The borough’s Government Affairs and Services Committee was divided, but ultimately advanced an ordinance proposed by the planning commission that would require people in the townsite, Mud Bay, and Lutak areas to obtain site development permits for development activity that exceeds 100 cubic yards or 5,000 board feet. The $25 permit is intended to inform people about how their development activities affect their surroundings, said borough planner Holly Smith.
“The intent is to educate people when they’re developing their property, to take into consideration how their drainage or their sloping impacts other properties,” said Smith.
Director of Public Facilities Brad Ryan agreed that the permits would serve to educate the public.
“As the person that quite often goes out to the site, and says oh, by the way, that piling you put in there isn’t going to fly, or any other number of things that come up, it would be good to have some sort of site development (permit requirement),” said Ryan. He said that this would reduce the kind of enforcement that often has people scrapping their projects part-way through.
“We’re getting better about it, but usually we are behind the ball, and a lot of times it’s because we haven’t had that conversation right off the bat,” said Ryan.
“We haven’t run into another community that doesn’t require permits for site developments,” said Smith.
Site development permits are required at least in Juneau, Anchorage, Ketchikan, Sitka, Petersburg, and Wrangell.
The permit proposal lost traction in the GAS Committee, when it became associated with the resource extraction ordinance. Even though Smith says passing this ordinance would strengthen resource extraction laws, at the meeting on Tuesday, she disassociated site development permits from resource extraction.
“(The planning commission) realized that we weren’t doing something that we needed to do from this discussion. To promote responsible development for properties. It has nothing to do really with resource extraction,”
Last month, planning commission chair Don Turner III resigned after assembly and public concern caused the ordinance to be rewritten. Assembly member Heather Lende apologized for this miscommunication, and on Tuesday, she supported the planning commission’s site development permit proposal.
“What you have before you is from the planning commission,” said Smith.
“But this question about Lutak, Mud Bay…” asked Lende.
“That was vetted at the planning commission, and we decided that the assembly needs to decide,” said Smith.
Assembly members Brenda Josephson and Stephanie Scott were against permits in the general use area, and assembly member Tom Morphet was against them in the Mud Bay and Lutak areas as well.
“The highway neighborhood is different from the townsite neighborhood, and that’s why we have zones,” said Morphet.
“I would be okay with including Lutak and Mud Bay, because those are residential areas. The townsite is a residential area. But the general use area is a general use area, and I think if you want to vet it, run it out to the townsite and Mud Bay and Lutak, and if it works, great. Then you can run it out general use. If not, you’re gonna have a whole lot of angry people from the general use area.”
“I agree with Brenda, you probably don’t need to add general use right now, but definitely add Lutak and Mud Bay,” said Scott.
Assembly members Sean Maidy and Lende were in favor of site development permits, and Maidy opposed any kind of discrimination between areas.
“I am of the mind that we are one borough, so we should be together on decisions like this,” said Maidy. “If they do not want to be included, that would be a great discussion for the public hearing process, but as far as us and the planning commission dealing with this, I don’t think there’s a whole lot more we can do with this, besides take it to public hearings,” he said.
The GAS Committee ultimately voted to advance the proposal with one amendment: site development permits will be required for the townsite, Mud Bay, and Lutak areas, but not in the general use area. They are still considering changing the ordinance from “effective upon adoption” to include a start date.