New approach refreshing

A pretty remarkable thing happened at last weeks joint meeting of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly and the borough planning commission.

Members were asking questions about the development of the planned Hatcher Pass ski resort and getting answers.

For nearly two hours, assembly members and planning commissioners discussed the status of Hatcher Pass with acting borough manager John Duffy and newly elected mayor Tim Anderson.

On the one hand, it was disturbing to realize that after all this time, so many people who should have known what was going on at Hatcher Pass, didnt.

It wasnt for want of trying.

In the past, assembly members who wanted hard numbers or facts about the project or Port MacKenzie, for that matter seemed to have a difficult time getting them. Then, last week, it happened.

Conversation flowed, questions were answered, suspicions were addressed, and if no one knew the answers, they said so.

Both Duffy and Anderson seem to be in agreement on at least one point: the assembly, and the public, and the planning commission, need to know all the facts.

Everyone has to be included in this, Anderson told a Frontiersman reporter in a recent interview.

There was another surprise at last weeks meeting, as well. No one present at the table seemed to be opposed to Hatcher Pass.

Many of the members of both bodies differed on details. Some are opposed to the borough investing money in infrastructure development for the proposed resort village. Others see it as being the only viable way to make Hatcher Pass a success.

One would have thought, under the previous administration, that there was an enormous conspiracy by the assembly to derail Hatcher Pass. The more the administration kept from a potentially hostile assembly, the better a chance it had of getting Hatcher Pass through.

Not everyone felt the process was closed, of course. Former assembly member Jim Turner has argued, very reasonably, that the process has been a lengthy one, and that there have been many opportunities for public input.

Hatcher Pass, Turner very recently pointed out, will be subject to a state process with public hearings and a borough process with public hearings on more than just one aspect of this.

The irony of it all was that not even the Hatcher Pass Development Corp. completely favored the proposed management agreement for the project.

What assembly members, and the public, wanted, was an increased flow of information.

And that appears to be happening.