No Butte office for troopers

Butte residents walked away disappointed last week, but determined to find a different source of help after a measure that would have allowed a room in the Butte fire hall to be used as a satellite office for Alaska State Troopers was voted down by the Mat-Su Borough Assembly.

The community has been working for more than two years with the Mat-Su Borough and Rep. Bill Stoltze, R-Chugiak and Mat-Su, to come up with a plan to address problems in the Jim Creek area stemming largely from illegal activity taking place on public lands. In addition to scheduled clean-ups in the area, through which dozens of cars have been extracted from public lands, borough officials have rescheduled the working hours of its code-compliance staff so it can respond to calls that a vehicle has been abandoned, trashed or burned on borough land. Recently, fire service area volunteers have been patrolling the area to keep the danger of wildfires down and keep an eye on activity in the area.

The next step, according to community council members, was to institute community patrols of the area. But before that could take place, they needed the assurance of a relatively fast trooper response if community members on patrol were in need of backup or assistance. Currently, according to community council member Tom Bergey, troopers are often more than an hour away -- too long for community council members to stay in an unsafe situation, he said. Although Palmer post trooper captain Dennis Casanovas said he couldn't guarantee a trooper would be on duty at any given time if the office in the Butte fire hall was available, he said the office would be a quiet environment with a desk and a phone that would serve as a good work area that would likely be well-used.

Through an agreement Stoltze included in the state budget for the coming fiscal year, an arrangement was reached that would have allowed money to be directed from the Mat-Su Borough to AST to be used specifically for increasing the number of trooper hours spent in the Butte area.

"I put in language that allowed some borough money to be used, if the borough made that policy decision," Stoltze said Friday. He added that the decision whether or not to make use of the funding mechanism was completely up to the assembly.

On June 17, through a 5-1 vote, the assembly chose not to use the funding mechanism. Members said they believed handing $50,000 over to the troopers for added protection in one area of the borough would lead to an outcry from other communities also suffering from a lack of police coverage. Each cited the amount of crime in their area, the number of junked cars recovered or late-night calls they receive about illegal and unsafe shooting, saying the problem is not felt solely in the Butte. Add to that the fact that the borough doesn't have police powers, they said, and the feeling was that the proposal wasn't well-planned.

"If we're going to do it, we should do it boroughwide," assemblyman Talis Colberg said. "The Butte does have problems, but it's not the only area. It has to be addressed boroughwide."

Borough assemblyman Bill Allen said he would like to see the borough take the issue to the Legislature.

"There's nothing I hate worse than to be on the negative side of a community trying to better themselves," Allen said. "It's a boroughwide problem, it's a serious problem and rather than Band-Aids, I think major surgery is required here. We need to take a plan to the state Legislature."

Assemblywoman Mary Kvalheim suggested the matter be taken to borough residents for a decision.

"I see this as us taking on police powers," Kvalheim said. "I say let's put it on the ballot and do it boroughwide."

Assemblywoman Jody Simpson said she didn't want to take on duties that don't belong to the borough.

"What we need to do is not just say, 'You can't do this in our Valley anymore,'" Simpson said. Instead, she advocated standing up to the state and asking them to step up and take responsibility for the public safety duties they hold. "These folks are looking to us to solve a problem that is a state problem."

Assemblyman Bruce Bush said the assembly members were turning their back on a problem they had the power to solve. Any community, he said, is able to hire police protection. Bush said using the Butte situation as a pilot program could help the assembly understand how to better meet the protection needs of residents in other areas of the borough.

"You're shirking your responsibilities," Bush said. "We have to take responsibility and try to solve it."

Assemblywoman Kelly Lankford Ladere said she didn't believe the satellite station would provide a cure, and encouraged the Butte community to come back with other suggestions. But Borough Mayor Tim Anderson said the proposed solutions hadn't been hatched overnight.

"I don't deny there are problems in other areas of the borough," Anderson said, adding that he welcomed residents from those other areas to organize and take charge of their community as the Butte residents have done, and to work with the borough as extensively as they have. If that were to happen, Anderson said, he'd be happy to help find and fund solutions. "The problem is much more serious in the Butte than anywhere else. We're … setting a precedent -- we're also setting a solution."

When it came to a vote, Bush cast the lone vote in favor of the project -- a response that wasn't what Butte community members expected.

"You have let us down, and you would not have lost anything," Butte Community Council member Brit Lively admonished the assembly, noting that the funding proposed for use by the borough will simply lapse into the borough's general fund at the end of the month.

"It's very clear the borough assembly has no interest in making their communities better when those communities have put together a pilot program," Butte council member Gregory Nilsson told the assembly. "It's a narrow, pedestrian view, 'If we give it to you, everyone else will want it.'"

After the vote was taken, Butte council members said they planned to look toward grant funding that may help them find a way to move forward. Grant funding may not help get the community patrols off the ground, however, and Nilsson said he hoped the halt on additional trooper support wouldn't quash the community's momentum.

Stoltze said he, too, will be looking for a solution to the community's problem.

"We'll have to look for plan B now," Stoltze said.