Timber!

PALMER — By code, meetings of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly have to conclude by midnight, and the assembly needed almost every minute of it on Tuesday.

Decisions on three ordinances had been delayed from the April 3meeting: school funding, a change to the borough’s tax cap, and the contract for a timber sale near Trapper Creek. All three were ultimately approved.

The school funding change did away with the formula the borough used to determine how much money goes to the Mat-Su Borough School District. Going forward, school funding will instead be based on a mill rate.

The original proposal called for 6.25 mills for the school district. While district officials and education advocates favored the new, more standard method, they wanted that number increased to 6.5 mills. Testimony was mixed. While many turned out to advocate for the higher mill rate, a nearly equal number criticized the results of Alaska schools in national testing.

The assembly discussed multiple mill rates before ultimately settling on 6.3, and passing the new funding scheme.

The combative public comment over education funding brought out many employees of MSBSD. Some felt that poorly performing schools were not deserving of more money until their performance levels improve.

“We’ve got to change something that we’re doing and it ain’t money,” said Dee McKee, a 21-year MSBSD teacher.

Joshua Clayton felt that opinions of teachers should be valued at a higher rate than non-teachers. Clayton has taught kindergarten for 16 years and also coaches wrestling.

“Those that blame lose the ability to blame,” said Clayton.

Clayton was told in school that for safety purposes there would only ever be 18 students in a class. Now Clayton teaches more than 25 students.

“We are all at the same level of intelligence but some people get told that they’re not smart and they believe that,” Clayton said. “My job is to rectify that. No we’re really all the same. You get out of life what you put into it. If you’re working really hard I believe in you, everything you want is attainable it all comes through hard work.”

The next item on the assembly’s agenda was a hard cap on the borough’s ability to tax. Like school funding, the limit was set by formula in years past. The old formula used a combination of population growth and the consumer price index for Anchorage. After public testimony criticizing the move, the borough approved moving to a flat tax cap, with a limit on how much it can increase each year. The limit was proposed by Assembly Member Ted Leonard and opposed in public comment by Jeremy Price, the state director for Americans For Prosperity, a national think tank and lobbying group.

“The total amount of Borough tax that can be levied during a fiscal year shall not exceed the total amount approved by the Assembly for the preceding year,” quoted Jeremy Price from the ordinance. “It has served taxpayers well. When you put a hard mill rate like is being done today at 10.5 mills that could be adjusted next month or tomorrow or next year. That formula has been in place for many years now and is an effective curb on increasing taxes.The only thing that protects taxpayers are you folks. So when you water down a tax cap that’s been very effective and in place for many years we think that that just gives rise to more taxes in the future.”

The final ordinance heard by the Assembly drew the most public testimony and assembly debate. The measure approved the 15,000-acre timber sale contract for Chijuk Creek. The plan is for the timber to be cut, trucked to Port Mackenzie, and shipped to China to be sold. In addition to the sale of the timber at $31.50 per acre, the borough stands to bring in $900,000 for a contract at the port.

The majority of testimony came from residents and property owners in the Trapper Creek area, particularly those with land on Oilwell Road, where the harvest area lies. While most of those testifying said the idea of a timber sale was a good one, they questioned the ability of Oilwell Road to suit the needs of both the timber harvesters and the normal users of the road. Donna Massay, who sits on the Trapper Creek Road Service Area advisory board, acknowledged efforts by the borough and would-be harvesters to hear the concerns of local residents who attended the last RSA meeting. Massay believes the community should have been consulted earlier in the process regarding transportation challenges. She said, “If it had happened at the beginning of this, we would not be here tonight. It would have been handled at the local level”

The concerns regarding Oilwell Road center on the fact that it is a pioneer road, which can be rather narrow in places. Massay said officials told Trapper Creek community members that the timber trucks will need a total clearance width of 12 feet, but there are spots where the width of Oilwell Road is only sixteen feet, making passing oncoming trucks next to impossible. Assembly Member Randall Kowalke, who is a proponent of the contract, says turnouts will be added to enhance safety, but the written transportation plan containing those details had not been made public by Tuesday’s meeting.

Trapper Creek resident Chris Wood felt that the infrastructure of oilwell road would not be cost effective and that the logging operation would not make money. Tom Hardwick proposed many options to track trucks so that residents could know when they were on the road so they could avoid them.

“We have a big problem with confrontation. Nobody wants to meet a logging truck off oil well road,” said Hardwick. “Somebody’s going in the ditch.”

“A Desperation move to save the port is not a good reason to jump into something without adequate inspection and public input,” added Greg Nelson.

Discussion over how fast the speed limit would be set remained unresolved. Residents did not want a 35 mph speed limit for logging trucks, feeling that they would damage the road in muddy conditions and make it more dangerous for the logging trucks and for residents. Some proposed a 25 mph speed limit, feeling that trucks would not obey the speed limit but that going slightly faster than 25 mph was better than traveling slightly faster than 35 mph.

Kathy Ernst was concerned about the values the Assembly stood for.

“I do not want to respond to an accident between a logging truck and a bus,” Ernst said. “One week of public community input, thank you for extending that, but Trapper Creek Community Council hasn’t met.”

The traffic of vehicles is not the only concern from residents. Distress over how the logs would be taken, whether there would be stumps left or if the land would be cleared and whether the logs would be left to rot as they have in previous logging operations, also highlighted the comments of naysayers.

Other speakers also took issue with the nature of the public process. The ordinance to approve the contract was introduced at a joint assembly and planning commission meeting in late March, and scheduled for a public hearing and vote on April 3. The assembly decided there had not been enough time to digest details of the contract, and opted to delay a vote until the 17th. Phillip Smith, who is a property owner in the area of the timber sale, said, after a career in the oil and gas industry, that he is familiar with permitting processes, and that this appeared to be a fast-track effort by the borough. Assembly Member George McKee agreed once the discussion was turned over to the assembly.

Assembly Members Matthew Beck and Barbara Doty questioned Borough Manager John Moosey about opportunities for the public to weigh in before the contract goes into effect. Moosey said the transportation plan must be approved by borough staff before the contract can be executed. After some debate over whether the assembly should take over approval of that transportation plan, it was decided to leave the process as-is. Moosey did promise to report back to the assembly with all of the public comment on the transportation plan before a final decision is made. Once the transportation plan is made available, the public has 30 days to comment.

Assurances by the manager were enough to ease the concerns of some members of the assembly, which ultimately voted to approve the contract by a vote of 5-2.

The Borough sees this as an opportunity to write wrongs perceived to have been done to the timber industry in the past.

Don Dyer, Executive Director of Alaska Moose Federation, is of the opinion that the logging of trees affected by spruce beetles and subsequent treatment of the ground will create better moose habitat, that moose are starving with nothing to eat and will find better habitat once the logging has been completed.

Six to 8 ships a year would travel across the Pacific Ocean from Port Mackenzie to China with lumber for five years. Dyer hopes that will open up further markets overseas for Mat-Su Valley exports.