New Palmer mayor DeVries on right-sizing local government

PALMER — Former Palmer city councilwoman Edna DeVries was elected mayor in October after her term ended the month prior. Since starting out in government as Palmer city treasurer in 1971, DeVries has accumulated an impressive array of experience in governance and government budgets. She served on Palmer City Council the first time back in 1979, then went on to serve on the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly before being elected borough mayor and later, to the state senate. She returned to Palmer city council in 1996-99, then lived outside Alaska for nine years to support family members.

But to DeVries, who has four children, 12 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, “Alaska was always home,” and so, when her work in service of family was done, she returned with her husband, Noel, in 2009. She served two more terms as a Palmer city councilwoman before becoming mayor, starting in 2010.

She said that, over the years, Palmer has seen steady population growth and currently enjoys a right-sized city government that matches services to number of residents and will see it cruise comfortably through the state budget crisis. Revenue-sharing from state coffers with local governments was cut last year, but even if it were dropped completely, Palmer would weather the tough times in decent shape, she said.

“The council the last six years has been real conservative about removing positions and not adding positions, and just been very thoughtful,” DeVries said. “We’re in good shape in our reserves. We certainly would love to have the (revenue sharing) this year. But if the state says no, it’s not going to be a matter that we’re going to have to stop plowing the streets, or water and sewer will stop running or something like that.”

A move by the council to cut non-essential positions and combine two departments into the current Department of Community Development back in 2009-10 has also helped, she said.

As for many governments, rising health insurance costs have been a source of overall increased budget expenditures for Alaska, DeVries said. That led to the city asking its employees to pay higher monthly premiums for coverage of their families. But they haven’t had to look at raising premiums this year.

She said one issue of concern that continues to impact the city’s ability to provide adequate services, is the reduced funding allocated to Palmer City Library from the Mat-Su Borough.

“That is a little bit of a sore subject between us and the borough,” she said.

Prior to 2002, DeVries said, the library received around a half a million from the borough, a sizeable portion of its annual budget of about three-quarters of a million dollars. She said about three-quarters of Palmer library patrons are from outside the city. When the borough changed how it distributed library funds to its communities, there wasn’t much of a change in funding levels at first, she said. But the last few years, it amounts to less than $30,000 per year.

“Now that I’m mayor, it’s going to be a higher priority for us to do some investigating with this,” DeVries said, citing some library funds distribution that she doesn’t think make much sense, including a distribution to Houston, which doesn’t have a public library.

“We’re going to put some pressure on our assembly people,” she said. “Our library was built in the 70s. It would be nice to have some upgrades.”