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MatsuMuckraker.com

2019 MSB Assembly campaigns are underway

The Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly is comprised of members elected from seven districts for staggered three-year terms for no more than two consecutive full terms. The MSB also has a mayor who runs the Assembly meetings and only votes when there is a tie. The 2019 election is scheduled for November…

The Taj Mahal of Fire Stations

  MSB Station 6-2, the new Knik Public Safety Building, is almost completed and the total costs are now just over $12 MILLION. This Fire Station & Training Facility is located on 74 acres way down KGB road in Wasilla. It belongs to the Mat-Su Central Fire Service Area. It is…

Are the MSB employee benefits packages too generous?

The MSB offers generous benefits packages to its employees. Maybe too generous? After 11 years of service, full time employees get 37 days (7.5 weeks) of personal leave! (They accrue 11.6378 hours per pay period. There are 26 pay periods per year.) Plus they also get 12 paid holidays! So…

Does the MSB want to get into Airport Management?

The MSB Aviation Advisory Board meets this week. One of the items on the agenda is the prospect of the MSB taking over management responsibilities for some airports in the Mat-Su Valley.  They are considering the Talkeetna, Willow, and Big Lake airports which are currently owned and operated by the…

The MSB wants to get in on the Wetlands Mitigation Regulation game

Assembly member Jim Sykes is introducing a Resolution (19-074) at the upcoming MSB Assembly meeting regarding developing a local regulatory scheme for Wetlands Mitigation.   RS 19-074 IM 19-138 As a reminder – the MSB has been trying to be a player in the Wetlands Mitigation game for many years…

MSB paid Palmer Tower LLC $500,000 to lease warehouse space

The MSB, which is in the process of purchasing the Tommy Moe building in downtown Wasilla for $1,285,000, paid the owner – Palmer Tower LLC – almost $500,000 to lease a portion of this building – the warehouse space in the back – for the past 11 years. Blog Post…

The secret Parnell contract was not a secret claims MSB Manager Moosey in an interview with his PR Agent (AKA the Frontiersman’s Publisher)

Dennis Anderson, the Frontiersman newspaper’s Publisher (who recently relocated to Colorado but still works for Wick Publishing which owns the Frontiersman), is MSB Manager Moosey’s “go to” person for Public Relations. Mr. Anderson’s “Publisher’s Notebook” column, which runs in the Frontiersman and its sister newspaper, the Anchorage Press, often features…

This “Land Exchange” proposal is malodorous

Here is a brand new Public Notice that was published in the local newspaper and on the MSB’s website today. The MSB is proposing a land exchange of borough land located in Trapper Creek to offset the MSB’s purchase of the Tommy Moe building in downtown Wasilla.  Comments are due…

Severance Package Solution

The MSB manager seems to be very free and easy with regard to paying out “severance packages” to dearly departed MSB employees. The MSB paid William F. Gamble $80,000 a few years ago…and today, via a Public Records Request, it was discovered that the MSB paid former MSB Emergency Services…