Assembly incumbents Haney, Rotermund called for shutting down rec facilities

The other day I wrote here about how Fairbanks assembly candidates Barbara Haney and Brett Rotermund tried to shut down the Carlson Center this year, claiming that the borough can’t afford to keep it.

If the borough has a financial problem—and it does—it’s because Haney and Rotermund helped create a financial cliff with a deceptive manipulation of the tax cap two years ago.

Haney, Rotermund, Tammie Wilson and two former assembly members laid the foundation for eliminating numerous borough public services when they monkeyed with the tax cap.

But they weren’t honest about the future implications of their actions in 2023.

They reduced the tax rate by spending from savings on a one-time basis in 2023, pretending they were cutting government. But they did not close the Carlson Center and Mary Siah Recreation Center two years ago, they simply drew more from savings.

They didn’t cut services or confess that the reduction of the tax rate guaranteed that the borough would have less to spend in future years on everything from education to parks.

Now they are claiming that facilities the public has relied upon for generations must be shuttered because of circumstances beyond anyone’s control.

Haney, Rotermund and Wilson are acting as if this is a case of the borough spending beyond its means, not the predictable result of a trick they pulled in 2023.

In addition to claiming that we can’t afford the Carlson Center, Haney, Rotermund and Wilson made the same claim about the Mary Siah Recreation Center.

In the end the assembly rejected the Wilson, Haney and Rotermund plan and the Carlson Center and the Mary Siah center remain open.

How much longer is an open question, however.

Fairbanks lawyer and former teacher Patrick Roach, a longtime Alaskan, is challenging Haney. If you want the Carlson Center and the Mary Siah Recreation Center to remain open, vote for him.

Rotermund is unopposed.

Wilson, an anti-government zealot who is a political employee of the Dunleavy administration, claims that the borough does not need and can’t afford three swimming pools.

She doesn’t mention the 2023 tax cap manipulation in making the dollars disappear or why the revenue picture is out of balance.

“You know we’re nine-and-a-half million dollars over what we currently have revenue coming in. And so that’s coming out of our savings. And we can’t do that year after year. And we can’t keep up with the same amount of facilities that we have,” Wilson said during the spring budget debate.

Rotermund claimed that closing Mary Siah was one of the “tough decisions” the borough had to make because it doesn’t have the money.

Wilson and Rotermund did not mention that it was their deceptive 2023 action that created the problem they are now moaning about.

In a budget letter two years ago, Mayor Bryce Ward said that passing a budget $27 million below the allowable tax cap, the assembly was creating a problem for the immediate future.

“Overall, the decisions that resulted in the large reduction of the mill levy are, unfortunately not sustainable,” Ward said in 2023.