Tax on Vapes passes

A tax on electronic cigarettes called vapes, a property tax exemption for private land with a public charter school, and a postponement of landfill fee revisions are three of the topics considered by the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly Tuesday night.

Assembly Member Jim Sykes sponsored adding a tax on Vapes to the Borough ordinance that defines the existing excise tax on tobacco products. Listen to the audio and read the remarks of three Assembly Members on the subject.

Assembly Member Jim Sykes

"This is a simple addition to what we’ve already got in place. We’re not the first community to do this. It’s been done in half a dozen other communities. Palmer I believe has already done it, Kenai, Soldotna, Juneau, and Nome. I think there’s widespread public support for this initiative. I think the evidence is very clear that it deters youth who do not have as much disposable income…”

Assembly Member Steve Colligan voted no on the Borough taxing vapes.

“Well we spoke earlier about our borough powers and the like and social engineering is not one of them. I’m just curious. There’s a cost to the borough to administer this. We self righteously collected on cigarettes. There’s a known second-hand smoke.. and we use those funds to offset, pay for education. In E-cigarettes I’m not sure that that’s totally there. Number two, I worry that the distribution, how we’re going to track it, how much additional work adds costs to that. It’s not free money. It’s not, and I don’t even know how much revenue, no details of the industry, but then how and who and where are we going to collect it.”

Assembly Member Dr. Barbara Doty

“I speak against the postponement for the reason that the information about nicotine supplement and the risk of nicotine in an E-cigarette is not well known because it’s not monitored. We do have an alternative product that is nicotine inhaled and that can be prescribed that is controlled by the FDA that you can use to assist people to stop using cigarettes. So there is an alternative to the E-cigarettes. E-Cigarettes fall into a product that has no data. You’re going to have a hard time finding accurate data because it is not monitored unless there is harm identified as a result of it and then it will be investigated. That’s how that works for any kind of supplement. So there is not a way to get the information that Mr. Colligan is looking for in terms of the harm, the risk, the science behind it. It’s not available. I do think though that the article that was presented is motivating to consider paralleling what Juneau has already done.”

Property Tax Exemption and Charter Schools

The Mat-Su Borough Assembly adopted an ordinance that provides a property tax exemption for privately-owned property rented or leased and used as a charter school in the Borough. Assembly Member Vern Halter sponsored the ordinance.

Solid Waste Fees Proposed Revision

After lengthy debate, the Assembly postponed until Sept. 1 a vote on whether to revise the solid waste disposal fees. In July, rates went up at the landfill and at 13 transfer sites in outlying communities like Big Lake, Willow, and Talkeetna. The fees were not paying for the cost of operating the system. Tuesday night Public Works Director Terry Dolan told the Assembly that the solid waste fund owed $3.5 million after the spring budget and has $7.6 million in loans. Each landfill cell costs about $5 million to open and another $5 million to close within 5 years, he said. The solid waste operation was running at a $1.5 million deficit last fiscal year.

Assembly Member Jim Sykes supported postponement and asked Dolan to return with a lower disposal rate increase that still kept the solid waste fund revenues neutral.

In an earlier press release on the recent rate hikes, Dolan said rates can be reduced by half or more by most residents who start separating the recyclable materials. “Every pound of waste that is kept out of the landfill saves the Borough .25 cents,” Dolan said. He encourages residents to recycle cardboard, plastics, paper, and metals to extend the life of an expensive landfill cell and to reduce your landfill fees.