Wasilla mayoral candidates address chamber

WASILLA — Probably the oddest thing about the race for mayor of the city of Wasilla is that one candidate was the spark that drove the other into politics.

Loren Means, a city planning commissioner running against Deputy City Administrator Bert Cottle, told the story at the Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce Tuesday.

He said he was sitting in traffic on Main Street, backed up all the way from the light at Parks Highway past the stop sign in front of the library. He got mad enough that there was a stop sign making traffic worse that, instead of going home he looped back around to Wasilla City Hall and sat down with Cottle.

“I says I got a crescent wrench, I want to go down there right now and take that sign down, get that traffic moving,” Means said.

Instead of signing off on that plan, Cottle told Means about an opening on the city’s planning commission.

Cottle said it didn’t take long before he found an issue that just incensed him: the ban on all-terrain vehicles proposed for city limits.

“We’re going to lose this privilege to do this charming thing that’s only legal in Wasilla,” Means said.

Cottle has made no bones about being a supporter of the proposed ban. Supporters cite safety concerns and property damage done by irresponsible riders as reasons a ban is needed.

As for why he’s running for mayor, Cottle said that he was born and raised in Mat-Su. He wound up in Valdez when the trans-Alaska oil pipeline was being built and stayed there for decades, rising through the ranks of the city police department to become chief — a position he held during the Exxon Valdez oil spill — then serving as a city councilman and, eventually, as mayor.

He moved back to Wasilla three and a half years ago.

“I’d served my penance and I was able to return home,” he joked.

Means, when he’s not serving on the planning commission, is self-employed as a general contractor specializing in renovations. He moved to Alaska from Las Vegas, Nevada, with his family in the 1990s. He and his wife divorced and she moved back to Las Vegas in 2000, taking three of their kids with her.

“I never wanted to leave and never did,” he said.

He said he thinks that the city needs to work on its priorities.

“We’ve got a homeless problem, there’s a drug problem,” he said. “I’m confounded with why law enforcement doesn’t focus more of its time on those bigger issues than enforcing panhandling laws and an ATV ban.”

He said that he’d like to see more roads paved and a tighter city budget.

“I think I will bring a better solution to the same set of problems,” he said.

For his part, Cottle promised fiscal accountability.

“Anything that we build during my three years as mayor, it will be paid for before I leave,” he said, though later he added that most Wasilla mayors have served two terms so six years might be a more likely scenario.

Cottle said he’d like to see more forward-funding of projects; saving up to build them like the city is trying to do with its new library rather than borrowing money for capital improvements. He said forward-funding the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center would have saved the city $2 million.

Means also mentioned the sports complex, saying he’d like to see the city try to get the Iditarod’s ceremonial start to occur in Wasilla rather than Anchorage.

“Why couldn’t we move that whole thing over to the Wasilla sports complex?” he asked.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.