School site selection process should be followed

We cheered when former Mat-Su Borough Assemblywoman Cindy Bettine crafted — and passed — an ordinance to improve the process for buying land for school sites.

The new process was born of the missteps in the land-acquisition process for what was then known as the south Palmer school. But in the end, the land was selected and the school was built, but the school that was built — Machetanz Elementary — was nowhere near south Palmer.

Before that there was similar arm wrestling and hard feelings over a school site selection for the Knik Elementary School.

Then came the 2011 school bond in which voters approved the sale of $215 million in bonds for new school facilities. The Mat-Su Borough School District’s school board said if the package of bonds were approved, it promised not to ask voters to pass more schools bonds for five years.

Tonight, the assembly will consider an ordinance introduced by Assemblyman Noel Woods to buy a parcel of land his family trust sold to current owner Kevin Sorenson. He says the move is designed to clean up a mess left by a previous administration.

According to public records, Sorenson’s site wasn’t selected in the last round of land purchases. This is not a contractual matter. Sorenson has no written agreement from the district or borough for the sale of this parcel. His parcel wasn’t selected, and that should be the end of the story.

A school in the vicinity of the Sorenson parcel in the Springer Loop area is not next on the district’s to-do list for new schools either.

So we wonder why the school site selection committee — and now the assembly — has spent months working to give Woods and Sorenson the public payday they want?

What seems clear is that this sale will directly benefit Woods and Sorenson, and that no part of the consideration here is whether the purchase is a responsible use of public tax dollars.

Woods says he has no financial interest in the deal. But we don’t see how that can be true. His family sold the land to Sorenson with a clause that says he cannot resell the land without the Woods’ family prior approval before payments are complete.

So if we understand this correctly, a yes vote from the assembly would buy the land from Sorenson, who would, in turn, pay the balance due on the sale to Woods, who introduced the ordinance to purchase the property.

That brings us back to Bettine. Before leaving office in 2011, she was able to create and pass at the assembly table a new process for selecting school sites. She described the process as “double blind,” designed to save taxpayers money by not revealing who the buyer is when the district goes looking for new school sites.

Why aren’t these rules in use now? Why the end run to avoid a process designed to use tax dollars more carefully?

If Sorenson has a legal document that says the borough is on the hook to buy this land, let him produce it. If he alleges that the borough has violated a contractual agreement, let the courts decide.

But nothing we know of in borough code — or Alaska Statutes — says that if at first a school district doesn’t buy your land, you can come back years later and demand special consideration from the borough assembly.