Not enough time to weigh in on borough budget

The transparency demonstrated by the borough in the 2013 Mat-Su Borough budget presentations and deliberations is a positive sign, and we appreciate the mayor’s wishes for public participation.

All this new information raises thoughts about Monday night’s budget reconsideration, which provides the public further opportunity to address comments to the assembly beforehand through public opinion messages and e-mails about issues that weren’t raised at the horseshoe during regular budget deliberations.

Why is the assembly’s attention on the calculator, literally nickel and diming staff budget requests, and why is its apparent laser focus on reducing the mill rate? When I asked my own assembly representative after he said it would mean nothing in savings to me next year, it was hard to keep listening. While it sounds like any savings would be an assembly gesture at best, the loss already from the change the assembly has made will ensure reduced government for the borough starting in 2014 — the government we complained to about snowplowing this winter, that sees that our kids have the education to win national awards and whose job it is to help us maintain the Alaska lifestyle we came here to live.

The changes the assembly will consider Monday may speed a snowball of already reduced support for staff Assemblyman Jim Colver calls “family.” Deregulation and smaller government sound great until you need the protections and services you think you’re paying for. While business (not necessarily mom-and-pop and not necessarily local) may profit and leave, borough services and infrastructure suffer, and residents ultimately pay in the long-term.

The gentlemen at Monday night’s horseshoe might demonstrate their respect for us, and our public servant family, by the following actions:

1. Leave the already low mill rate as is, and especially in light of the assembly’s own extreme ratio of benefits (about 70 percent) to total compensation, direct mill rate reducing funds to convert staff positions that have been “temporary” as long as three years to the permanent positions they actually are, and even saving money from repeat and spendy hiring and training costs.

2. Assemblyman Ron Arvin got across-the-board cuts for select departments in travel, overtime wages and other contractual work by as much as 25 percent of already restricted (and rising) costs. While the assembly exempted itself from these cuts, it could readily set an example by reducing its own budget increases and current expenses (the assembly’s costs and budgets appear to exceed 2011 expenditures by as much as 250 percent and 340 percent), and might not assembly members eliminate the first-time expense of assembly life insurance (doesn’t look like staff gets this one)?

3. The new fast-tracked borough building annex approaches $8 million that I can find (public comment on the movement of some of this money, especially from EMS and other capital funds that have held balances maybe longer than the required limit, is scheduled Tuesday night). Not that we don’t need nice digs to observe and participate in assembly ruminations, but we have immediate needs in Community Services, Planning, Platting and other core departments, not to mention what to do with the ferry now that it’s ours and we have no place to put it.

We’re not getting money we expected to support the bridge, and there are a host of other immediate issues left silent for the clicking calculator during the two short nights of budget deliberations last week.

Is this really the time to put unexpended EMS funds into Martha Stewart aspirations when that money might support public servants doing the work we expect and depend on, and save borough services without cleaning out taxpayer pockets?

At this time of the year it isn’t just the dandelions and crabgrass that borough residents need to get a handle on, it’s into the weeds of our borough budget that could really pay us to dive.

Patricia Rosnel lives in Palmer.