A discussion of Haines Borough planning commissioners last week reflected apparent support for the municipality’s harbor expansion plan, but members Lee Heinmiller and Heather Lende cited multiple concerns.
Commissioners also roundly criticized the public process surrounding the project, which only obliquely involved planners during the first third of the project’s design process and skipped them entirely last month, when a two-thirds design plan was submitted to the borough.
The Haines Borough Assembly has signed off on the 65 percent design, a plan for spending $20 million on a metal wave barrier, partial dredging and a roughed-in parking lot.
To complete the project, the borough must find an additional $10 million to complete dredging, add floats and slips, install a “drive-down float” sought by commercial fishermen, and finish uplands work.
Borough manager David Sosa this week stopped short of saying the assembly has “approved” the 65 percent design.
“(Engineers are) proceeding with the 95 percent design while, of course, giving consideration to any timely comments received on the 65 percent. The assembly did not take any other action concerning the 65 percent design. Nor was it required, in my opinion,” Sosa said this week.
Comments by commissioners last week came as a “discussion item” on the group’s agenda, under new business.
Commissioner Lende’s concerns included that public comments on the project were taken only by the Ports and Harbors Advisory Committee and that planning commissioners’ comments were coming after assembly review of plans. “We’re almost being blackmailed by not being able to have (our comments) taken seriously,” she said.
Lende said the harbor project didn’t receive the same level of commission review as a construction permit.
“We’re pretty detailed about how a project gets going in terms of the permitting phase. For the first issue – when dirt gets moved – there’s a permit required. There’s a whole lot of questions that need to be answered at that time. We have two pages of code on it. It seems like that wasn’t followed on this project,” Lende said.
Going ahead with only a partially funded project is equivalent to building a house without a roof and hoping money would come from a rich aunt, she said. The borough should instead look at harbor improvements that could be completed with the $20 million in hand, she said.
She also raised concerns about the planned metal wave barrier that will need replacing in 50 years. “If we push off questions of financing until 95 percent (design), we could have an insurrection. If somebody puts in a citizens’ lawsuit, it’s over. It stops,” Lende said.
Commissioner Robert Venables said the project was still worthwhile if it took 10 years to finance floats to the expanded, protected basin. He downplayed questions about the cost of slips and parking improvements, saying those items also would generate revenue through the harbor enterprise fund.
“Those are details that can be worked out. It’s a workable model. Our biggest issues are on the aesthetics of the surrounding area,” Venables said. The metal breakwater is needed to protect recently installed wooden floats in the harbor, which already are seeing damage from wave action.
“This is our only shot at the $20 million (appropriated by the state of Alaska for the project),” Venables said. “We have to use it wisely.”
Commissioner Donnie Turner said he supported the project, but he also questioned why the group was consulted only at the 35-percent stage, and then only through an informal arrangement.
“The fishing fleet hasn’t been supported as much as it should be over the years. Other towns take half of their raw fish tax and dedicate it to harbors. The borough has been taking raw fish tax and throwing it in the general fund for 30 years. I think the fishermen deserve this,” Turner said.
Turner also said a planned three-acre parking lot at the expanded harbor would be too small and said that friends of his whose names are on the fisherman’s memorial at the site “would be proud to be in the parking lot” of an expanded harbor. “Most of the fishermen I know would be happy for that.”
Citing the harbor ice house project, commissioner Lee Heinmiller said the harbor was only the most recent of several large projects that have gone ahead without commission review. “We’ve tried many different ways to change how (commission review of projects) functions. Even since consolidation, with a great comp plan, we’re still wandering in the wilderness with blinders on.”
Heinmiller also expressed concerns about project costs, questioning the durability of metal breakwaters and the borough’s estimated cost of using material dredged from the ocean floor to build a parking area.
Commission chair Rob Goldberg said he would see if the commission could hold an official, public hearing on the project’s 95-percent design documents, which the borough expects to receive from engineers in May.
That the project isn’t fully funded shouldn’t keep it from going ahead, Goldberg said. “I think we have to start. A lot of projects around here didn’t start with all the (construction) money in hand… There are things that get started and they manage to get finished.”
Goldberg told commissioners a new protocal was in the works to make sure they see designs for large projects at three stages during their evolution. A current problem is that code doesn’t say when commission review of a project will occur, he said.
The borough assembly in March 2014 voted 4-2 to pay $1.7 million to PND Engineers to draw up a design for harbor improvements under the $30 million configuration.