BIG LAKE -- A drive to make a city out of Big Lake is revealing a deep split between residents seeking more local control and those leery of any more government at all.
Once a recreation destination more dominated by weekend cabins than full-time homes, Big Lake is becoming a booming residential community.
Projections indicate Big Lake's population could swell to more than 6,000 within 10 years -- the size that Palmer is now, city supporters say. The town is also grappling with a state proposal to route a four-lane highway through the middle of downtown from Port MacKenzie on Knik Arm to the Parks Highway.
A group of residents successfully petitioned the Alaska Local Boundary Commission for the chance to put the question to a vote: Should Big Lake become a second-class city? And are residents willing to pay a local tax to support it? Mail-in ballots will go out to residents in the next few days and will be accepted by the Alaska Division of Elections through Oct. 27.
That second question is proving to be a public relations battle for incorporation supporters.
Not many people willingly vote for new taxes. But in this case, city petitioners say, the 3.09 mill levy is exactly what Big Lake residents already pay the Matanuska-Susitna Borough for road maintenance and broader services like the local library.
"There is no additional tax burden," said Big Lake Community Council president Bill Kramer. "It's different wording, but you're going to have to be willing to answer yes to the Big Lake tax of 3.09."
But signs on Big Lake Road leading to the lakefront downtown core show a community divided.
Some show a big "Yes" box with a check in it, touting "local control" and "better roads," while others urge residents to vote "NO" to "more government."
The Alaska Republican Assembly -- the self-described "Republican wing of the Republican Party" -- has spent at least $1,250 on the signs in the "No" campaign, according to filings with the Alaska Public Offices Commission. The City of Big Lake, Vote Yes committee had raised more than $6,300.
Supporters of incorporation say cityhood would allow a part-time city manager to work with a seven-member city council to have control over money the borough now spends on more than 100 miles of road -- much of it gravel -- in the Big Lake area. The city could accept certain low-traffic roads as "sub-standard" and be required to spend less on them than the borough now does, petitioners say. Incorporation would also give Big Lake a seat at the table during decisions about major projects like the highway.
Skeptics say cityhood opens the door for new taxes in the future and that the borough secures more funding for Big Lake roads than the city could.
One local critic of incorporation is calling into question the contention that Big Lake can fix roads better than the borough can.
Butch Moore, a real estate developer who owns property in Big Lake, said he made a public records request to the borough to get information for an Alaska Republican Assembly flyer.
The request revealed that in the 2015 fiscal year, it cost the borough $164,000 to administer roads in Big Lake, compared to the $355,000 petitioners estimate it will cost to run a city every year, Moore said. But while petitioners say they will have about $245,000 available for capital improvement projects, the borough in the 2015 fiscal year put more than $1.4 million into improvements for Big Lake roads.
"What's wrong with this system? It's working great!" he said in a phone interview Friday.
Mat-Su Assemblyman Dan Mayfield, a Big Lake resident, attended a Thursday night informational meeting where Moore presented his numbers and pointed out that the borough money includes state grants. A city staffer could write grant applications too, perhaps more effectively because the borough would no longer have to play middle man, Mayfield said.
"The city of Big Lake would be in a better position to get grants," he said.
The debate is getting ugly, Bill Allen told about 50 people who attended the sometimes charged meeting at Big Lake Library Thursday evening.
Allen, a former Fairbanks North Star Borough mayor and Palmer city manager who also served as the state's economic development director, retired to Big Lake with his wife.
He told the group at the library that "there's been a lot of misinformation spread around" since the incorporation bid started.
"Folks, never ever in my life have I been involved in such a charade as this," Allen said. "People, good people, calling each other liars and thieves and crooks … This is nonsense."
One of the state's requirements of the Big Lake incorporation petition was that supporters put together a hypothetical budget with "conservative" examples of possible spending and revenue, Kramer, the Big Lake Community Council president, said at the meeting. The result was a "bloated and overstated" worst-case scenario and not necessarily what the city would cost, he said.
"Doesn't sound conservative to me!" shouted resident Roger Gay, who got into a shouting match with three incorporation supporters leading the meeting Thursday, at one point waving a bound copy of the Constitution. The petitioners eventually took a break and attendees calmed Gay amid talk of calling Alaska State Troopers.
Along with the city and tax questions, seven candidates for a potential city council will be on the write-in ballot: Sandra "Sandy" Baker, Chris P. Hoskinson, Ralph G. Lindberg, Gregory J. Quinton, Yvonne V. Ruth, Larry L. Schmidt and Lolly R. Symbol.
Alaska Dispatch Publishing