ENSTAR raised its gas line relocation estimates and Mat-Su road budgets absorb the cost

ENSTAR Natural Gas raised its cost estimates on eight Matanuska-Susitna Borough road projects, several of them by 100 percent or more, and the borough's road service areas will absorb the difference. Borough code generally requires the borough to pay when a permitted utility has to move its lines for a public project, and there is no second gas utility it could call instead.

The assembly approved six of the amendments Aug. 18, running from about $31,500 to $220,624, all of them revised estimates on projects still at an early stage. It held back two invoices for work already finished — on Crimson View and Heavenly Meadows, and on Helen Lane — postponing them to Sept. 1 and inviting ENSTAR leadership to come explain.

Mayor Edna DeVries said the utility had "basically doubled the cost of all these projects, to the tune of almost $700,000." Crimson View alone went from $160,000 to $389,000, she said, a jump of $229,000. That money would otherwise have repaired France Road, which serves the Pathway School.

Borough staff rejected the bills at first. ENSTAR acknowledged the estimating errors. But administrators told the assembly the work has been done, the invoice amounts themselves are not in dispute, and accurate estimates likely would have produced the same final costs.