Mat-Su voters to weigh expanding borough authority over road projects

What you need to know:

• Mat-Su voters will decide whether to give the borough authority to approve major areawide road projects through the annual budget process without first seeking voter approval. Voters would still need to approve bond sales. The update would not change the Road Service Area structure.
• Borough officials said the change would speed up projects and reduce costs by allowing the borough to use multiple funding sources, including grants and taxpayer money. The change would also let officials purchase construction rights of way earlier in their planning process.
• The measure will appear on ballots in November. 
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PALMER — Mat-Su voters will decide in November whether to give the borough power to take on large, taxpayer-funded road projects without first seeking voter approval.

The Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly voted last week to put the question on the ballot.

If voters approve the measure, major road projects would appear on future ballots only when the borough needs to issue bonds to pay for them.

Under current rules, the borough can do road work only within individual Road Service Areas paid for by taxes on properties within that zone, or when voters approve major projects on a case-by-case basis.

If voters OK the measure, the borough could instead debate and approve major projects through its annual budget process, funding them through sources such as grants and taxpayer dollars, Borough Manager Mike Brown said Tuesday. The borough also could purchase needed construction rights of way without voter approval, a step that could save money by acquiring land before property values rise, he said.

"This allows us to ... look at roads, schools, all these things on even footing, and determine how you want to allocate resources in a given year to support infrastructure development," Brown said during the meeting.

The change would not affect individual Road Service Area tax rates or how those areas function, he said.

The assembly voted 6-1 to add the question to the ballot, with Assembly member Maxwell Sumner voting no.

Sumner said he voted no because the measure expands borough government's authority.

"I like this ordinance because it has the potential to save taxpayers money by purchasing right of way ahead of time instead of later on when it's more expensive," Sumner said during the meeting. "I don't like this ordinance because it grows government and gives more avenues to spend tax dollars."

Building and maintaining roads to handle Mat-Su's growing population was a top priority when Brown took the manager's job in 2020, he said. The need has only grown, while paying for it has become more complicated and expensive.

"When I took this job — it's been a few years now — I heard 'roads, roads, roads.' I still think that's our number one issue and challenge in the borough. I don't think that sentiment's changed," he said. "If we have this issue that we all know about, I don't want to be here six years, five years, seven years later, and then go, 'Well, what did we do to change the number one problem that we had?' And the answer is, 'Well, we just did more of the same.'"

Voters have overwhelmingly approved three major road project packages in 2021, 2023 and 2024, authorizing up to $140 million in bond sales for more than 40 projects across the region. Of those, only a handful are now fully complete. 

All 17 projects approved in 2023 required the borough to secure grants covering half of each project's cost. Three of those projects went before voters again in 2024 to allow the borough to cover their full costs.

-- Contact Amy Bushatz at contact@matsusentinel.com