Mat-Su tells its manager to design an $8 million trooper post, and commits nothing yet

The assembly voted Sept. 1 to approve a resolution on its consent agenda, the block of items adopted without separate debate, directing the borough manager to develop a public safety facility proposal for Alaska State Trooper operations near Tate Drive and Bogard Road. Its memorandum says approval "has no immediate fiscal impact beyond staff time," and the purpose "is not to approve construction of a facility or commit Borough funds." Funding would have to survive the fiscal 2028 budget cycle, and the assembly would still vote on a lease and on design and construction contracts.

The prices and the 20-year lease come from a non-binding term sheet Borough Manager Mike Brown presented the same evening. The borough would develop, own and lease back a trooper building of about 16,000 square feet, estimated at $8 million, plus a $5 million dispatch facility built as an annex to a planned Central Mat-Su fire station. Brown said the borough would pay for the work without taking on debt, with lease payments intended to return roughly what a 20-year investment would.

The borough already has regional E911, the enhanced emergency call system. MATCOM, run by the city of Wasilla under contract, handles call-taking and dispatching, and fields more than 29,000 E911 calls a year. Brown said the Wasilla City Council is expected to consider a memorandum of agreement on the dispatch facility at its Sept. 14 meeting, and that the borough will not move forward in earnest without that agreement.

Troopers now work out of six leased facilities in the borough that were not designed for law enforcement, Brown said, and the resolution puts the state's cost at $475,000 a year with no equity built.

The borough's population rose from 107,081 in April 2020 to 117,412 in July 2025, state labor figures show. In a 2019 news release, the assembly asked the state for full trooper staffing of 85 troopers within three years. As of September 2024, Alaska State Troopers B Detachment in Mat-Su had 13 of 49 positions vacant, a 27% vacancy rate.

Austin McDaniel, deputy commissioner of the Alaska Department of Public Safety, said the department has consolidated facilities in the Kenai Peninsula and Fairbanks North Star boroughs but has three patrol squad rooms, three investigative squad rooms and evidence spread across several buildings here. He also said the department has "our walking papers" at its current Palmer office. "We're not seeing additional funding from the legislature for our presence out here," he said. Statewide, 61 of 410 budgeted trooper positions are vacant, McDaniel said, with 15 recruits in the Sitka academy.

One assembly member asked whether consolidating six sites would thin coverage across a large borough. A trooper who identified himself as a past B Detachment commander said satellite offices are "largely outdated and extremely inefficient." The state's trooper lease expires in 2028, the target date for occupying both buildings.