Port expenses rattle Mat Su taxpayers

Mat Su’s Port MacKenzie is feeling the sting of the state’s budget axe. The Borough’s plans to upgrade the nation’s Northernmost deep water port have been stymied by setbacks. Most recently, state funds to complete a rail spur connecting the port to the main line in Houston have been put on hold, due to the state’s budget fiasco.

Download Audio

A bid to amend a Port MacKenzie master plan into Matanuska Susitna Borough code failed to gain enough Borough Assembly votes on a first vote for approval last week. Port director Marc Van Dongen told the Assembly that the proposal was only the third update to the Port plan in the past 16 years. Van Dongen urged haste in approving the bid, because of a plan to expand the port by adding additional tidelands

“There’s a potential for a company to come in a put a dock in those tidelands. We have about two square miles title now, we want to add about another half square mile.”

The Port plan issue was postponed until June on the initial Assembly vote, but a reconsideration vote at the end of the meeting reversed that decision.

Port MacKenzie has rarely earned enough money to support itself. The Borough supports port operations through an annual line item in the Borough’s areawide fund budget, something that does not go unnoticed by Borough property taxpayers. Michelle Church, a former Borough Assemblymember, says one problem has been no link with its counterpart in Anchorage.

“Until you get coordination between the two port areas, you are continuing to dump money down this rabbit hole. This port plan is nothing but dreams. You are talking about exporting coal… do you guys listen to NPR? Because, you know, nobody’s using it.”

Church spoke at the April 5 Borough Assembly regular meeting.

For this fiscal year, [fy2016] the Borough appropriated $980,000 for port operations, according to Van Dongen, and in an emergency move last December, the Matanuska Susitna Borough Assembly approved an additional $2.5 million loan from its Land Management Fund to pay for urgent repairs to the port’s barge dock.

Last week, the Borough Assembly had to re-approve $704,890 of that loan for port repairs, because emergency appropriations expire in 60 days, and the work had not been finished. The new ordinance stipulated the money be paid back from the Borough’s areawide fund, port revenues and potential insurance claims payments. Port director Van Dongen says, now repairs are on target.

“I would say I am 95 percent certain that we will be able to complete the project with the funds we have available.”

But the Borough’s areawide fund is supported by property taxpayers, and critics of Borough spending, like Patty Rosnel, told the Assembly that it is misleading to tell taxpayers that the port’s enterprise fund will repay the cost of the port repairs.

“Port revenues do not make enough to pay port costs every year. We know the enterprise fund as such has failed, and in fact, that it is the general fund, fund 100, residential property taxes, that pay for the port.”

Van Dongen admits that, after port revenues are deducted, the Borough averages $600,000 dollars a year in port operations expenses. About half that money goes for salaries for two full time employees and one part time port employee at the port.

Assemblymember Dan Mayfield, who supported the port loan, told the body that the emergency repairs started in December have been fairly successful, but that winter ice prevented repairs on one important structural component of the ailing barge dock. He said that work needs to be completed before insurance claims can be filed.

Mayfield says the repairs must go forward to protect the Borough’s investment in the port, so that in future, it’s success could take the burden off taxpayers.

Port MacKenzie offers the northernmost deep draft dock in the United States… 60 feet deep at low tide, Von Dongen says. He says it’s design makes it capable of exporting any commodity… gravel, wood chips, coal or any other mineral, even LNG. But until the rail spur is completed, the port is not likely to see long term financial viability.