Mayor DeVilbiss talks Borough Matters at TKA Community Council

Borough Mayor Larry DeVilbiss attended the Talkeetna Community Council Board’s March meeting on Monday night. He suggested Talkeetna start the process of becoming incorporated, saying that it was difficult to get Borough services up to residents’ satisfaction. By incorporating, the mayor said, Talkeetna would be able to implement its own tax, be it seasonal or year-round, and in that way be able to have a local equivalent to the bed-tax, which is collected borough-wide and re-distributed amongst communities. It was suggested at the meeting that by incorporating, the borough would be able to divest itself of the Talkeetna Water and Sewer Utility, leaving the town to deal with the financial difficulties of rate increases and loan re-payment.

The council took the opportunity to question the mayor’s about an ordinance he introduced in November that would allow Community Councils to decide for themselves whether to include non-resident land owners and other entities to have membership in Community Council affairs, such as voting on advisory ballots and electing board members.

The original ordinance, eleven-dash-127 would have required Councils to amend their bylaws to allow for the inclusion of non-property owners and other entities. The Substitute ordinance, eleven-dash-157 would give the Community Councils the choice of whether to include these groups in their membership. The Mayor says he had been asked by three Councils to let them include non-resident land-owners, because they had so few full-time