Road Services Areas looking for volunteers

MAT-SU — With road funding front and center among the Mat-Su Borough Assembly’s priorities for this year, the Borough is seeking a few good volunteers to fill nine vacancies on its Road Service Area boards of supervisors.

Of the 16 boards of supervisors, five boards — Alpine, Golden Trails, Lazy Mountain, Midway and North Colony — have one vacancy each and two — Knik and South Colony — have two open seats, Borough spokeswoman Patty Sullivan said.

“A lot of people really don’t want to put a lot of time or effort into it because they’re working,” said Mike Garner, one of three superintendents who oversee the service areas.

The boards, he said, are an important component in the Borough’s system for deciding which projects to start. Board members are the eyes and the ears of the Borough, he said.

But what are Road Service Areas?

The 16 Road Service Areas cover about 1,009 miles of road encompassing a majority of roads not maintained by the state or municipalities, Garner said. Each service area has a three-person board of supervisors. Those boards, in turn, make recommendations to the Borough’s public works department as to how funds gathered in their particular areas should be spent. Those recommendations are compiled and forwarded to the assembly.

The pot of money, gathered through property taxes, is significant.

“The Borough residents today tax themselves on the order of $10 million per year for local roads,” Borough Manager John Duffy reports on the Borough’s Web site, adding, “$6.5 million of that amount is used for capital improvements, upgrading roads, widening roads, buying rights of way.”

Garner said that money is not associated with other capital improvements and is used for maintenance, like snow plowing, road grading, striping and otherwise keeping the roads in good shape, as well as administrative costs for superintendents and the Borough.

Marty Quaas has served on the Greater Butte Road Service Area board for about 11 years.

“My reason for doing all this is, well, I’m 69 now, but when I was working for a living and all that other stuff I didn’t have time for this,” he said. “Somebody else did it.”

Now it’s time to give back, Quaas said.

His board meets about six or seven times each year. As far as time commitments, it’s not particularly onerous, but he said he would like to see dedicated people take on board seats.

“The people that I hate to see on the Road Service Areas are the guys that want to get the road in front of their house paved,” he said. “They’ll stay long enough to get it paved and then they’re gone.”

Quaas and Garner agree it’s rare for the assembly not to abide by recommendations made by the local board. Making those recommendations are only part of the job.

Quaas described himself as a “middle-man” — a link between local residents and the Borough.

He said a lot of the job involves fielding calls from locals whose streets need plowing or paving. He said when he gets a call he’ll try to drive out and take a look for himself.

“You can actually have a couple inches of snow on the ground and some residents will say, ‘I’ve got eight, 10 inches,’” Quaas said.

Garner said that each service area has a different tax rate based mostly on its population base. Sparsely populated areas will generally need a higher tax to keep up maintenance contracts. Denser areas can get by with a lower tax. Some areas, two he could think of — Caswell and North Colony — have no money left over for improvement projects after paying for maintenance. Others have double the amount of their maintenance budgets to put toward improvements.

Asked if he’s enjoyed his time on the board, Quass said, “I guess I do, either that or I’m just asking for punishment. If you’re counting, ‘What am I going to get out of this?’ that’s the wrong attitude; it’s what you can give to the community, to the road service area.”

For information abuout serving on a road service area board, contact the Mat-Su Borough at 745-4801.

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