected from a list of questions that was distributed and Councilwoman Jill Valerius added a question about how candidates would handle the hunker down mandates due to the pandemic present on the minds of citizens nationwide. Moosey said he prayed for two weeks that a community in the Mat-Su would not have the first positive test prior to the arrival of people who tested positive for COVID 19 in March.

“We have three. It means we’re doing something right, so and I think it’s because people are listening. People care about their communities. People are doing the right thing and it’s pretty simple, it’s social distancing, keep clean, be respectful,” said Moosey.

Moosey noted that Palmer’s economy is centered around small businesses that may be some of the most harshly impacted among the pandemic’s unknown economic impact.

“That’s really what’s great about Palmer is we have a small city where people want to come, people want to congregate, people want to spend their money here and that’s really kind of the strength is what we have here in Palmer,” said Moosey.

Moosey used his open ended question to tell a story about his first job in local government in Pennsylvania and how he met his wife. Moosey spoke proudly about how he was able to apply for and receive grants building boat launches in Pennsylvania, paving roads in Ohio and receiving tens of millions of dollars in state funding nearly every year at the Mat-Su Borough.

“I think this is the perfect time for us to seek those funding. The state of Alaska is getting $1.3 billion from the Federal government. They haven’t developed the program, this is the perfect time to kind of line those up and go after that because $100,000, $200,000, half a million dollars to Palmer means an awful lot and to others it doesn’t mean much so I think there’s a lot of opportunity,” said Moosey.

Where Moosey’s answer to the identical interview questions stood out the most was not in his three decades of experience, but his response in the face of failure. Moosey was asked a question about if he had presented an idea to the council that they had shot down and he was sure it was a mistake, how would he react.

“First off I would say I didn’t do a very good job explaining,” said Moosey. “I never try to take something to the city council or Mat-Su Borough Assembly or county commissioners that I think is going to fail to begin with.”

Following the conclusion of interviews, the council moved to go into executive session to discuss their decision in private. For the meeting, City Clerk Norma Alley and current Manager Nathan Wallace were present in the room with Mayor DeVries. City Attorney Michael Gatti joined Deputy Mayor Linda Combs, Councilman Steve Carrington and Councilwomen Sabrena Combs, Julie Berberich and Dr. Jill Valerius on the teleconference. Councilman Richard Best did not attend the meeting. Moosey is set to take over around the end of May.

“I’m very interested, I feel like I was created for local government. I think I thrive on chaos,” said Moosey. “I really like people. I want to solve their problems and I want to do it in a way that everybody benefits.”