WASILLA -- The only clear take-home message from last week's Mat-Su municipal elections seems to be "Sales tax? No way."

Click to enlarge

Ron Arvin

Click to enlarge

Jim Colver

Story tools

Comments (0)

E-mail a friend

Print

Share on Facebook

Digg this

Seed Newsvine

Send link via AIM

Follow on Twitter

Font size : A | A | A

The borough sales tax measure was trounced -- 76 percent of voters said "no," according to unofficial results. That's the sixth time it's been voted down since 1991, although this measure promised lowered property taxes and other incentives.

Tossed out with it were two incumbent Assembly members who didn't publicly oppose the measure.

Rob Wells was one of the losing incumbents -- he finished a distant third in a three-way race to represent the Hatcher Pass area on the Assembly. He is a former, longtime School Board member, and he ran unopposed for the Assembly three years ago.

His position on the proposed sales tax: Voters should have a chance to weigh in on the issue.

Wells is being replaced on the Assembly by Jim Colver, himself a former Assemblyman and School Board member.

The other ousted incumbent was Michelle Church, who finished a distant second in a two-way race. She joined the Assembly three years ago in a victory hailed by Valley zoning supporters as a coup in a place where borough officials who back zoning were once hung in effigy.

She is being replaced by Ron Arvin, chief operating officer of former wood-chipping and exporting company NPI, who got 58 percent of the vote to Church's 42 percent in unofficial results last week.

Church was a long-time activist for zoning. She started the pro-planning group Friends of Mat-Su in her kitchen in 1998 after a race track moved in near her home. Some called the 2006 election that put Church on the Assembly a "Friends of Mat-Su Sweep," because voters also elected Tom Kluberton, a Sunshine resident who represents the Su Valley district, and the new mayor became Curt Menard, a former state legislator. Church, Kluberton and Menard had something else in common besides winning their 2006 elections: All had been named earlier to the Mat-Su Planning Commission by a pro-planning mayor.

After last week's election, the Assembly seems to have shifted slightly right.

"The Assembly will be slightly more conservative at this point, but it's a little too early to say how meaningful it is," said Mat-Su Mayor Talis Colberg, who won re-election last week.

SALES TAX TURNS OUT VOTERS?

A common take on the election is that conservative voters showed up to defeat the sales tax and ousted Wells and Church along the way.

Arvin said he thinks his anti-sales tax message helped, but it wasn't the only key to his victory.

He also knocked on voters' doors, called people in his district and lined up supporters to make calls too.

"I worked to win this race," he said.

The Arvin-Church race was one of the more expensive races, with the candidates collecting more than $20,000 from donors -- Arvin $12,233 and Church $8,589.

The most expensive contest came in the Su Valley Assembly district, where Iditarod musher Vern Halter raised $13,813 and Willow store-owner Doyle Holmes raised $9,100, more than half of that from his own pocket.

Halter won, getting 55 percent of the vote in unofficial results.

The district is the Valley's largest and most diverse, representing both roadless residents of Skwentna and the bustling town of Talkeetna. Halter did well in Talkeetna, Trapper Creek and one Meadow Lakes district but lost in Houston and Willow.

Halter said perhaps his newness to politics helped him win. Holmes is a political veteran, having served on the Assembly and run unsuccessfully for statewide seats. But part of the win could be chalked up to his Iditarod-learned mindset for competition.

"You have to stay steady and stay consistent. And realize that you're probably going to do OK later, but the day-to-day stuff gets kind of difficult," he said.

SHOOTING RANGE CANCELED In the one contested race for Wasilla's City Council, Taffina Katkus' got a double win: She got the most votes, and because she won the mayor has halted the city project that Katkus opposed.

Like Church, Katkus got into the public eye over a neighborhood development. In this case, it was city plans this year to put a shooting range at the Menard Sports Center next to her home. On Friday Mayor Verne Rupright announced he was directing city employees to stop work on the shooting range.

"Since the race for City Council recently resulted in a victory for Taffina Katkus, who campaigned on a platform opposed to the city gun range project, it is clear we can infer that a majority of voters are opposed to this project going forward," Rupright said.

Katkus said she opposed the gun range but that she ran for other reasons -- linked mostly to a desire to get residents to participate in planning Wasilla's future.

She participated more than three years ago in a planning effort in which residents spent hours outlining a future for Wasilla, only to see those plans get shelved. Katkus said she hopes to get city residents of all ages and backgrounds involved in making Wasilla a better place to live.

"I really want to be an encourager, to be positive and proactive," she said.

HOUSTON'S CITY STATUS

In Houston, residents are still awaiting news on the result of an advisory vote to pursue or not pursue first-class city status.

There, 152 residents voted against reclassifying the city while 132 voted in favor of it. Changing the city status, among other things, would let residents vote on who should be mayor. Currently the mayor is a City Council member selected by the council to serve as mayor for one year.

Mayor Roger Purcell said he didn't expect the vote to change when the roughly 200 absentee, questioned and special needs ballots are counted.

Find Daily News reporter Rindi White online at adn.com/contact/rwhite or call her at 352-6709.

ADVERTISEMENT