The Haines Borough Assembly voted 4-2 not to create a public ad-hoc working group that would have been tasked with advising the assembly on the Lutak Dock renovation project.
Assembly member Debra Schnabel said she thought the Lutak Dock Project Group Advisory Committee, as it would have been called, would be redundant because plans for the dock project already will go through the public process via the port and harbor advisory committee and planning commission.
Assembly members Tyler Huling and Paul Rogers voted in favor of creating the group.
Mayor Douglas Olerud weeks ago proposed creating the Lutak Dock Project Group to replace the Lutak Dock Design Working Group, an informal group created in December to assist staff on the phase 3 concept of the dock project.
The Mayor also suggested expanding the scope and membership of the working group to include at-large seats and to give the public an open forum to discuss questions about the dock project, which generated public outcry when the port and harbor advisory committee met in March with Yukon industry representatives about the potential to ship ore from a renovated dock.
On May 13, the borough put out a request for proposals from an “owner’s advisor” to coordinate and oversee the project, which will be a progressive design-build, meaning a single contractor will work on both design and construction.
The owner’s advisor “will be the face of the team (along with Borough officials) in public meetings on the project,” borough manager Annette Kreitzer told the CVN in an email. “They are our technical expertise and will assist us to control costs. The owner’s advisor will be the liaison between the public and the design/build contractor.”
Kreitzer reminded assembly members Tuesday that project plans will go to the planning commission at three stages (35%, 65% and 95%) and that the port and harbor committee also will be able to give input.
She noted that the request for proposals asks potential owner’s advisors to “describe your approach regarding stakeholder engagement for this project, including but not limited to Delta Western, the Haines Borough Planning Commission, applicable Advisory Boards, the Borough Assembly, and the public.”
In other news, the assembly delayed a vote on rezoning six lots at the northern end of the Mud Bay area, where a popular retreat and wedding venue is located. The assembly also stayed enforcement until Sept. 30 of a conditional use permit for the business — Chilkat Inlet Retreat — that expired in 2019 but only recently enforced.
The rezoning, which was recommended by the planning commission, would detach six adjacent lots, including the Chilkat Inlet Retreat, from the Mud Bay Rural Residential Zone and append them to the General Use Planning/Zoning District.
The idea to rezone came from planner Dave Long and a petition by the affected property owners, who said the general use zone would better suit their needs.
Mud Bay code requires a business owner to live on the same property as his or her business. The owners of the Chilkat Inlet Retreat live on a lot adjacent to their retreat center. One of their lots is already in the general use zone.
The borough granted the retreat center a conditional use permit for commercial enterprise in 2018 on the condition that the owners would consolidate three lots within a year to be in accordance with code, but they never did, citing the expense of hiring a surveyor.
Planning commissioner Rob Goldberg, who was absent from the commission’s vote on the issue, spoke at Tuesday’s assembly meeting against the idea.
“Rezoning these two properties is a mistake of enormous proportions,” he said, predicting that other property owners who don’t like their zones would come forward with petitions to be rezoned. “If you give special consideration to these two property owners for their own convenience, you will have to give it — or we will have to give it at the planning commission — to others.”
Goldberg suggested instead changing Mud Bay code to allow business owners to live on lots adjacent to their businesses. Other planners opposed that idea, arguing that a code change would take too long and might not succeed due to resistance from neighbors.
Assembly member Caitie Kirby, liaison to the planning commission, noted that planning commissioners and community members spoke overwhelmingly in favor of the rezoning proposal. She said the move wouldn’t result in “spot zoning,” as Goldberg worried, because the properties that would be rezoned are at the edge of the Mud Bay and general use zones and both zones would remain contiguous.
Still, the general use area, according to borough code, is for “the borough regions with no previous land use regulation and the need to provide a reasonable transition toward land use regulation.”
It is not clear whether property in the borough has ever been rezoned back into general use.
The assembly will take up the issue again on June 14.
In other news, the assembly voted to grant a number of property tax exemptions for nonprofits, including the Chilkat Bald Eagle Foundation, Southeast Alaska State Fair, Chilkat Valley Historical Society, Takshanuk Watershed Council and the Uglys.
The assembly denied an exemption for SEARHC’s apartments, following staff’s rationale that the organization doesn’t qualify because it doesn’t enforce housing qualifications based on income or disabilities for veterans.
The assembly also granted an exemption for the Haines Senior Village on only three of the complex’s 14 units — amounting to 22% of the total property tax. Staff recommended exempting the three units for “very low-income” tenants but not the other units, which don’t have household income requirements.
Senior Village president Cheryl McRoberts asked for an extension from the assembly and said the Village has gotten exemptions for the last 20 years.
“To have to raise the rents $76.29 for each apartment may be devastating for folks,” she wrote in an email to borough officials. “We have always kept the rents low knowing at their age they are on a limited budget and we know they are struggling with the food prices and worry about them all the time.”
In separate news, borough manager Annette Kreitzer reminded the community that camping will be allowed for Beer Fest this weekend at Tlingit Park and the public beach area near the cruise dock.
She also said staff has received complaints about people parking and camping in pull-outs along Mud Bay and Lutak roads but that there’s no mechanism in borough or state code to address it.