This week, the Mat-Su Borough Assembly went through the quarterly process of approving the next three months of funding for storage and maintenance of the M/V Susitna, which currently amounts to about $18,000 per month, excluding insurance.
The Susitna was meant to be used as a ferry between the Mat-Su Borough and Anchorage across Knik Arm. That project never came to fruition, however, and the borough has been trying to find a new home for the boat. For more than a year and a half, that has meant trying to sell it. The borough has an interested buyer, but there’s a catch. That buyer is located outside of the United States. Mat-Su Borough Manager John Moosey says that means going to the federal government, who built the vessel, for permission.
“Because this is a U.S. Navy prototype, primarily designed for battle missions, that it was potentially thought could be used as a ferry, we have to go through these extra hoops. A second thing is, as far as export license, when you sell outside of [the] Continental United States, you need permission to do that.”
There’s another level on which the Mat-Su Borough has to go through the federal government with regard to the Susitna. When the borough was laying out the plan for ferry service, it received $12 million in grant funding from the Federal Transit Administration. Since the boat was never put into service as a ferry, the federal government is asking for that money back. John Moosey, Borough Attorney Nicholas Spiropoulos, and Borough Assembly Member Steve Colligan recently went to Washington D.C. to speak face-to-face with the FTA.
“I really don’t think they are looking for a pound of flesh, or to financially hurt us, but they have some, I think, responsibilities and obligations. So, trying to ferret through not hurting the Mat-Su Borough financially versus ‘Hey, we are also accountable for these grants,’ is really pretty much, I think, what’s going on here.”
John Moosey says the borough hopes to hear back soon on whether or not it has permission to sell the M/V Susitna to a foreign entity. He also says that the borough is hopeful that some of the $12 million in grant money will not have to be repaid, but that the “federal government makes no promises.”
