Palmer City Council passes grants, sewer money

PALMER — The Palmer City Council awarded two community development grants during its meeting Tuesday at Palmer City Hall. The council also heard a presentation from Katrina Nygaard of Stantek about their work in studying the redevelopment possibilities in Palmer.

Wasilla City Council member and Alaska Municipal League first Vice President Stu Grahamt came to speak to the Palmer City Council during public comment and continued an ongoing budget discussion during the meeting.

“When we come forward and we have alternatives, we are heard and we are part of the discussion,” Graham said.

Graham discussed possibilities of additional sales taxes in response to the cost shifting to municipalities through the governor’s budget, as reported by City Attorney Michael Gatti.

“Our taxpayers should benefit from our tax revenue and our ability with the good offices of this council to decide what revenue sources will go to provide those services and not have an overriding state requirement that’s going to charge us at least a 10 percent fee on our tax collections,” Gatti said. “Anyway that’s my soap box, I support you 100 percent Mayor.”

Mayor Edna DeVries had briefly mentioned during her report a dialogue she’d had with Sen. Shelley Hughes at the Palmer Senior Center. Hughes mentioned a likelihood for a sales tax if a new tax were to be levied on Alaskans during this legislature.

“I just encouraged the senator to be sure and remember local control regarding the sales tax,” DeVries said. “I was pretty stern with her regarding local control.”

Councilwoman Linda Combs corrected the mayor that she was firm, not stern. DeVries made multiple allusions to the administrative fee that she fears would be charged by the state if a sales tax is implemented, including a sarcastic question to Graham as he finished his comments. DeVries was not the only one to disagree with Graham, and apologized for picking on him during council comments.

“I think we as a city are doing our due diligence and providing the services for our citizens through a city sales tax. Implementing a sales tax on top of our sales tax doesn’t incentivize living within the city limits. It puts a burden on us. My alternative is an income tax,” Councilman David Fuller said. “I appreciate your opinion but I disagree.”

The council voted to approve $54,502 to HDR for engineering services with the Palmer Wastewater Treatment Plant. HDR provides coordination with the DEC, EPA, and DOJ in addition to performance testing.

“I know that this is probably a very good thing because you have phase two of this whole

sewer plan that could be riding on how well we do on documentation and stuff, so I think this is a very good idea, very wise,” Councilman Steve Carrington said.

The council also renewed liquor licenses for Klondike Mike’s Saloon, the Alaska State Fair and Matanuska Brewing Company. City Clerk Norma Alley informed the council that Klondike’s had not been current on their sales tax, but paid up in between the time the meeting packet was published and the time the meeting was held. Alley also asked the council to determine who would travel to Saroma, Japan for the 40th anniversary celebration of the sister city program. Always cognizant of how many council members can be in one place at one time, Alley said that only three council members may attend.

“I understand that we’re traveling abroad but open meetings act is open meetings act and yes, it would be applied in this situation as well,” Alley said.

City Manager Nathan Wallace informed the council that his reports would now feature highlights and anomalies rather than the entirety of police and fire department statistics each month. Wallace highlighted that a Palmer firefighter was recently appointed to a firefighters grant board, which could become incredibly valuable for the Palmer Fire Department.

“Sitting on a board is the next best thing to getting grants accepted because you get to see how grants are written you get to see what the boards are approving so having him be invited to sit on that board is going to be a great asset for us,” Wallace said.

A Palmer firefighter recently attended confined spaces training in California, and Wallace stressed the importance of properly trained firefighters so that they can provide training to other firefighters.

“Confined space is a huge area of safety concern,” Wallace said.

Wallace was happy to detail the business license statistics. Palmer has processed 1,322 business licenses to date, more than half of the 2,048 processed in 2018. Wallace said that it was the second highest month in the last ten years for valuation. Deputy Mayor Pete LaFrance thanked Palmer Police Chief Lance Ketterling for the Palmer SRO’s assistance in diffusing a recent situation.

“I would just like to tip my hat to her and also to the Palmer Police Department for putting a very capable officer in that position,” LaFrance said.

The Council passed two $2,000 community development grants to the Palmer Museum for the Midsummer Garden and Art Faire and the Who Let the Girls Out 5k.

“This is not a commercially oriented event and it takes this kind of support to pull it of. We are educationally based,” said Brooke Heppinstall. We offer a reduced fees to as many nonprofits municipalities and otherwise that we can to try to allow people to bring their message to the people of Palmer.”

Palmer Museum Executive Director Sam Dinges noted that staff from the Anchorage Museum told him how impressed they were with activities inside the city of Palmer.

“It’s not just a commercial event, but an event that promotes art in the community, it promotes music, it promotes gardening, it promotes putting energy into our town,” Dinges said.

Staff from Stantek presented to the council about their plans for studying brownfield area wide planning. Nygaard has already presented to the council once this year, and is assisting as part of a $400,000 EPA Brownfield grant that was awarded to the Mat-Su Borough in 2016. Nygaard identified the Matanuska Maid block as a possible site for redevelopment or reinvigoration, and will continue to study the city and it’s ordinances.

“Brownfields are really a broad category defined by the EPA for sites that may or may not have contamination on them, but for some reason they are really struggling to redevelop. Maybe it’s because of public perception maybe it’s an actual environmental hazard...What does our zoning code say? What is allowed? What is not and does that match what people want? Is the community asking for one thing and your code is allowing something else? How can we rectify that,” Nygaard said.

Councilman Pete LaFrance was one of many to say they were looking forward to the Green Day Gallop. This year’s Gallop will feature the first marathon inside of the city of Palmer. LaFrance also noted that the Crazy Lazy race will be the following weekend.

“In the next few weeks palmer becomes Alaska’s running epicenter and that’s really exciting,” LaFrance said.

Contact Frontiersman reporter Tim Rockey at tim.rockey@frontiersman.com.