What is it? Campaign boiler room or a Borough government that serves the interests of its citizens?
Assembly Ordinance 14-050 comes before the Assembly this Tuesday, April 1, 2014 for public hearing followed by Assembly action to approve or deny. This hastily drafted and pathetically ill-conceived ordinance would allow the expenditure of public funds…. our taxpayer funds… to influence statewide ballot propositions. No requirement for accurate representation of the issue; no cap on the amount of funds that may be expended; no limit of Borough staff time to work on the Assembly’s narrow, extreme agenda; no prohibition on using borough facilities.
If Assemblyman Arvin and company have their way this Tuesday (which happens to be April Fool’s Day, or is it make fools of the public day?), the Mat-Su Borough Assembly will go a long way towards becoming nothing more than a political platform to further an extreme ideology of at least one assemblyman at the expense of the public interest.
Instead of dealing with a heaping plateful of serious underfunded road projects, classrooms becoming more crowded, emergency services beaming with litigation and liabilities, and dry docked ferries hemorrhaging taxpayer money just to name a few, furthering political agendas instead of meeting the real everyday needs of our citizens gets thrown in the already ugly political polarized stewpot and given a place on the assembly agenda? Really? How exactly to you square that up with a bunch of elected officials that were elected under the banner of “fiscally conservative”.
Is Mr. Arvin so emboldened by the toss of his own hat in the ring for a state level house seat that he wants to show his political party just how big a bucket of water he can carry? It’s hard to think of anything smacking more of political partisanship unless of course you count of the Wasilla assemblyman’s influence in the states redistricting fiasco. All of this while pointing a finger at the size of government and demonizing public workers with one sweeping ordinance, this would let a tango line of foxes in the peoples hen house and use borough property tax money to pay for the privilege of the raid.
Cities across the country are starting to realize that the “big project” approach the ceremonial mayor and the spending hound majority member assembly love takes up too much staff time, wastes too much political energy and distracts too much from the basic needs of existing neighborhoods. But that memo hasn’t seemed to reach some members of this assembly. Despite the election of two even handed assembly members (Beck and Sykes) who have put the brakes on a few bad ideas and started asking questions that clearly annoy those on the assembly that are only used to telling us what to do and not answering our questions, they are swimming against the same powerful tide. Toxic brew supplied by cronyism!
Assemblyman Jim Sykes who is walking his talk of protecting the borough checkbook and property taxpayer monies wrote an excellent piece in today's Frontiersman that makes it clear this is one elected official that thinks passing Ordnance 14-050 is a terrible idea. We encourage you to read it and other sane men on the assembly to protect our public funds from this nonsense and vote NO.
We also suggest contacting your Assembly person (and while you are at it… cc the entire Assembly and the Ceremonial Mayor) and say DON’T MAKE FOOLS OF US…. VOTE NO ON ASSEMBLY ORDINANCE 14-050! If you want to see the sparks fly on this you are encouraged to come to Tuesday's assembly meeting at the borough building at 6pm or listen to the live stream at www.radiofreepalmer.org.
Even if Mr. Arvin pulls this terrible ordinance off the agenda before the meeting his introduction of this idea and the smell of it is so bad it should serve as a reminder of what nefarious things lay ahead if we aren't paying attention and hand power of representation to the wrong people. And yes we are looking at you if you fail to vote.
