Vanity video isn't the answer to economic development in Wasilla

Letter to the editor/by Stephen Stoll, Wasilla

To the editor:

We spent $29,950 on the mayor's vanity video. It showed on CNN, we got three or four phone calls from a couple of bored retirees in Missouri. It was declared a "success." The promotional firm that made the phone call and sold this honor to the mayor is now reported to be in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Next, we spend a hundred grand creating a new "economic development department," and bring a new guy on board from one of those blue states back east to encourage new business to come here. Meanwhile, we tell a developer that his Parks Highway frontage cannot be zoned commercial because the folks in the subdivision near it don't want commercial development anywhere near their half-acre lots. Three of those folks just happen to be on the city council.

Just last meeting, another developer with land on Fishhook Road who wants to zone his two acres commercial was also denied. The owners of the four-plex next door complained it might change the nature of the neighborhood.

ADOT approved the project, so did the Mat-Su Borough. Our planner recommended denial and the planning commissioner voted 5-1 to uphold her feelings on the issue. Go figure.

The commercial zoning would result in higher real estate taxes for the city and the borough. More sales taxes, jobs, commerce. All truly thwarted simply on the whim of the planner and the commission. There really is no code to back up their decision. And now the Wasilla City Council is asking businesses that locate here to buy their own streetlights. This all seems very NIMBY and anti-business to me.

While I am appalled that the mayor had negotiated secret deals with Lowe's and Home Depot, I am in agreement with the fact that public safety and safe streets are the most legitimate functions of city government. We could be enticing businesses with existing sustainable infrastructure and commerce-friendly planning. Instead, we offer them obstacles and costly infrastructural investments to locate here.

The city council will be voting soon on a change in the sales-tax code, to further hurt hard-working Valley families building their own homes stick by stick. The mayor and council want to modify the tax cap on building materials for your home by issuing the tax waiver certificate monthly instead of annually. This won't affect the big builders much, but if you are building your own home it will be an additional tax of $137.50 per year. Taxing the groceries and building materials of hard-working Valley families is a way this mayor and council can finance their hockey games, reflective gardens and vanity videos. Incidentally, I am gravely concerned how I will heat my home in the very near future, and I welcome careful development of our local natural-gas resources. Coal and oil are not reasonable alternatives.

Stephen Stoll

Wasilla