Recycling center, borough at odds over baler

PALMER — There’s a big empty space on the floor of the recycling center and the clock is ticking on a plan to fill it. The space is where a paper baler would sit, and Valley Center for Recycling Solutions has already installed a conveyor to feed material into it.

“It’s installed and now it goes to nothing. It sits in the middle of our floor. It looks like a ski jump,” VCRS executive Director Mollie Boyer said at a recent Mat-Su Borough Assembly meeting.

Assemblyman Jim Colver asked the first question.

“I’m really interested in what is it going to take to get you fully operational,” Colver said. “Why do you need this baler and what waste will be diverted from the landfill?”

Boyer replied that the federal Economic Development Administration is willing to pay $550,000 for the baler and a windbreak at the center’s drop-off area. But the borough would need to put up a $450,000 match to get that grant.

She said she told the borough there was money available for the project in 2008 and the matching funds were green-lighted. But in 2010, the borough came back and informed VCRS its money for the project was gone. Now it’s nearing the end of 2012 and the EDA has ruled the borough out of compliance with the grant. The grant is set to expire as early as February 2013.

“Your credibility is on the line and the ability to get further grants from EDA,” she said in urging the assembly to reinstate the matching funds.

Borough manager John Moosey said in an interview Friday that he’s been on the job two years and has been working with VCRS that whole time. He said the money the borough was going to use to match wound up not qualifying as grant match money.

“Those grant people said, ‘no, you cannot use our money to match,’” Moosey said. “The money we were getting was not acceptable as a match and so could not be spent on a match.”

Moosey said a request in his budget for this year for money to match the grant was denied.

“I certainly don’t have it in my current budget,” he said.

The plan, as of Friday, was to have Assemblyman Darcie Salmon introduce legislation at the next assembly meeting in January seeking an extension with EDA while the borough looks for more money. Moosey said that grant writers on his staff have applied for two grants. One is pending, the other was turned down.

All of this is stuff that has happened since he’s been on the job, but the wheels were set in motion under the previous administration. Reached late Friday, Moosey wasn’t sure of all the details.

He offered to research it and said he hadn’t spent too much time dwelling on it because he’d rather talk about “all the good things we can do as opposed to arguing about something that happened five years ago.”

Boyer seemed to also want to move forward positively.

“I’ve always felt that we’re good partners and that this has been a group effort,” she told the assembly. “I invite you to come see the challenges that are before us.”

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.