Proposed trooper post would bolster patrols near Willow and Talkeetna

WASILLA — An Alaska State Troopers post proposed for the Talkeetna area would add dedicated law enforcement officers to the upper Mat-Su as part of an effort to improve public safety response times, officials said Thursday.

Funding for the post is included in Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s proposed $16.8 billion budget for fiscal year 2026, which begins in July. The budget proposes $2.4 million to establish the post with six new positions: a sergeant, three full-time troopers, a wildlife trooper and a criminal justice technician, public safety officials said.

The post would be part of B Detachment, which patrols an area the size of West Virginia, stretching hundreds of miles from Glennallen to Cantwell.

If approved, it would not be the first time a trooper post has operated in the Talkeetna area. A facility on Talkeetna Spur Road was closed in 2016 due to state budget cuts, and its six employees were transferred to the Meadow Lakes post.

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Rather than field its own police force, which borough officials estimate would cost at least $14 million annually, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough relies on troopers to provide law enforcement for much of the region. About six troopers patrol the vast area at any given time, public safety officials said earlier this year. Incident response times vary widely, with some calls to locations outside the core area taking hours, borough officials said.

Reopening a post near Talkeetna would help address that problem, said Austin McDaniel, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety. Troopers assigned to the new post would cover a roughly 60-mile stretch of Parks Highway from Willow to north of Trapper Creek, he said. They would not be regularly called to core area patrols or incidents, he said.

McDaniel said the funding request for the post stems in part from feedback gathered at a community meeting after a kidnapping and double homicide near Trapper Creek in 2023 that was linked to drug trafficking.

“They were very clear that they felt that the responsiveness from the Alaska State Troopers wasn’t up to what it should be,” he said.

Both a Mat-Su Assembly resolution passed unanimously in January urging residents to arm themselves and a free gun safety and live-fire training program approved by the Assembly in May were created in direct response to the lack of trooper presence in the Trapper Creek area, said Assembly member Ron Bernier, who represents the area and sponsored the measures.

Troopers receive about 2,500 calls annually to the region between Willow and north of Trapper Creek, McDaniel said, or about 15% of calls received area-wide each year, according to trooper incident data. Since 2021, troopers have logged 262 welfare checks and 421 vehicle collisions in the area north of Willow, he said. Since 2020, they have recorded 785 reports of illegal drug use, he said.

If funding is approved, the exact location of the proposed Talkeetna post would be determined through a state leasing process, McDaniel said.

Mat-Su Borough officials said they are eager to support the proposal and could share land or space in an existing facility.

“This is a huge deal for us and something that I think we all want to dive into and lend our support wherever we can through this legislative session to retain what the governor has done,” Mat-Su Borough Manager Mike Brown told the Mat-Su Assembly during a meeting Tuesday.

While the reopened post would add new trooper positions if approved, filling those spots is a separate challenge, public safety officials said.

Fourteen of B Detachment’s 72 trooper and wildlife trooper positions were vacant as of Oct. 1, according to public safety data. A dozen recent academy graduates — nine troopers and three wildlife officers — are expected to fill some of those positions, McDaniel said. The department is also working to solve its staffing challenges in part by refocusing its recruitment and retention efforts in the state, he said.

“They have doubled down on in-state recruiting, which is an area that we have frankly overlooked for a few years as we focused on out-of-state applicants,” he said.

Dunleavy’s 2026 budget proposal marks the first recent effort to reopen a trooper post in the Talkeetna area with new staffing.

In June, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District considered a proposal to convert portable buildings at Su Valley Junior-Senior High School for use as temporary office space for troopers passing through the area. The school board rejected the proposal in a 4-3 vote, citing the lack of permanently assigned troopers.

Republished with permission from the Mat-Su Sentinel, an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan online news source. Contact Amy Bushatz at abushatz@matsusentinel.com.