Talkeetna council still waits

TALKEETNA — Ruth Wood thought she was finished with town business after her last meeting Oct. 3 — then came the election results.

As outgoing Talkeetna Community Council chair, Wood’s final duty is to lead her council through partially uncharted electoral waters and help decide who won the council’s fourth seat based on the legitimacy of seven contested ballots.

That race is too close to call without a determination on whether at least three of the seven questioned ballots are valid. That leaves incumbent Loudon Wilson, a carpenter and drywall contractor, teacher and local activist Ellen Wolf and businessman Don Lee sure of their victories. Still waiting for word are local businessman Aaron Benjamin, with 115 votes, and Talkeetna librarian and council incumbent Jen Baron with 114 votes.

Talkeetna’s council will settle the election during a special meeting at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Talkeetna Public Library when four absentee ballots may be tossed immediately because the addresses on them are from outside the Talkeetna council’s area of residency, Wood said. Instructions in the council’s bylaws are a little loose in some areas, but in the event of a tie the course is clear.

“We do a coin toss,” she said. “The bylaws cover that, thank goodness.”

Wood went to Mat-Su Borough Clerk Michelle McGehee for advice, but received little. The community council’s election is separate from the Borough’s process and only advice on things like parliamentary procedure can be given. As far as how to handle and decide contested ballots, “It’s totally up to them,” McGehee said.

Wood said McGehee was helpful, but “our bylaws aren’t as strict and straight as the Borough’s.”

Candidates wait

Benjamin runs a boat launch and RV park. He wasn’t sitting around worrying about election results Friday; he was working. Turnout was high for a Talkeetna election, and he thinks a lot of people paid attention to the issues.

“The last community council election we had, I think, 90 people who voted,” he said. “{This year] there were 244 people who voted.”

The number is significant because the community council election at Talkeetna Library attracted more voters than the Borough polling place at a nearby school.

Uncertified Borough counts indicate a little more than 26 percent of Talkeetna’s 911 registered Borough voters showed up to vote on school board and Borough proposition questions at Talkeetna Elementary School. There were 237 voters who went to the polls at the Borough site. Of those 237 Borough voters, 206 voted for Talkeetna resident Sandra White, who won school board Seat G in Borough-wide polling.

The voter pool for the Talkeetna council race is smaller than 911 people, Wood said. Some listed in the Borough’s Talkeetna voter rolls live outside the community council’s jurisdiction. There is no voter list; voters must simply be eligible to vote and prove residency in the community council’s area to cast a ballot.

Voters at the school received a Borough ballot wrapped in a privacy sheath after having their names checked from a list and signing next to their names. They marked a ballot with a felt pen and fed the ballot into a scanning machine.

The process was different at the library, where poll workers had voters verify their names and addresses on a sheet of paper, issued a paper ballot and a pen. Voters then marked their choices and slipped the ballot into a large, wooden box.

Lots to do

There’s plenty of work awaiting a council that recently began joining with other community councils in the Upper Susitna Valley to explore working together on issues of importance.

Wolf, a retiring teacher who is new to the council, is an old hand at community issues. She helped draft the Talkeetna Comprehensive Plan, a process that began 15 years ago and was finished a decade ago. She sees growth — in tourism, but especially balanced residential growth — as the top issue facing Talkeetna and the rest of the Borough.

Among Talkeetna’s other issues is the fate of a popular Borough-sponsored Community Enrichment Program that ran into problems this year with new school district facility use policies and the issue of how to pay a director. The school district’s policy change also displaced the community council, which now meets in the Library but may return soon to the school.

Also awaiting some future agenda are plans the Alaska Railroad Corp. has for possible improvements downtown, including a new winter train station, relocation of a boat service’s office and construction of a second track crossing leading to newly constructed streets in East Talkeetna.

Those future agendas won’t necessarily be Wood’s concern, as she is term-limited and could not run again. Her last meeting was Oct. 3.

“When I banged the gavel I thought I was done,” she said.

Wood has served seven years on the council, having been appointed to fill one term and elected the next three. She said there are many details she won’t miss, like getting out agendas. “It’s a good time to be getting out,” she said.

The election has one more mystery — one Wood doesn’t seem too interested in solving. Mysterious signs popped up reading “Vote for Balance” and giving the council election date and time. The red and white signs didn’t tout any specific candidates, and Wood suspects the message was that people should vote for political diversity, not only for pro-business or pro-environment candidates.

The message may have been a little too literal for some, Wood said, as “there were two write-in votes for ‘Balance.’”

Contact John R. Moses at john.moses@frontiersman.com or at 352-2270.