What you need to know:
- About 100 Big Lake residents gathered Thursday near Drowsy Drive and Peaceful Place to hear officials’ plans to address crime, squatting and junk in the area.
- Officials say enforcement will depend partly on residents reporting suspicious activity. Troopers plan to use a Criminal Suppression Unit in the area, while borough officials are working through a slower property cleanup process complicated by absentee ownership and private property rules.
- Residents want faster action, including more police patrols and cleanup help. They said the borough should provide dumpsters so they can address the trash problem now. Borough officials said that’s not possible because of private property rules.
- Short on time but need the local news scoop? Get free weekly news in your inbox for Mat-Su, from Mat-Su.
BIG LAKE — About 100 residents gathered Thursday at a corner just off a troubled street in Big Lake to talk about junk, squatting and crime in the neighborhood — and how to stop it.
Borough officials hosted the meeting with Alaska State Troopers to bring attention to the challenges on a quarter-mile section of Drowsy Drive and Peaceful Place near Beaver Lake. Palmer District Attorney Trina Sears also attended.
“The key item for this meeting today is the community,” said Jason Ortiz, a Matanuska-Susitna Borough planning and land use deputy director who spearheads the borough’s community cleanup program. “We need every one of you guys to report every suspicious thing — everything — and document and hold us accountable, and hold public officials accountable, because we need to be able to respond to this.”…