State, borough negotiate swap

WASILLA — An eight-year-old agreement between the Mat-Su Borough and the state is causing all kinds of rancor among road maintenance officials.

The issue surrounds the Seward Meridian Parkway expansion, Phase I of which is all but complete between Parks Highway and Palmer-Wasilla Highway.

Borough manager John Moosey said in a meeting Saturday, the back in 2004 the state agreed to push Seward Meridian to the top of its priority list.

In exchange, he said, the state wanted one of two things. Either the borough would take over maintenance of the road, or the borough would take a bunch of the state’s current roads off its hands.

“We have an agreement with (the state Department of Transportation). I don’t want to renege on that,” Moosey said.

The borough isn’t equipped to maintain a road like the new Seward Meridian.

“It will be more expensive, dollar for dollar, than a road swap,” Moosey said.

But here’s the problem — the borough doesn’t have its own road maintenance department. Or, at least, it doesn’t have one single road maintenance department. Road maintenance here is done by Road Service Areas. Local areas are taxed to maintain local roads. Some have a whole lot of property value and not a lot of roads and end up with lots of money to do not so much work. Others, usually in more rural areas, have less property value and more work — paving, grading, clearing snow, etc. — and therefore are much more cash-strapped.

Taking over the state’s roads in this instance, then, would mean more roads to be fixed or maintained for those poorer areas.

Which, those rural RSAs say, is not fair. Seward Meridian happens to fall in two relatively rich RSAs. Why should a project that benefits those RSAs incur costs in RSAs that don’t?

That, of course, was the bulk of what was discussed around the assembly table at a special meeting Saturday.

Assemblyman Warren Keogh — who has mostly rural RSAs in his area — called it “fundamentally inequitable.”

Assemblyman and former attorney Vern Hatler — who also has a lot of rural RSAs in his area — questioned whether it was legal.

Assemblyman Jim Colver said he doesn’t like the idea of the state negotiating from a position of power and insisting that the borough take over these roads.

Assemblyman Steve Colligan said that although this is a good deal for his district — one of his RSAs is actually one of the two that has Seward Meridian now — it doesn’t seem right.

“I’m not prepared to make a decision on this today,” he said, articulating what was eventually the consensus of the assembly, which will revisit the issue next week.

Borough transportation planner Brad Sworts said that the state is kind of in a holding pattern wherein it doesn’t quite know which party is responsible for snow plowing on Seward Meridian this winter.

Moosey said the borough will maintain the road while it works to sort out the issue.

But, he said, he thinks the borough should be trying to figure out a way to make it happen, not looking for a way to get out of it. It makes the borough look bad and also damages its relationships with the state.

“We’d be saying, ‘we don’t like the deal after you did your part so now we want to get out of it,’” he said. If the borough does that, “what is our word good for?”

The Mat-Su Borough proposes to take over the following roads from the state in exchange for Seward Meridian:

• Plumley Road

• Marth Road

• McKechnie Loop

• Hughes Homestead Road

• Clark Road

• Huntley Road

• Christiansen Lake Road

• Jonesville Mine Road

• 49th State Street

• Inner Springer Loop

• Marsh Road

• Davis Road

• Willow Lane

• Three pieces of Old Trunk Road

• Snodgrass

• Georgeson Drive

• Cottrell-Campus Drive

• Duchess Drive

• College Drive

• Stringfield Road

• Trunk Road Entrance