Unfair that Talkeetna residents be treated as 'special'

First Name:

Editor:

Re: Rate Increases to the Talkeetna Water & Sewer District.

Ostensibly, the Talkeetna Water & Sewer system was implemented to provide a safe water & sewer system to the residents of the village of Talkeetna at affordable costs. I am commenting as a resident of the Mat-Su Borough, property tax payer, and a user of the Borough-owned Talkeetna Water & Sewer system; unless the system was built and is operated for the benefit of the entire Mat Su Borough, then it should be explained to all the residents of the Borough why a select number of individuals who live in an arbitrary geographic area receive a benefit that other residents are not entitled to.

The reason that this issue is being raised is due to the proposed rate increases to users of the system. At a recent Talkeetna W&S advisory meeting; it is apparent that those board members are intelligent and well meaning, but without any real power. It is also evident that the Mat Su Public Utilities is staffed by forthright individuals. However, the latter do not answer to any voters or to the collective membership of the TKA W&S.

It also seemed apparent that there was a lack of communication between the Borough representatives and the Advisory board regarding loans, operating costs and methods available for rate relief. The State of Alaska does not provide any oversight over the operation of this type of public utility. As such, user/members are subject to rate increases to cover a system which is apparently not economically viable, i.e., it must be operated at a loss relative to the number of users unless user membership is increased (a number which has not increased since the inception of the system in 1990).

In addition, because of a lack of oversight, the Borough, through compulsion (it's not so simple to “unsubcribe”) can force 180 users of the system to future costs that might be a result of Borough mismanagement. Consider the situation in Unalaska (http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/unalaska-dirty-fight-over-clean-water).

The users of the TKA W&S system should not have to pay more than market value for using the system and should not have to subsidize a system that is proving to have unsolvable defects. The issue then becomes who pays.

If the system benefits the residents of the Borough, as it seems to do, because Talkeetna, a key hub for tourism in the north-central part of the Borough, provides revenue to the Borough (via a bed tax), then all residents (through the Borough budget) can bear the difference in operating costs. The only other method of raising revenues would be through a “crapper tax.”

Given that there are up to 2,000 visitors a day to the environment of TKA (in excess to the 200 or so inhabitants who pay for the system), those visitors would be subject to a user fee in order to assure those visitors that they have a place to use a commode and to be assured their water isn’t laced with arsenic and is laced with a proper amount of chlorine. In summary, if one of the policies of the the Mat-Su Borough is to promote tourism, it is “unfair” that less than 180 users, of whom less than 50 percent are commercial, should subsidize 2,000 visitors per day to the community by paying for a system whose operating costs outstrip the the service demands for which the system was built.

It is also unfair that the residents of Talkeetna should be treated as “special” by the Mat-Su Borough, i.e., the Borough should provide safe water to all residents of the Borough and share the costs among all Borough inhabitants instead of singling any one group simply based on territorial hap chance. A thorough public review of the operation of this system should be conducted before any further rate increases are considered.

Anthony Martin (Talkeetna)