Your choices: Seven ask borough voters for support in mayoral election

WASILLA — The race for Mat-Su Borough mayor is coming down to the wire with a crowded field of candidates.

Recently, the Frontiersman sat down in our offices with five of the seven men seeking the spot. Here, in alphabetical order, is a look at what they had to say.

TALIS COLBERG

The former Alaska attorney general said that, having served at such a level, there is a clear benefit to knowing a number of major players in state and local government.

“It doesn’t hurt to be able to walk in there and already know their names,” he said. “Short of being cryptic or snide about my opponents, I think I have a background and experience that none of them can match.”

On the topic of zoning, Colberg said the zoning codes need to be rewritten. It’s something he’s discussed in previous forums as one of the biggest issues facing the borough.

“There is a need for a clear understanding of what the rules are,” he said. And with growth tapering off in the borough as of late, now is the time to do it. “One of the benefits of the slow-down is that we have some breathing room.”

On Hatcher Pass, he said, “I very much am skeptical on the borough getting involved with running a downhill ski area.”

On sales tax: “No Assembly can bind future assemblies,” he said and, even if this assembly wants to see a sales tax to bring down property taxes, thus diversifying the tax base, eventually that will change and, “it wouldn’t be a diversification it would be an augmentation.”

On schools: “I feel they’ve been adequately funded,” he said. “The budget has consistently, in the nine years that I’ve watched the school budget, grown faster than enrollment and inflation combined.”

And that, really, gets to the heart of his concerns for the borough.

“There has always been a steady growth beyond what I think is sustainable.”

He said he would support changing the borough from a strong-manager government to a strong-mayor government, making the mayor more of a decision-maker than a diplomat. But he doesn’t see the position changing anytime soon. He thinks he is personality is well-suited for the job and that he would enjoy the role.

“I’m not a bomb-thrower,” he said.

BRUCE FONDAHN

Fondahn set up a meeting with the Frontiersman but, at the appointed hour, didn’t show up.

At a candidate’s forum last month he described himself as a registered Democrat and pro-union. He is a former boxer and boxing promoter.

JOHN Leihner

Leihner declined to meet with the Frontiersman, saying that traveling here would cost money and therefore run contrary to his campaign’s objectives.

“My campaign is to have no campaign. People will either vote for me or they won’t,” Leihner said in a message left at the Frontiersman. “I will not accept any campaign contributions nor will I spend even two cents of my own money on my campaign.”

STEVE MENARD

Menard is the son of the late Mayor Steve Menard, whose death while in office left the seat up for election. Menard is also the only candidate who said he would not seek re-election after the shortened four-month term has expired.

“I feel that with the sudden passing of my father, I’m just trying to keep his vision, his mission on the forefront,” Menard said. What does that mean? It means development of the port.

“Point MacKenzie is a moneymaker, an absolute gold mine for the borough because we own everything out there,” he said.

It means partnering with the railroad to get a line going to Point MacKenzie, something his father worked on as an Alaska Railroad board member and which Menard has continued, having been named to replace his father on that board.

It also means being willing to work with anybody who walks through the door of the mayor’s office, being friendly and inviting, just like his father was.

“You can’t have anybody that’s mission-driven or bull-headed because the Valley is tremendously complex,” Menard said.

On a sales tax, Menard said he’s in favor of it. As a former Wasilla city councilman he saw what sales tax can do. In Wasilla, he pointed out, it allowed the city to drop property taxes to zero.

As for the school district: “It’s never adequately funded. It never is.”

But the problem is that a lot of money that goes to schools doesn’t end up being spent on the children. Retirement and benefit plans, he said, are getting close to the point of bankrupting the system.

In the end, what he said he brings to the table is an engaging personality that won’t leave constituents too intimidated to approach him with ideas.

“I’m not saying I’m the smartest person in the room. If you’ve got a better idea, I’ll run with it.”

FRANK SHOR

Shor is a one-time Coast Guard cook and current farmhand in the Valley who stresses that, if elected, he would listen to anyone who came to talk.

“I stated that I would have an open-door policy be enacted,” he said. He would strive to “try and get things moving instead of being a big bottleneck.”

On updating zoning codes, Shor said he’d take more of a piecemeal approach.

“It depends on what kind of zoning,” he said, when asked if he would change the codes. “Some things are over-zoned. Other things aren’t zoned enough.”

On the issue of roads in the Valley, Shor said he doesn’t like the idea of directing more traffic into Palmer, as he says anti-congestion projects would likely do. He also would like to see that roads are built so they aren’t cracked and rutted every spring.

“It isn’t the traffic that’s the problem. It’s that it wasn’t done right in the first place,” he said.

He said property tax assessments are problematic. He said he knows of homes assessed for much more than they could be sold. He’d like to see reforms there, perhaps by sending assessors out on more visits to homes being reassessed.

Shor summed up his run this way:

“The thing I feel is important is that through life we have many things that we want to attain and we never reach those goals. But when we go out to help our fellow man the reward is much greater.”

DAVID STRAUB

Straub is a carpenter by trade who once ran the Iditarod, attaining as he so often says, the fastest last-place finish ever.

He’s got a lot of ideas for what to do at the borough. He’d like to see a raised commuter rail line running above the existing Alaska Railroad line into Anchorage. As for planning and zoning, he said, it needs to be completely rethought.

“Take their planning book, take that and shred it and use it for insulation in the building,” he said.

He would like to see a lot of that replaced with state and federal rules.

“If the state’s not regulating it or not got a code on it then the borough shouldn’t be regulating it,” he said.

As for a sales tax, Straub is opposed.

“It would add more revenue to the borough and most of my constituents want to figure out where the money goes to now,” he said.

As for schools, Straub said if times call for it, if retirement and benefits are bankrupting the system, he’d be for declaring bankruptcy in order to work out a deal.

On Hatcher Pass: “I just don’t think we have enough of a skiing base,” he said, but “I could really see some nice groomed lawns with some nice mansions up there.”

He thinks he brings a lot to the table with his background.

“I’m a well-rounded person in the community,” he said. “I know a lot of different aspects of the Valley, whether it’s construction or dog mushing.”

BRUCE WALDEN

Walden counts himself a staunchly pro-industry, pro-development candidate. Asked about coal mining in Sutton, for instance, he was all for it, though he wouldn’t approve of open-pit mining. He said he felt air-quality concerns were overblown.

“I spent half my career in Asia where you have to chew the air to get it down and I haven’t seen anybody dying of these diseases they’re telling us about,” he said.

Asked about borough zoning regulations, he said he would want to tear up the zoning code and start from scratch, taking out measures that keep industry from coming to the Valley.

“You can open a coffee shop here but you can’t open an honest-to-God industry,” he said. “If we can’t open some honest-to-God industry we’re sunk.”

On schools, he said the district is adequately funded but the money isn’t being spent right. On roads, he said Alaska should take the lead in devising new ways to connect highways and that current traffic solutions are akin to, “putting little bitty band-aids on sucking chest wounds.”

As for how he would use the mayor’s seat, which does little in the way of decision making at the borough, but a lot in the way of being the borough’s public face, Walden said the position is still a bully pulpit, and he intends to use it to maximum effectiveness.

“There’s not excuse for not leading if you’re in an executive position,” he said.

And, anyway, he’d like to change the borough government from a strong manager form to a strong mayor form.

“I don’t care if George Washington sprang out of the grave,” he said. “If I don’t have a chance to vote for him that’s not right.”