The borough assembly on March 11 approved moving ahead with Mason Villarma’s request to buy two borough-owned industrial lots at the corner of Etolin and Pine streets.
The vote to sell the land to the borough manager was 6-1.
Villarma plans to clear both lots and eventually build a 40-by-60-foot building on each of the lots — “one for personal storage and one for a fabrication business venture,” he wrote in his request to the borough.
“It might be boat storage or container storage until I can save up enough to build a shop,” Villarma said. “It’s amazing. You think we have a lot of storage, but you look around and there are boats in the street and cars everywhere. I think there’s certainly a need.”
The lots will be sold at fair market value, to be determined by an appraisal. The parcels currently are shown on the borough’s land map at an estimated $29,800 value each.
The lots are each 17,000 square feet and have no utility services. Extending any utilities would be at Villarma’s expense. The parcels are located across the street from a predominantly residential area a couple blocks uphill from Zimovia Highway.
Borough Clerk Kim Lane will advertise the pending sale for about a month, after which the appraised value will be presented to the assembly at its April 28 meeting for approval of the conveyance of the land titles to Villarma.
While assembly members on March 11 acknowledged the optics of selling public land to the borough manager, they reiterated that the process was conducted in a fair and equitable way, though the vote was not without debate.
Bob Dalrymple was the only assembly member to vote no on the land purchase. But he said he cast that vote out of protest, not because he didn’t want Villarma to own the land. Dalrymple was vehement in his opposition to land purchases that he described as a “Sooner-style land grab” rather than a more competitive auction-style sale of public lands.
“I’m going to vote no on this as a protest,” he said, “because I think we need to change (these sales) to a competitive bid on all our properties in the future.”
Dalrymple was not accusing the process of being corrupt or favoring the manager in any way, as borough officials were quick to point out that they had not received interest in these specific lots in at least the past 18 months. He simply hopes to rewrite the borough code for future public land sales.
Carol Rushmore, the borough’s former economic development director and planning and zoning official, advocated for selling the lots by public auction.
“While the (municipal) code does allow for sales of public lands directly to individuals, when the lots could be of interest to multiple community members it is in the best interest of the borough to offer a public land sale by auction,” she wrote in a letter to the borough last month.
She noted that three borough-owned residential lots in the area were sold a few years ago at auction for more than the minimum price, and the two lots sold to Villarma might have generated higher bids at an auction.
Assembly Member Michael Otteson is happy that a member of the public, albeit the borough manager, came forward with a proposal to purchase the lands.
“We’ve been encouraging people to come forward if they want to purchase a lot,” he said. “I don’t like the accusation of favoring the manager, because we have encouraged people to do this. He went forth, started the process and did what we’ve been telling the community for some time now.”
Assembly Member Phillip Mach pointed out that the borough’s parcel map can be found at wrangell.com, and he encouraged anyone interested in a land purchase to visit the website and begin the process.
Reader Comments(0)