PEEK AT THE PAST: July 30, 1993

Here’s what made the news 18 years ago from the July 30, 1993, edition of the Mat-Su Frontiersman:

Palmer looks at ATV ban on streets

Two years of complaints about all-terrain vehicles on city streets have driven the Palmer City Council to reconsider a 22-year-old city regulation that designates some city streets as legal ATV routes. State law on ATV use mandates that they cannot be operated on city streets and they must be at least three feet away. Ron Otte, Palmer’s police chief, says he gets plenty of complaints about ATV users. “We could ban them from city limits, or just apply state law; maybe the answer is more aggressive enforcement.” Councilmember Diana Long disagrees. “Complaints would go down with increased enforcement, but that’s futile, because you can’t catch them, they are all-terrain vehicles and they can go anywhere and a police car can’t.”

Palmer balks on EMS contract

Palmer City Council members Tuesday night rejected a Mat-Su Borough-proposed emergency medical services contract, saying it was blatantly unfair to the city.

The Mat-Su Borough contracts with Palmer for its ambulance to respond to calls within the city. Palmer EMS chief Dan Contini brought to the council a budget that was $17,000 less than the asking price from the borough, a budget that council members said was the borough’s way of unjustly picking on the city.

In the contract’s section on pricing, the borough holds all the cards, according to city attorney Jack Snodgrass, who also stated that the language on terminating the contract is similarly one-sided. Contini insists that the budget reduction is sizeable.

“We don’t have a lot of extras in our budget,” he said. “We try to keep the budget down. We could ask for a lot of things, but we’ve always tried to be fair and honest with the budget.”

Little Su pact spurned

Houston City Council decided to reject a contract offer from the Mat-Su Borough to operate the Little Susitna River Campground for six months with a $5,000 borough budget. The council had originally sought $15,000 to keep the recreation site at the Parks Highway Bridge going for a year. Responding to a contract sent to the city, the council decided unanimously at last week’s meeting to instruct Mayor Freelon Stanberry to send a letter rejecting the offer. The park is owned by the borough, but is currently operated by the city.

It cost what?

According to advertisements, in 1993 you could:

• Catch a matinee movie at Mat-Su Cinema for $3.

• Fly round-trip to Seattle for $198.

• Purchase a word processor for $380.