Assembly lowers mill rate in 2010 budget

MAT-SU—A third year in a row the Borough Assembly held the mill rate steady, even lowering the mill rate this year.  No new hires and fastidious spending cuts kept the budget lean, despite increasing expenses and demands for services in Alaska's fastest growing community.

The new areawide mill rate is 9.980, considerably lower than last year's effective mill rate of 10.326. The non-areawide mill rate also lowered to 0.429, which is used to fund services such as animal care and libraries.

In April, Borough Manager John Duffy presented a proposed budget with five percent cuts across departments and no new hires, and the Assembly reduced it further Wednesday night. “The Assembly recognized that the national and global economy are having a tough time right now and some of our local taxpayers and businesses are also strained financially. The Assembly held the line on the general government budget, and in fact reduced it,” Duffy said.

Among the funding highlights, the school district will receive an increase of more than $300,000 over last year.

Assembly Member Pete Houston, of Palmer, looked at the million dollars frequently leftover in annual school district funds over the last decade, and made an amendment to reduce the amount of increase for the school district to some $300,000.

“So it seems that a $1 million and ten thousand is in normal fluctuation of their budget and not on the verge of crisis. I would just like to emphasize that my suggestion has very little to do with the school district as far as providing education to the kids. The education of my two children, I've been extremely pleased with. In my mind it's fiscal responsibility. We asked all the other departments in the Borough to hold the line on new hires. The budget that the school district brought forward that says zero based has upwards of 40 new people and that doesn't say zero based to me.”

Assembly Member Rob Wells, of district 6, opposed a spending reduction for education, saying the education budget represents a primary reason for local government.

“I would submit that when you look at contracts that exist, not contracts that are being negotiated, and you look at costs of utilities, and when you look at yes modest but still a real increase in the number of students, that the number being proposed is going to in my mind lead to a reduced education service in the MAT-SU school district,” Wells said.

Assembly Member Tom Kluberton voted against a spending reduction for education but expressed frustration with how the school budget is presented in programs rather than line item expenses.

“These guys have come in with an 11.5 percent increase before they have looked at the pending grants that come in. I've grown certain that any amount of money that we throw to the school district they'll consume it and never look back and then next year we've got to increment from that level forward. What bothers me is that we speak so much to the need to maintain numbers of teachers, that they're a staff driven budget, but we budget in programs, so every time we give more we're not necessarily protecting the jobs of the teachers i feel, but we're bringing along whatever amount of other components have gone into that next package. In order to protect teachers, theoretically, we're held to a standard of moving far beyond just salary increments.”

The Borough continued its commitment to agricultural land preservation by allocating another $100,000. Assembly Member Michelle Church, of district 3, opposed an amendment which reduced funding from $300,000.

"Everywhere I go everything I see, every piece of advertisement, everything, everything, everything: it's all about ag land. It's about saving ag land because we like to look at it, it's about saving ag land because we might need to grow some food on it, it's about saving ag land so we can have land to grow things so we can process them through our processing plant so that we can create jobs. I agree that the state should be stepping up, they should be stepping up in a lot of places that they're not stepping up. I don't think that's a reason for us to step down.”

For more information call Public Affairs Director Patty Sullivan at 745-9577 or 355-0103 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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