Three months after the Haines Borough Planning Commission recommended Mayor Jan Hill appoint a committee to dig into the issue of commercial trailers, the group has yet to be formed.
At its December meeting, commission chair Rob Goldberg raised the issue because of the recent proliferation of trailers and the lack of guidance on how to properly permit or otherwise address them in local law. “We don’t have anything in code addressing them right now,” he said.
Three weeks ago, Goldberg brought up the December recommendation and asked Hill why a committee hadn’t yet been set. Hill said she hadn’t received Goldberg’s previous email about the recommendation, but would work with him on putting the group together.
Two weeks ago, Hill said in an interview she hadn’t finalized the committee but planned to name the members early last week. That hasn’t happened, and the matter didn’t come up at this week’s assembly meeting.
Hill didn’t respond to an email this week asking for an update.
Commissioners Heather Lende and Lee Heinmiller volunteered to be on the committee.
The borough has struggled to deal with commercial trailers, which were once prohibited but more recently have been allowed with issuance of temporary use permits. Some of the confusion comes from interpretation of code and questions of whether a “temporary use” should be indefinitely extended.