Mat-Su Borough passes budget

In their regular meeting on Tuesday night, the Mat-Su Borough Assembly passed the budget for fiscal year 2011. It took four special meetings and seventy amendments to adopt the budget.The Assembly cut the borough’s operating budget but increased pay for emergency responders by six percent.  However, that increase has to come out of the emergency service’s existing budget.

The Mat-Su school district’s funding has increased to $48 million. Assembly members Vern Halter and Jim Colver sponsored amendments to raise the district’s funding by $3.25 million. The school district had asked for funding to the tune of $52 million.

The new area-wide mill rate slightly dropped and has been set at 9.96. This is just under the current mill rate of 9.98.  Assembly members lowered the mill rate for the non-area-wide levy to 0.39.

The assembly also decided to cut the department of economic development’s $500,000 budget in half.

The final tally of the budget – including the 70 amendments – will be released next week. Prior to the amendments, the budget was almost 369 million dollars.