News-Miner Editorial
Annexation needed
Fred Meyer, Riverside should be in the city
Published Friday, August 22, 2008
Digg
delicious
Facebook
Mixx
Reddit
Stumble It!The Fairbanks City Council has the chance in coming weeks to advance efforts to update two relic city boundaries.
The council will decide whether to forward a petition to the state’s Local Boundary Commission that asks the commission to approve the city’s annexation of two small areas on its western border.
The most significant annexation would bring the Fred Meyer store at University Avenue and Airport Way into the city. This would provide a much-needed boost of property tax to the city as it struggles to provide services for a daily influx of people from outside its boundaries.
The Fred Meyer area is already part of the city in every fashion but the official.
The property is an important commercial center that draws traffic and people across city streets immediately adjacent to the property. It’s the only major retail center in the region that sits outside a city, even if just barely.
Because the Fred Meyer property is so close to the city, the city fire and police departments already respond there regularly under mutual aid agreements with the borough-chartered University Fire Service Area and the Alaska State Troopers.
That brings up one potential downside, though: The annexation could cut out University Fire’s largest source of income.
So the city has proposed, in its application, that the fire service district continue to serve the area and that the city reimburse the district for its post-annexation tax loss.
That seems like a reasonable proposal and one that recognizes that University Fire, with a substation just a third of a mile from Fred Meyer, has the ability to continue good fire protection.
The second proposal in the city’s petition to the Local Boundary Commission would finally annex an odd collection of lots in the Riverside subdivision on the south bank of the Chena River between Washington and Park drives.
This should be a no-brainer for the commission. The gerrymandered border leaves those properties without fire protection and good street maintenance. It needs to be fixed.
Community Discussion
Newsminer.com doesn't necessarily condone the comments here, nor does it review every post. Read our full user's agreement.
Now for the rest of the story...
The University Fire Service Commission voted unanimously to oppose this unneeded land grab by the City.
All of the businesses within the proposed annexation area are opposed to the annexation. The News-Miner demonstrates its contempt for the concept of government having the consent of the governed in this case.
This annexation will cost the taxpayers within the North Star Borough about $300,000 dollars per year in lost alcohol and cigarette tax revenue- driving up the cost of borough property taxes.
The City would force double taxation on these business- hey, that sounds fair, right? So these businesses will then have to pass their increased costs on to their customers.
Brilliant.
The UFSA does a great job providing fire and EMS service to this area- from a station that is, literally, a few blocks away. But if the City were to grab even more land in another annexation the "agreement" with UFSA will be void.
A truly horrible deal that is being forced on those who live outside the City.
Hey -
annexation is easier than learning to control your spending!
maybe we can annex Canada next - better try for it before someone else gets the idea!
"The News-Miner demonstrates its contempt for the concept of government having the consent of the governed in this case."
Are you surprised?
"This would provide a much-needed boost of property tax to the city as it struggles to provide services for a daily influx of people from outside its boundaries."
This one sentence says it all. To the DNM, this is what its all about. If the editorial staff were truly interested in providing services to the "daily influx of people from outside", they'd have come out in support of a sales tax and made those people pay for services rendered.
I must agree with all of the above comments. In style the staff and editor of the FDNM show their stupidity and political posturing ... I think the staff and editors must be socialists.
They dont wont the big "box" stores built outside of downtown, but they wont to anex them into the town.??? If I were Fred Myers I would close the store and then watch them scream about "tax losses". The city will provide them with nothing for their taxes, that they dont already have. Time for another Tea Party?
The Park street mess is a much needed change and should have been done 20 years ago.
Bugger, I could not agree with you more. I will support Freddie's if they were to choose to move. I will shope exclusively at them if they are annexed and then relocate. The city wants it all, no box stores outside the city, but yet annex them into the city....I would close in a heartbeat and move to the corner of Badger and Old Rich. They could buy the 49er and a few houses and have all kinds of parking and be right in the middle of two tax and spend towns!!!!
Bulldoze the downtown parking lots and put in another Wal-mart so the city can have additional tax revenue. Plus it would complement the borough's Vision.
Money, money, money. Give us all your money. People and businesses choose where to build and live based on many factors. Three being location, location, and location. If they had wanted to be inside the city limits, they would have built inside the city limits. The city should not have the authority to annex anyone who does not want to be annexed. This is all about getting into the deep pockets of Fred Meyer for as much money as possible.
Photodude, you are correct. The newsminer has come out in oppostion to almost every plan to reduce the tax burden on property owners.
"The gerrymandered border leaves those properties without fire protection and good street maintenance." If this is a problem to the property owners, why do they all oppose annexation? If they want street maintenance they can form a service area. This argument is lame.
Anyone else notice that in the last sentence of the article it says "those properties are without fire protection and street maintenance," but just two paragraphs above that it says "That seems like a reasonable proposal and one that recognizes that University Fire, with a substation just a third of a mile from Fred Meyer, has the ability to continue good fire protection."
So University Fire is providing good fire protection without providing fire protection? Who edits these stories?
This editorial does nothing to explain how Fred Meyer benefits from being annexed at all, and I believe that is because it doesn't. My guess is that Fred's already pays for their own snow plowing and garbage removal as a large commercial property. The University Fire Department already provides Fire and EMS coverage to this area, and has a sub station significantly closer than any of the City's fire stations and AST provides police protection.
If the City is going to use the argument that they should be able to annex it because they already have a mutual aid agreement to provide services then anyone who lives outside the city, but in a fire or ambulance service area should be worried. The city also has a mutual aid agreement to send an ambulance to anywhere in Steese's ambulance area if Steese isn't available. Does this mean they can now annex Chena Hot Springs becuase they will get lots of property taxes?
Also, why mess with the system if they are going to have to enact a more complicated system to make up for the changes? If the City annexes Fred Meyers they will have to set up some system to reemburse UFD for their fire and ambulance services, and I guarentee that no one will be able to come up with a system that makes everyone happy. The City isn't going to want to fork over that much money, and UFD is going to want to recover the loss of the 300,000+ as much as they can.
The city needs to wake up and realize that the property tax based system is not working without putting unnecesary burdens on the city property owners. Fix the current system by enacting a sales tax and lowering the property taxes. Use the sales tax to help pay for Fire, EMS, Police and the road service, the 4 things most commonly used by the people who do not live in the city, but come into it for work or shopping. I don't think those things should be totally funded by a sales tax, but a percentage could be.
lets just do away with the city of FBKS all together. no city, and as far as fire protection ...let'em burn!
The News-Miner has always been partial to the idea of effectively abolishing the city of Fairbanks anyway (unification/consolidation, anyone?), so while the suggestion is offered as a joke you can be sure DNM's editors wouldn't be laughing.
Salivating, more like.
Fred's won't get anything out of this.
It's just a grab by the City.
The fire protection issue makes this quite obvious.
Something for everyone in the borough to think about..............If the city annexes the Fred Meyer enclave, the borough will be losing 300,000+ dollars. Where do you think they will make up those loses?? You might think that the city will cover the monetary loss to the borough, not so they are only covering the cost of the mil rate for fire protection not the entire tax base, for now.
Yep, you guessed it. Property taxes! If the city takes Freddys, Taco Bell and the bank you the home owner will cover the loss of the tax base from that enclave all in the name of the city "growing".
What they really need to do is get the Princess Hotel and Jay's hotel. ASAP.
I'm for scrapping the city if they want to get out of hand. Less politicians to pay for. Just run everything w/ a borough assembly and mayor. After the vote to strangle local government w/ no revenue a couple of years ago, I hope that the politicians would not think the folks around here would be "just whistling dixie" when it comes to the minimal tolerance for B.S.
Let's not let the City of Fairbanks rule with an iron fist.
Leave Fred Meyer alone I say.
So the City of Fairbanks can't provide any additional services to Freddies that they do not already have. But on the other hand, The City of Fairbanks wants to collect $300,000.00 from Freddies in alchohol sales tax yearly. But then again, I think Freddies will have to pay additional Property Tax to the City of Fairbanks?
Is the Fairbanks Daily News Miner is trying to make a silk purse out of a sows ear?
IMAGINE THE HEADLINES FOR:
Fairbanks "Peace Keeping" forces have entered the area to protect ethnic Fairbanksians from the alleged ethnic cleansing being carried out by the North Star Borough. Although the mayor of Nenana negotiated a cease-fire between the communities, FPD continues to patrol Fred Meyers and conduct random field sobriety tests in the parking lot. Neighboring communities of Fox, Ester, & North Pole are discussing mutual protection treaties with Anchorage.
Correct me if I am wrong, but if the land is annexed to the City, it is still within the boundaries of the Borough, and therefore still subject to any and all Borough taxes.
I think this is a good idea. Our city limits are woefully small. The city has grown far beyond the decades-old political lines on the map, and those lines need to move to keep up with reality.
But why do they need to move? In many areas outside the city people pay less for the services the city would be providing. Unless the city can show some good hard facts that it would be better economically for the people who own the land that is proposed to be annexed in, there is no reason the city should just start grabbing land.
OK You are wrong Henry! The borough collects all the sin taxes for the sale of alcohol and tobacco. There must be a lot of sinners because the article says it 300,000.00 a year. As for the city needing to grow, why don’t they just leave us who don’t live in the city alone and concentrate on their downtown Vision?
I loved the line about good road maintenance. What does that mean? Plow the road once a year? I think there are some in the city that want to have a municipality like Anchorage where the outlying areas support the cultural center. Maybe it’s time for Fairbanks to become a service area in the borough.
Post a comment
Commenting requires registration.