Wasilla council needs independent evaluation

In Wasilla city government, something seems to have gone bad and city council has caught wind of it.

Councilman Steve Menard believes the offending element is in how the city has operated on behalf of and to benefit Meritage Development and its proposed Creekside retail project. He wants an independent entity to take a look.

We agree, as do other council members, including Stephanie Massie and Dianne Woodruff. From the beginning, the city has given the appearance it has gone above and beyond normal protocol to accommodate Meritage, to the point of threatening to take land from neighboring businesses to give Creekside its preferred Parks Highway access.

What some in city administration didn’t count on was how hard those businesses, especially Windbreak Café owners Bob and Annette Andres, would fight for their survival. By bringing to light a questionable chain of events and correspondence among Meritage, the city and area landowners, they have made a difference.

No longer is there a threat to take their property for the development’s access and also seemingly dead is a proposal to swap part of the frontage road that runs between the Parks Highway and the Creekside property.

Now it appears the city wants to award a large community block grant to Meritage — money originally designated to help low- and moderate-income people. There are other projects much more deserving that would do more to directly help those of lower incomes. The city needs its own septage treatment plant, it could expand the library or use the money to directly lure helpful industry rather than award it to a developer that has yet to give any firm commitments.

Throughout it all, city administration has maintained it has done nothing wrong, nothing unethical and has only operated within the scopes of city policy. We say allowing a developer to dictate how the city should word a letter to landowners (as public documents show), threatening to take land from established businesses to benefit that same developer, then floating it a community block grant raise enough suspicion to warrant an audit.

For the sake of the city’s integrity and credibility, we need an independent perspective into this and, perhaps, other “development deals” the city has negotiated in recent years. Either administration has been bending over backward for a developer or the city’s policies governing the ethical practice of government are flawed.

Whichever it is, Wasilla owes it to residents and business owners to take a closer look at the process and fix the flaws, whether those flaws lie with people or policy.