Haines Borough planning commissioners last week approved a variance for Haines Assisted Living’s addition, but said that continuing, after-the-fact variances were rendering the group meaningless.
“Why are we here if you can build whatever you want and then say, ‘oops,’ afterwards? Even if it’s an honest mistake, it still isn’t what code is and it makes this job kind of irrelevant at some point,” said commission member Donnie Turner.
“I don’t know how many times it’s happened. Somebody said it’s 20 feet from the property line and it’s only 15 feet and we’re stuck in this position,” Turner said. “We need to fix this, so we’re not in this situation.”
Turner said he’d vote for the variance because HAL is a “good organization” and the project was “well-needed.”
Before approving the second, after-the-fact variance for the building from a prescribed 15-foot separation from an adjacent home, commissioners voted to ask manager Mark Earnest “to determine what systemic changes need to occur to prevent a recurrence of these after-the-fact issues, including penalties and fees to contractors.”
Commissioner Roger Maynard said a pattern of variances points to the need for a borough building inspector, “somebody to go out and measure the foundation and say, ‘go ahead. You’re fine.’”
Maynard referred to a three-story, downtown home unfinished more than a decade after the former City of Haines shut down the project for violating height limits. “I’d hate to think we’d treat people differently depending on who they are but, like you say, (HAL) is a good project.”
Neighboring property owners Mike Denker and Lisa Blank expressed that they were due some kind of compensation for potential impacts to their home, including a loss in property value, snow blowing from the HAL building roof, reduced views and limited access for building maintenance.
“Why do we have a planning commission?” asked Denker. “Are we supposed to sit here and take it? Take one for the team and not accept any compensation or compromise?”
Denker suggested HAL pay them a small amount for expected and unexpected costs of the proximity of the building to theirs and also make a donation to four community non-profits.
Such a solution would maintain HAL’s recent work while compensating his family and the community, Denker said. “We do see the benefit HAL is to our community and we support it,” he said.
Mike Ricker, who owns a motel near the new building, supported the request for compensation, saying the variance was the fourth for the project and that Denker and Blank would have expenses resulting from the proximity of buildings.
“We’re neighbors. We’re all neighbors. The project I support, but the methodology, I don’t,” Ricker said.
Maynard, however, said the commission couldn’t order compensation. “We can’t take money for a party and re-assign it to someone else. That’s not within our authority.”
Commission member Robert Venables said the variance was “imminently unfair” to Denker and Blank and that a “systemic pattern of after-the-fact variance requests” reflected “something wrong with our system.”
Contractors need to share responsibility for mistakes, he said. They need more “skin in the game” to make sure such mistakes don’t happen, he said. “To drag the neighbors and the commission through this again is not good governance.”
Venables said Denker could seek civil remedies for the encroachment, and commissioner Maynard said the borough also could be liable. Venables pointed out that the borough partnered on the HAL project and a school playground roof project where another after-the-fact variance is sought.
Commission chair Lee Heinmiller said what he disliked most was being asked to grant variances after the fact, and there have been multiple after-the-fact variances in the same year. “No matter how you state it, this is the sixth time since I’ve been on the planning commission that I’ve been in a position where the public is lying to us as a commission, and it has to stop,” Heinmiller said.
Vice-president Jim Studley spoke for HAL. He told the commission that plans for the project weren’t finalized until July 2010 and that HAL wasn’t aware of the need for a second variance until Nov. 5. (Architectural plans for the building were dated June 10, 2010.)
In March 2009, when the first setback variance was sought, HAL only had a survey showing the approximate footprint of a footer, Studley told the commission “That’s what was used as documentation to get the (first) variance. If for one second, you ever believe that we wouldn’t have asked for (everything) we needed at the time, we would have. There’s no reason for us to ask for (two feet) when we needed seven or eight. It would be crazy for us to be here now with a million dollars on the line and try to revisit this whole thing. No one conspired to see this happen.”
Studley said he supported raising the cost of building permits from $50 to $300 or $500 to pay for on-site checks of building standards. Such checks would protect scrupulous builders from ones that flout the rules, he said.
Studley told Denker he would relay Denker’s request for compensation to the HAL board of directors.
Commission members Rob Goldberg, Andy Hedden and Pete Lapham were absent from the meeting.