Rapid growth fuels schools, road talk

WASILLA — Barring a major downturn in population growth, voters will likely see another school bond at the polls within four years, school officials told borough assembly and city council members Thursday evening.

Within the next few years, the borough’s core area (roughly the greater Houston-Palmer-Wasilla area, plus the unincorporated communities of Butte and Knik-Fairview) will cross the line from rural to urban, at least as far as federal transportation planning is concerned.

That was the takeaway from a pair of meetings between the borough assembly and other bodies this week, where staff members laid out future planning initiatives.

School enrollment has far surpassed projections originally revised downward to account for the ongoing effects of the oil price slump, superintendent Deena Paramo told a joint gathering of the borough assembly and the Houston, Palmer and Wasilla city councils held at the Menard Center in Wasilla.

For now, the hope is that a bond reimbursement program suspended by the Legislature will be restarted at some point in the future, just in time for student populations to meet or exceed total capacity.

That’s all according to the district plan, Paramo said.

“Yes, Redington Sr Junior/Senior High school is at capacity in its first year, and that is due to good planning,” she said. “I hope that the folks in this body can understand that we like to bring the maximum amount of money from the state.”

Next year, students will see portable buildings put up on the new building’s campus, as additional students are added to the Redington roster. The crowding is designed to put the onus for school construction on the state. In the past, the school system could rely on bond payment reimbursement from the state: state government would pay 70 percent of the construction cots for new school construction. The Legislature suspended that program in April amid concerns about revenues, but also as Fairbanks, Bristol Bay and Anchorage school systems worked to complete bond packages that would have been eligible for the reimbursement program. New rules would go into effect in 2020, but the reimbursement wouldn’t be as good.

Hitting a future when the revenue picture had stabilized was a matter of timing Mat-Su’s growth against the availability of state funds.

“The manner in which you do that is having a need of unhoused students per square footage,” she said. “In order for us to build a high school out in that area of 1,000 students we first built a middle school that can house about 600 to 750 students. We will put portables there, grow that school similar to how we afforded that school, by putting a boundary at Wasilla High and putting portables. That way we can qualify for the maximum amount of a bond.”

The greater the population density, the greater the need for the bond, and the greater likelihood the state will contribute at least some portion of the cost.

The district plans a Nov. 13 workshop on population growth with Gunnar Knapp, director of the UAA Institute of Social and Economic Research and Neal Fried, an economist with the state.

This year’s population jump was remarkable for a number of reasons, not least of all because the district projection has never been more than 1.2 percent off actual enrollment. This year’s educated guess about enrollment was 3 percent below the actual numbers. Projection figures constructed in November 2014 had predicted 350 students would show up. When oil prices slumped in January 2015, district officials revised the figure down to 300 students, Paramo said.

“I asked (Assistant Superintendent for Business Services Luke) Fulp to shave off about 50 kids, because it was undetermined,” she said.

Instead, enrollment figures more than doubled the original projection. As measured by “FTE,” or full-time equivalency, in which part time students are added together to produce the equivalent of a one full-time student, 746 showed up this year at the new school, according to figures provided by the district Thursday night.

Growth spurs transportation talk

Classrooms aren’t the only place where increasing numbers could play a big role. Borough officials are still working on reforming two sections of the borough code pertaining to land use: revisions to Title 43 could affect the shape and speed of future development by changing the rules under which subdivisions are granted. Several council members cited the intersection between Engstrom and Bogard roads as one example where a lack of planning was leading to traffic congestion. The road has numerous hairpin turns and feeder roads with limited visibility, and has no traffic signs or signals for its length. Housing density in the area is starting to creep up. Numerous cleared lots can be seen through mostly leafless trees.

And Title 17 could revise the way Special Use Districts (SPUDS) are formed and maintained, a reform prompted at least in part by the rejection of the Meadow Lakes SPUD earlier this year.

Sometime before the 2020 census, the Mat-Su Borough’s core area is predicted to pick up it’s 50,000th resident. When that happens, federal legislation will automatically make the borough’s core area the third of three with a metropolitan transportation planning organization, known as an MPO, according to borough officials. (In Anchorage, the MPO is known as the Anchorage Metropolitan Area Transportation System (AMATS), and in Fairbanks, it’s known as the Fairbanks Metropolitan Area Transportation System (FMATS)). That number also triggers some federal funding, though it likely won’t provide much more than one or two staff members, and allow for long-range planning, public involvement and capital improvement planning. The MPO would also serve to coordinate with state officials to a greater degree than is currently seen.

The MPO will serve as a clearinghouse for potential federal transportation funds, and lays the groundwork for greater regional cooperation on a range of transportation issues, said planning chief Lauren Driscoll. Among the strongest challenges planners face: establishing a governing “policy committee” which will serve as the overall governing body for the organization, Driscoll said. That could be difficult in the Valley, where regional economic, political and cultural rivalries can sometimes run deep. Unlike other metropolitan planning areas, a Mat-Su Core MPO wouldn’t have a single political master, because it would encompass a second-class borough, two first-class cities, and one second-class city.

While the census surveys will be completed in 2020, the data won’t be fully analyzed until three or four years later, Driscoll said. Legislation should complete the drafting process and be ready for approval by the time Census takers start knocking on doors, Driscoll said.

“All those details are really up to us,” she said. “Starting this far in advance, and starting to have these conversations, we have time to get all of that ironed out, so that when 2020 comes, we’re not surprised and shocked, and a lot of those relationships have been built, and figuring out what we look like has started to happen.”

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