Haines Borough Assembly members and Mayor Jan Hill this week turned back efforts to extend public comment time on the Small Boat Harbor expansion project.
Concerns about the project have grown in recent weeks and include cost, parking, the future of Lookout Park and adherence to the public process.
Project details became critical when Haines Borough officials said last week that comments on the expansion plan released March 21– now 65 percent complete – were due by March 25 to meet the timeline of project engineers.
The borough holds $19.5 million in state funds for expansion that must be spent on completed construction by July 2017. The borough’s engineer this week told the assembly the plan would be difficult to change at the next review in May, when it will be 95 percent complete.
“Haines has the most beautiful waterfront in Southeast. It would be a shame if we fill it up, parking lot by parking lot,” resident Gina St. Clair told members of the Ports and Harbors committee Monday. She pointed to the cruise ship dock apron and Picture Point as other waterfront parking lots completed or in progress.
St. Clair said she has heard about the harbor expansion for years but always assumed it was “something out in the water.” A diagram of the project recently published in the Chilkat Valley News surprised her, she said. “I was shocked that we were going to build another parking lot on the beach.”
Diane LaCourse said the 65 percent plan recently released doesn’t incorporate comments made on a 35-percent plan released in early February, contains no provisions for making the area attractive and doesn’t incorporate a “seawalk” envisioned by planners to extend between Picture Point and Port Chilkoot Dock.
“This plan is totally incomplete. It overlooks visuals and other uses of the waterfront… The waterfront is not just for people who have boats moored there,” LaCourse said.
Residents Evelyna Vignola and Debra Schnabel spoke in defense of Lookout Park, which in current plans would become an island amid a planned, three-acre parking lot. Borough officials have roughly estimated the cost of moving the park at $500,000, but have no hard numbers or plans for the park.
At Tuesday’s borough assembly meeting, Mayor Jan Hill said she was directing discussion of Lookout Park to the borough’s planning commission and to its parks and recreation advisory committee.
HILL: ‘FEEDBACK FROM
ALL DIRECTIONS’
“We’re getting a lot of feedback from people, and it’s coming from every direction,” Hill said. “But I’d like to say the harbor project is moving forward. It’s moving forward through the process it was started in.”
The issue this week appeared like it might mushroom into a larger battle, as fishermen defended the expansion and planning commissioners and others questioned whether borough code was being followed and whether the public comment process was being rushed.
Commercial gillnetter Bill Thomas, a former Alaska legislator and project supporter, told a meeting of fishermen Thursday that a fishermen’s memorial at the site could be moved to Picture Point. Gillnetter Marty Smith said Monday he has trouble finding a place to park at the harbor in the summer months. “The bigger the parking lot, the better, as far as I’m concerned.”
In a March 21 email to manager David Sosa about the harbor planning process, planning commission chair Rob Goldberg cited a section of borough code that says, “The commission shall review and report to the borough assembly regarding the location, design, construction, demolition or disposition of any public building, facility, collector or arterial street, park, green belt, playground or other public facility.”
Goldberg wrote: “When we did the improvements at the Port Chilkoot Dock there was a public comment period with paper copies available at the library. There were planning commission meetings every step along the way that allowed for public input. The harbor expansion should follow this planning path, too. If necessary, we can schedule a special meeting of the planning commission or a joint PC/Assembly meeting that would allow everyone to comment on the plans.”
WHY AREN’T PLANNERS
REVIEWING THE PLAN?
Goldberg this week said he never heard back from Sosa and didn’t know why a commission meeting wasn’t scheduled. “It seemed odd to me that it didn’t come to us this time, and that the comment period is very short.”
The commission did comment on the 35 percent plan, but Goldberg said this week that meeting only came about because Ports and Harbors committee chair Norman Hughes mentioned that the plan was ready during a conversation in a parking lot.
Commission member Heather Lende said she skipped the Ports and Harbors meeting this week, assuming a commission meeting would be held. “The information that I got was that we had to have a public process. It’s in the (borough) code,” Lende said.
Lende has concerns about the planned, three-acre parking lot at the site and said parking perhaps should be uphill of Front Street.
She also said the borough should consider a waterfront plan by the City of Haines in 2001. “We need to research and look at the plan creatively. I’d welcome creative ideas. We owe it to ourselves to not do what we did at the cruise ship parking lot,” Lende said.
At Tuesday’s assembly meeting, member George Campbell made a motion to extend borough comment on the plan for another two weeks, saying he feared the project’s costs outweighed its benefits. Members Diana Lapham, Dave Berry, Joanne Waterman, Mike Case and Ron Jackson said they appreciated Campbell’s concerns, but they didn’t want to delay the project. Campbell cast the lone dissenting vote.
“I don’t think at this point, we can hold up this thing. I think we have to go forward,” Jackson said.
After Monday’s Ports and Harbors committee, chairman Norman Hughes said borough code appears to require a planning commission review of the latest plan. He made a motion at the meeting to seek commission review, but it failed 4-1 with him casting the dissenting vote.
Hughes said the idea of “moving” the park was a misconception, as only the gazebo structure, railings and nearby fisherman’s memorial could be moved. “If the public wants a new park, they need to create one.”
Hughes said he thought the project could move ahead without resolving the question of the fate of the park, noting that the expansion project has included no money for changing or moving the park.
At a Chamber of Commerce meeting Friday, borough manager Sosa said options for Lookout Park include moving it to the southwest edge of the parking lot, or moving it east to overlook the water. That option, however, would involve work in wetlands, which would require additional permitting and cause delay.
Hughes voiced opposition to the idea of reducing the planned, three-acre parking lot planned for the site. “We can’t invest all this money into harbor expansion and only increase parking by an acre. There’s not enough parking now.”
Most of Monday’s two-hour meeting on the project was spent on figuring out where $1.6 million could be trimmed from the project.
WHERE TO CUT
$1.6 MILLION
Dick Somerville, vice-president of PND Engineers, advised the committee to find elements of the $21.1 million project that could be cut or designated as “additive alternates” to meet the project’s $19.5 million budget. Somerville said competing contractors might bid to do all the work for the budgeted amount, but the borough couldn’t count on that.
Following his advice, committee members agreed to two options: to forego dredging in the harbor north of the existing fuel float and reduce the size of a new wave barrier breakwater. Shortening the 700-foot wave barrier by 100 feet would save $1.1 million, and might be the only necessary change, Somerville said.
However, the borough would still need to build the structure to 700 feet in length to protect a planned new boat launch inside the harbor, Somerville said. Federal sportfishing funds that will help pay for the boat lunch can’t be used if the facility isn’t protected and all 700 feet are needed, he said.
PND’s Somerville said the increased cost of the project was due to additional dredging and realigning the sewer plant outfall. Redirecting the outfall to a spot outside the new harbor boundaries will cost $300,000, but that’s less than if the pipe stayed at its current location, he said.
Committee chair Hughes expressed hope that borough funds for the increased cost of the project might be forthcoming. “I’d like to think the borough assembly would invest in this project rather than whittling down something we’ve been working on the past two to three years.”
The $21.1 million project cost would pay for a wave barrier, dredging, parking lot and sewer outfall relocation. Planned additional work estimated at $10 million and yet unfunded would include harbor floats and pilings to accommodate 40-50 more vessels, a “drive-down float” (allowing vehicles to pull up beside vessels) and the new boat launch.
Bill Thomas said at last week’s fishermen meeting that gillnetters should seek funding for floats and other items from the borough’s economic development account. He suggested as much as $100,000 per year could come from the account.
A concern expressed at Monday’s meeting is the $21.1 million project cost doesn’t include money for purchasing protective zincs for the metal wave barrier. Somerville told the committee that zincs lasting 20 years would cost between $300,000 and $400,000, but weren’t necessary for the first seven years of the structure’s estimated 50-year life.
The zincs reduce corrosion after metal structures in salt water begin to lose their galvanized coating.
“Do you trust yourselves to do it later?” Somerville asked. Committee member Don Turner Jr. said he didn’t.