Sarah Palin was my mayor

ProSense

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Fri Aug-29-08 07:06 PM
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Sarah Palin was my mayor

Edited on Fri Aug-29-08 07:35 PM by ProSense

by loyalson
Fri Aug 29, 2008 at 04:09:52 PM PDT

For those of you who want pictures, shipyardian is still local and put up this diary.

Sarah Palin was my mayor.

My family moved to Wasilla when I was eleven years old. The road I lived on was still gravel, and the town then was still on its first of three successive Wal-Marts. It was 1996, and Sarah Palin would not be mayor for another three years.

Today, under Sarah Palin's leadership, Wasilla has become the picture of exurban sprawl: an explosion in the housing stock, tons of new highway expansion, tons of new big box stores and fast food franchises, and absolutely 0 sustainability. Combined with a lack of zoning, and a predilection for building open-pit gravel mines all over the place, and Wasilla could be the poster-town for bad municipal leadership.

Wasilla, like a lot of Alaska, is defined by its remoteness. It is a 45 mile drive from Anchorage, yet functions primarily as a bedroom community. The city limits are confined mostly to a narrow strip along the Parks Highway (a major route from Anchorage to Fairbanks), but Wasillans can live dozens of miles away from the town center. An official population of roughly 6,000 balloons to dozens of thousands in the greater Wasilla area. Despite their small size, Wasilla and Palmer form the major social and political axis of the Mat-Su borough, a county equivalent the size of West Virginia.

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Growing up, my father used to take me to a barber shop in one of our many strip malls to get my hair cut. I call it a barbershop, and the sign said it was a barber shop, but it was more of a combination barber shop, guitar repair shop, ammo store, and local NRA headquarters. That barber shop was a microcosm of Wasilla: an odd mix of country friendliness and can-do work ethic, and hardcore, reactionary conservatism.

When I graduated from Wasilla High School, Sarah Palin's alma mater, there were 1200 students, some fantastic teachers, and a strong Advanced Placement program. When Sarah Palin graduated, I doubt there were less than half that many students. Unfortunately, the last several years' budget cuts have hit WHS rather hard, and it's been shedding good teachers and AP classes, with no end in sight. Last I heard, the coordinated advanced learning program had been disbanded, for lack of funds. Wasilla High School used to turn out some amazing students, many of whom were friends of mine who went onto MIT, Harvard, Colgate, Tufts, and many other top universities. Now, WHS is a school in decline, even amidst an explosion in the local housing stock, and record state revenues from oil extraction. This decline began under Mayor Palin's watch as mayor, and is coming to its inevitable conclusion under her watch as governor.

Beyond gravel mines and strip malls, there is one thing that defines Wasilla more than anything else:

Walmart.

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