By Aaron Selbig
Turnagain Times Correspondent
Voices were raised and terse words exchanged at the June 16 Girdwood Board of Supervisors’ meeting during and after a presentation by members of the Heritage Land Bank and Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility.
William Mehner, Executive Director of the Heritage Land Bank, was especially upset over the tone and comments made by GBOS board member Jake Thompson towards Lynda Barber-Wiltse, Project Manager for AWWU near the end of her presentation.
“He (Thompson) was absolutely rude,” said Mehner. “He crossed the line”.
At issue was a plan before the Board to extend a water transmission line from the Girdwood School into the planned Holtan Hills subdivision off Crow Creek Road, a project that Heritage Land Bank is working on in conjunction with AWWU. At the Board’s May meeting, officials from AWWU were asked to modify the plan so the transmission line would satisfy a request from the Anchorage School District(ASD). ASD wanted the line’s location to not interfere with the Girdwood School’s plans for future expansion of the building.
“AWWU, by reverting to a previous plan that has the transmission line skirting the school at a greater distance, has satisfied that request,” said Barber-Wiltse. Toward the end of a heated discussion of the plan, Thompson repeatedly cut Barber-Wiltse off as she attempted to make the point that, without the immediate approval of the plan by the Girdwood Board of Supervisors, the project could be delayed by a year or more.
“If you keep on showing up here with these things that are not voted on, you’re going to have this happen, so change the plan,” Thompson told Barber-Wiltse, “ and thank you for your time,” effectively ending discussion on the issue.
What Thompson wanted, and ultimately was successful in attaining, was a temporary delay of board approval of the plan until it could be debated by the Girdwood Land Use Committee at their next regular meeting, scheduled for July 8.
“It’s not that Girdwood doesn’t want this, it’s just that we want it done right,” Thompson told the Times after the meeting convened. “We don’t want this town ending up looking like some of the places in Anchorage.”
“I might have gotten a little bit upset, but there’s no need for apology,” he added, “she (Barber-Wiltse) certainly raised her tone and I raised my tone.”
Following their presentation and outside the building, Barber-Wiltse told the Times that she and AWWU have been straightforward throughout the process.
“I have kept the community informed, and I have kept this project going forward,” she said.
Barber-Wiltse and Mehner were expecting Board approval of the plan at the meeting, and were disappointed by the delay. They said the lack of timely approval for the water transmission line could have a “domino effect” on development of the Holtan Hills subdivision. Surveying and environmental study of the area were already scheduled, they said, and completion of the water transmission line was targeted for next year. Now, they will have to wait at least another month while the Land Use Committee reviews the current plan.
“The Board of Supervisors is being wagged by the tail of the Land Use Committee,” a visibly upset Mehner told the Times, “and usually it’s the most contentious people that show up to those meetings”.
Thompson said that Land Use Committee approval of a plan like this is simply part of the normal process, and points out that the Girdwood Master Plan was changed to allow this development in the first place.
“I think they’re just in a hurry to get their subdivision in,” he said.
Diane Stone Livingston, a Land Use Committee member who attended the meeting, said Thompson was too “Draconian” in his tactics, but was right that the water transmission line plan should be looked at by the committee.
“It’s the great strength of the Land Use Committee that everybody can vote,” she said after the meeting. “The people of Girdwood have a vested interest in this.”