Wasilla shifts money, power

WASILLA -- Wasilla is already the only local government that grants broad powers to an elected mayor, and last month the mayor's power got a little stronger when the city council passed an ordinance that raises the amount the mayor can spend without council approval from $10,000 to $30,000. For day-to-day operations, the Wasilla mayor's office now has twice the purchasing power of the Mat-Su Borough manager and four times that of the Palmer city manager.

The council passed the code change unanimously. Administration officials say it came at the request of city finance director Ted Leonard and the city's attorney Thomas Klinkner, of the Anchorage-based law firm Birch, Horton, Bittner and Cherot.

Other aspects of the finance code were rewritten as well. Leonard said last Friday that the goal was clarity and a better defined division of responsibilities between the council and the mayor -- increasing the mayor's purchasing authority was an effort to bring it up to speed with current costs.

"When we looked at it, the first code we could find was from 1980, and it hadn't changed much since," Leonard said. "We were restating the buying power into 2002 dollars -- and it's even a little less than that."

The code still includes mandatory quarterly financial reports to the city council from the administration, which Leonard said is an important part of the power balance.

"If you had a mayor that was running around, making $29,900 purchases, then when any council member saw that report, it would jump out at them pretty quickly," Leonard said.

"What we're trying to do is unburden the council from day-to-day purchasing decisions," Leonard said.