Big Lake residents press officials for quick action on troubled properties

What you need to know:

• About 100 Big Lake residents gathered Thursday near Drowsy Drive and Peaceful Place to hear officials’ plans to address crime, squatting and junk in the area.
• Officials say enforcement will depend partly on residents reporting suspicious activity. Troopers plan to use a Criminal Suppression Unit in the area, while borough officials are working through a slower property cleanup process complicated by absentee ownership and private property rules.
• Residents want faster action, including more police patrols and cleanup help. They said the borough should provide dumpsters so they can address the trash problem now. Borough officials said that’s not possible because of private property rules.
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BIG LAKE — About 100 residents gathered Thursday at a corner just off a troubled street in Big Lake to talk about junk, squatting and crime in the neighborhood — and how to stop it.

Borough officials hosted the meeting with Alaska State Troopers to bring attention to the challenges on a quarter-mile section of Drowsy Drive and Peaceful Place near Beaver Lake. Palmer District Attorney Trina Sears also attended.

"The key item for this meeting today is the community," said Jason Ortiz, a Matanuska-Susitna Borough planning and land use deputy director who spearheads the borough's community cleanup program. "We need every one of you guys to report every suspicious thing — everything — and document and hold us accountable, and hold public officials accountable, because we need to be able to respond to this."

Deeply potholed and lined with disassembled vehicles and trash, the unmaintained street is a magnet for illegal activity, borough officials say. They said much of that is tied to a series of vacant parcels transferred to absentee owners after their previous occupants died, paired with actions connected to William Olinger, a property owner on Peaceful Place who officials allege uses the other properties for criminal activities.

Olinger attended a portion of the Thursday meeting. He said the way the borough is characterizing him is untrue.

"My place is a mess down there, but I'm constantly cleaning it up every day," he said in an interview. "He's lying about us."

Since 2019, Olinger has been ticketed for dozens of junk and trash violations and vehicle crimes, including driving without a license or proof of insurance, according to court records. He pleaded guilty to driving under the influence in 2010 and 2021, the records state.

Borough officials want residents to report what they see to law enforcement to help identify and prosecute those responsible. State troopers have pledged to use a Criminal Suppression Unit in the area but said they also need residents' reports.

Troopers declined to share specifics about the unit's operations at the meeting, citing ongoing police activity.

Some residents at the Thursday gathering said they appreciate the borough's attention to the properties but are frustrated with the slow, step-by-step process, which could take years to produce results. Instead, they want increased police patrols paired with immediate cleanup assistance.

"There's just not a whole lot they can do, and they need to be honest with people," said Nori Dusenbury, who owns property on Peaceful Place. "But the things they can do, they need to do. They could bring a dumpster here."

Other residents agreed. The neighborhood can help clear the problem properties of junk and trash if the borough arranges free dumping at the Central Landfill near Palmer or places dumpsters in the area, they said.

"It's making it hard for us financially to show any care for other neighbors or ourselves when we don't have any money to do anything," said one resident who lives near the street but asked that her name not be included in a news story. "We need trash cans, and we need state relief — everybody needs state relief for dumpsters."

Ortiz said the borough can't simply provide a dumpster and ask surrounding residents to clean up the parcels without the owner present because of private property rules, even though squatters are also illegally occupying the land. He asked the neighbors to be patient and work through the borough's process.

"What I can tell you today is this: this will be clean. I guarantee this will be clean," he said. "I can't tell you exactly the route and path it's going to go, but I guarantee it's going to."

Alaska state Sen. George Rauscher and Rep. Kevin McCabe, whose districts include Big Lake, attended the Thursday meeting. They said one challenge law enforcement officials face when tackling squatters is a lack of state law on the matter.

A bill co-sponsored by Rauscher last year would make it easier for a property owner to force squatters to leave and would make squatting a Class B felony under state code. The measure has not yet moved out of committee, in part because of its implications for homeless individuals in Anchorage, McCabe said.

– Contact Amy Bushatz at contact@matsusentinel.com 

This story was updated Aug. 10 to correct the spelling of Nori Dusenbury's name.