Neighborhood charts new path

PALMER — After a decade of trying, a neighborhood in the Lazy Mountain area is finally on the road to getting natural gas service, and the route those residents traveled may prove useful to other communities.

Or maybe it won’t.

One of the ways people can get natural gas to their properties is through what’s called a local improvement district. The Mat-Su Borough helps set them up and, once voted on, neighbors share the costs associated with maintaining services within that area.

But LIDs have long been a sticking point at the borough assembly where members worry that the process is not fair to the minority of homeowners who don’t want natural gas service, or say they can’t afford the increased costs.

The solution: non-contiguous districts. A non-contiguous district is a way to let people opt out who don’t want to participate in the district.

“I am extremely grateful to be able to use the first non-contiguous LID in our subdivision,” local resident Katherine Bacon told the borough assembly Tuesday in her testimony on the approval of the district. “Hopefully this will help other communities come to a resolution for their needs as well; instead of pitting neighbor against neighbor.”

Another property owner in the area told the assembly that neighbors were no longer upset with one another and that the exemption of properties seemed to have assuaged some of the hurt feelings. This was the fourth time the neighborhood had attempted to create an LID.

Former Mat-Su Borough Assemblyman Warren Keogh, who did a lot of work on LIDs during his time on the assembly, also testified, saying that he thought this was a laudable way neighbors had found to navigate a flawed system.

“These people have found a way to come together, as imperfect as it may be, to find a way to get natural gas to people who want it and leave out of the equation those who don’t want it, don’t need it, or can’t afford it,” he said.

Mat-Su Borough Manager John Moosey said the non-contiguous district idea has its own risks. He said that after three years, people can hook into the system without paying the start-up costs, which means that it could be hard to get people to sign up in the first place because not signing and waiting out that three-year period could save a significant amount of money.

Assemblymen asked if people could sign up before those three years. Enstar Natural Gas representatives told them that people who sign up before then would have to pay their share of the startup costs and that the reduction in costs that created would be passed on to the customers already in the district.

But while all this might sound like a good plan for future districts, at least one assemblyman wants to get rid of LIDs altogether.

“It’s just a mess and the borough needs to flat get out of this business,” assemblyman Vern Halter said. “If Enstar and these people want to get together and do this themselves and finance it, have at it.”

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