School board, borough at odds over school sites

PALMER — Upset that the Mat-Su Borough School District’s voice isn’t being heard, a member of the committee assigned to pick sites for new schools attempted Wednesday to pull the district off the committee.

“The frustration is I’ve got no say in it whatsoever or no input, and neither does the board,” said Ole Larson, member of the school board and of the Mat-Su Borough’s School Site Selection Committee.

He brought his concerns to the school board in the form of a resolution that would end the board’s participation on the committee. Currently, he and another board member, Lynn Gattis, sit on the committee. Gattis also said she was unhappy with the way the committee functions.

She said the committee process contained irregularities and lacks transparency.

“I want no part of it,” Gattis said. “I do think that we need to do things very, very differently.”

Larson, in an interview after Wednesday’s meeting, said that what he’s trying to avoid is what happened the last time the borough built a school. Machetanz Elementary was built in a newer subdivision without roads to access it that met the borough’s requirements for handling that kind of traffic.

Nearby homeowners worried about increased traffic, others about having their properties steamrollered to make way for a new road.

Larson said that with school board members on the committee, he fears it looks to the public as if the school board has endorsed the decisions for where to locate schools when in fact the process is mainly a function of Mat-Su Borough government.

“I do not want the school board being used as a tool,” he said.

The borough is currently working on site acquisitions for a half-dozen schools. Mat-Su Day School, the new Iditarod Elementary and Fronteras Charter School have sites picked out. Yet to find homes are a middle and high school on Knik-Goose Bay Road and an elementary school in Palmer.

Larson said the Palmer site seems to have leapfrogged the Knik schools and the committee seems to be getting close to settling on a parcel.

“We’ve got at least five years to look at that. I’m not saying we shouldn’t buy it, but why has that become the priority?” Larson asked.

Assemblyman Jim Colver chairs the site selection committee. He said that the current process the borough uses is a new one implemented in the wake of the Machetanz problems.

“We are coming off a process that didn’t have enough sunshine,” Colver said. Former borough assemblywoman Cindy Bettine “introduced an ordinance to go to this process now where they hire a realtor to represent the borough and go out and look for property.”

The realtor is not supposed to disclose who’s looking for the property.

“Everybody knows it’s the borough anyway,” Colver said.

And some that don’t know it’s the borough are getting bent out of shape thinking a developer is after land they don’t want to sell. Adding to all of this is a potential site for that Palmer school that is on farmland. Colver mentioned that controversy.

“People were notified or asked about selling property where when if you were real familiar with it you would know they had no interest in selling,” he said. The farmland was one of those and he said a lot of people started asking, “why is the borough trying to buy farmland?”

Colver said he’s not opposed to change. If people are upset, maybe change is what’s needed.

“If people don’t feel comfortable about the transparency and the process used, then there may be a taint from a smell and that’s not what you want,” Colver said. “You want to have everything above board and you want to pick the best site.”

Larson’s move to remove the district from the site selection committee failed on a vote of the school board. Gattis was one who voted to keep the district on the committee. Also opposing the move was Sarah Welton, who said that if there’s something wrong with the committee, the school board should sit down at the table and work to fix it.

“If it’s broken we need to fix it, not just walk away from it,” Welton said.

Voting on the other side were Larson, board president Mike Dunleavy and Erick Cordero, who said in a text message afterward that he sympathized with the board members sitting on the committee.

“I hope both bodies can come to an agreement that works, that keeps the public involved and takes the politics out of the committee,” he said.

The board is due to discuss the committee with their colleagues on the borough assembly at a meeting next week.

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