Assembly members and planning commissioners headed out the road Monday evening for a special joint meeting at the former Mosquito Lake School, which has been proposed to be sold out of borough control. 

The meeting turned out members of the public in high numbers, not unlike meetings on other hot-button issues this year. But for once, away from the dais and big leather swivel chairs in the usual assembly chambers, elected officials were packed in knee-to-knee with the rest of the crowd on the short plastic chairs of the former elementary school. 

It was the ability to do that — to gather a portion of the dispersed Upper Valley community together in a room — that many of the meeting attendees pointed to as the value of the borough facility. 

 “When this is gone, it’ll never get built again,” said longtime resident Tom Binder, who drew big applause for his comments. “This is the only place we have to get together. If we want to get together, we’ll have to go to church, and I’m not going to church unless someone dies.”

In recent weeks, conversation surrounding the potential sale of the community center has seemed to separate into two sides: one that believes the borough can help close a revenue shortfall by taking the building’s costs off the books, and another that believes a sale would end services both essential to the Upper Valley community, and deserved as a return on tax contributions. 

On Tuesday, however, a surprise middle ground seemed to exist. Erika Merklin, who played the dual role of planning commissioner, and also board member of the Four Winds Resource Center—the nonprofit that manages the facility—suggested that the nonprofit could be willing to take on ownership of the building. 

“We could work directly with the borough to do a staged weaning, where we would know the borough would have the intention of deeding the facility to us, so the borough would no longer be responsible for the costs,” Merklin said. “If we were deeded this tomorrow, could we find the funding (for operations costs)? It would be a big scramble. We would absolutely be able to manage it into the future if it were deeded to us, but it would need to be done in a very measured way.” 

Merklin’s suggestion that Four Winds could pick up operations costs if deeded the building for free put her in agreement with assembly member Mark Smith, who has led the charge on selling the facility. Smith was not present at the meeting, but said last month he would vote for that kind of arrangement. 

Four Winds president Julie Korsmeyer, however, tempered Merklin’s statements somewhat. 

“What Erika was proposing was just a thought,” Korsmeyer said. “We don’t have the money right now. We would not refuse (the building), but we’d have to figure out how to support it.” 

Korsmeyer said funding the roughly $40,000 in yearly operational costs would require fundraising in the ballpark of double the organization’s current level. And that it would likely only be possible with an operational grant from a large grant-giving organization. 

At the same time, fully transferring control to Four Winds could address ongoing disagreements about how the nonprofit and the borough are meant to allocate oversight of the facility and facility activities — something Korsmeyer said would be welcome. Assembly member Gabe Thomas pointed to functions like the Mosquito Lake School’s free tire shop, and said he wasn’t sure if the borough should be funding a service competing with businesses in the borough. 

“If you want to be a borough facility, then you have to follow the borough rules,” Thomas said. 

But still, even if Four Winds were to support taking on full control, the core complaint from residents, about fair return on taxes, would remain. Townsite services that their taxes fund, many residents said, simply don’t offer as much benefit to out-the-road residents. “I’ve been to the pool, the Chilkat Center, maybe one time,” said Ryan Eckert. “I’ve been here over 50 times.” 

As assembly members decide on selling the facility, they’ll likely be considering the near-unanimous wave of public comment they received Monday. Just how much weight that should carry, however, is not something officially laid out in borough code. 

This year has seen large meeting attendance on controversial issues, including a cemetery easement and funding for the pool. On both issues, assembly members referenced the show of public support in their voting rationale. 

But both Thomas and assembly member Cheryl Stickler argued it was the content, not the quantity, of public comment that could influence their decisionmaking. Stickler said she is inclined to give more weight to residents who don’t regularly weigh in to local government. “On the cemetery topic, there was a segment of the community that doesn’t usually speak at assembly meetings that really showed up. So we had to pay attention and listen.”

For Monday night’s meeting, Stickler said one surprise was the number of young people and young families from the area that advocated for borough support of the facility. “I wasn’t expecting the number of young people who said, this is their place. This is a place they come to.” 

But still, Stickler said what she heard from residents would still have to be balanced against the math. 

“The down and dirty of it is, it does come down to the dollars and cents,” Stickler said. “It can be hard to find a balance, because we want to respond to community values, but in a way that is affordable and sustainable.”

It’s not completely clear what selling the facility could save, or raise, for the borough. Last year the building cost the borough just under $40,000 to operate. But in some years, that number has jumped to $54,000, or down to $26,000, largely depending on maintenance needs. 

Borough facilities director Brad Jensen said this week that the maintenance needs of the building are in line with other borough facilities. “Like all of our borough-owned buildings, there’s significant investment that needs to be done to bring it up to satisfactory standards,” Jensen said. 

As for revenue raised by selling the land, it could be limited. One proposal is to divide the 13-acre property, deed the portion with the building to Four Winds, and place the rest up for bid. The rest, however, is almost completely steep, overgrown hillside. 

“The land is not high-value land,” said Dave Pahl. “It’s steep and you can’t drill a well.”

Neighboring parcels on the same hillside that are between six and seven acres are valued at around $40,000 each. 

Some residents say those details of the math—the precise value of the land, or year-to-year maintenance—are outweighed by the value of the services offered at the facility, and the role it plays in tying the community together. 

As Chuck Mitman put it, “It’s peanuts, what we’re paying in, compared to what we’re getting.”