Possible police station move among Wasilla planning issues

WASILLA — Some Wasilla City Council members questioned a plan to relocate the police department to a future former elementary school this week.

The plan is among a host of planning measures under consideration for the city’s biennial budgeting process, slated to begin with a special city council meeting set for 6 p.m. Monday. The rough plan, as briefly outlined in past meetings and in greater detail by city council members in interviews last week, would involve moving the current police department at 1800 Parks Highway to the present site of Iditarod Elementary School at 801 Wasilla-Fishhook Road.

The school is slated to move into a newly constructed building about a mile north of its current location next year, and Wasilla officials have said they plan to look into obtaining the title from the Mat-Su Borough.

The move would also open the possibility of offering office space to the Alaska State Troopers, according to council member Brandon Wall. Wasilla currently handles dispatch services for the Wasilla Police Department and the Alaska State Troopers, while the physical trooper post is located in downtown Palmer, where the city also currently holds the contract to dispatch for the borough’s numerous emergency service and fire responders.

Wall is skeptical of the plan. He said the current Iditarod Elementary building is being vacated amid chronic maintenance concerns, and may require city funds in order to serve as a police station.

“The scary thing for me on this is, number one: is that (co-location) necessarily something you should be doing?” he said. “The second thing is: the school district isn’t able to make Iditarod work as a school.”

As for other city priorities, council member Gretchen O’Barr listed emergency planning at the top of her list. The city currently retains a relatively flexible plan involving putting the headquarters for a disaster at the police department

“I would like to see something a little more solid,” she said.

O’Barr and others also pointed to the contentious discussion of the city’s Downtown Overlay District, which was sent back to the planning commission after a number of local business owners complained that they had not been included in a years-long effort to create a set of guidelines and rules for the downtown district. The district will return to a city planning commission meeting in January, and could go before the city council as early as February, officials have said.

The goal is one of 40 items in eight categories slated for consideration at Monday’s meeting. City council members said they’d also like to focus on possibly expanding the city’s digital footprint and online services, emergency preparedness and data archiving.

Council member David Wilson said he’d like to see the council play a greater role in evaluating progress on city goals.

“This year, I’d like to change it so the council has a little more input on what is discussed,” he said.

Officials have repeatedly warned that the Valley’s economic center faces tough times in coming years as state revenues dry up amid declining oil prices and production.

Declining funds were part of a push earlier this year to extend a 1 percent sales tax raise originally intended to help finance library construction. The extended rate would help supplant capital budgets cut by the Legislature last year. However, voters rejected a stay in the tax rate, meaning it will return to 2 percent Jan. 1, 2016.

Mayor Bert Cottle said he doesn’t favor revisiting the sales tax rate, despite suggestions from some council members that they would entertain reintroducing a separate tax once the library tax expires.

“I had pushback on that, and the public came and they voted on it,” he said. “It would be disingenuous to bring it up again. The public spoke, and we should follow what they said.”

The city will work to improve its fiscal position given the means available to it, Cottle said.

The city will see two additional parks come online next year — one recently cleared for development after an Alaska Supreme Court decision and another on a piece of property along Old Matanuska Road — as well as continued construction of the new library.

Wall said he’d like to see more advance financial planning for declines in revenue sharing funds provided by the state.

“We’ve got to fill that gap,” he said. “That gap is real. “We’ve got to something about it as revenue sharing goes away.”

The city could streamline “without leaving roads unplowed and unsanded and making sure we don’t have cuts on the street,” he said. “We need to be looking at what our absolute mission is and what’s not, and figure out if it’s going to be really important over the next two or three years.”

A full list of items on the planning meeting is available on the city website at cityofwasilla.com.

The meeting will take place in the city council chambers, which is located at 290 E. Herning Ave.

Contact reporter Brian O’Connor at 352-2270, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.

CORRECTION, Dec. 8, 8:34 a.m.: An earlier version of this story used an incorrect first name while referring to Wasilla city councilman Brandon Wall.