PEEK AT THE PAST: April 11, 1990

Here’s what made news in the Mat-Su 20 years ago, from the April 11, 1990, issue of The Frontiersman:

Big Lake OK

for Ice Classic

The state Senate has approved legislation to allow the Big Lake Chamber of Commerce and Houston Junior-Senior High School Booster Club to host a lottery. The groups will sell tickets to people who bet on when the ice on Big Lake will break up. Although the bill was approved too late to allow the contest to happen this year, it will be on for 1991.

State Rep. Curt Menard helped push the legislation.

“I think it will be a real boon for the area,” he said. “It’s been a tourist-recreation area, and it will help them have some money to develop the site.”

GCI to come to Valley

General Communications Inc., the major competitor for Alascom for long-distance telephone service, announced it will open a service center in the Valley. The move will create 40 full-time jobs. The company plans to lease 4,500 square feet of space, but has not identified a location.

“This new center will provide the Valley with significant economic benefit,” said Mat-Su Borough Mayor Dorothy Jones.

Safes not so safe

A 1,500-pound safe was stolen from the D&A Shop Rite store on the Parks Highway over the weekend. The thieves are believed to have accessed the store through a hole chopped in from a vacant unit adjacent to the store in the Shop Rite mall. They broke the large safe loose from where it was bolted to the floor and used a hydraulic jack to transport it.

The robbery is similar to one at the Big Lake Food Mart in March where a large safe was removed through the ceiling.

Sales tax debate

rages on in Wasilla

In an editorial, the Frontiersman comments on the Wasilla City Council bringing up “that T-word again.”

Adding a sales tax to the city has, the editorial reports, “been an oft-debated question for years now, and the only things that have changed have been state-funded municipal revenue sharing grants (they’re lower now) and local property taxes (they’re higher now). Hence the pressure for a sales tax.”

The editorial calls Mayor John Stein’s proposal for a sales tax a “3-percent solution to the city’s revenue troubles.” It goes on to say that many of the tax’s naysayers are those who live outside the city’s limits but shop in Wasilla.

“But if you asked Wasilla residents who must fund the streets and sewers and lights and flowers and all the other things that help draw shoppers to Wasilla if they would like to tap some non-residents pockets to pay for those services now funded by resident property taxes, you might hear a different answer,” it says.

It cost what?

According to advertisements, in April 1990 you could:

• Buy shocks for your vehicle from $18.99 to $29.99 each.

• Wish Don Tanner a happy 40th birthday.

• Buy round-trip airline tickets to Minneapolis or Detroit for $398.

• Get a class ring starting at $75.

• Have a special prime rib Easter dinner for $15.95