The Haines Assembly is set to meet on Tuesday. The Chilkat Valley News’ Will Steinfeld joined KHNS’ Melinda Munson, to discuss what’s on the agenda.

Melinda Munson: “It is a dense agenda for the March 10 meeting. Let’s start by talking about the quote, “safety belt” ordinance.

Will Steinfeld: It’s something that was put together by assembly members Kevin Forster and Gabe Thomas, and for me, at least, it’s a little out of the blue. I hadn’t heard about this, but it’s seems related to the ore containerization ordinance that the two assembly members introduced last Assembly meeting. 

What this is, is it looks to be a really comprehensive, wide-ranging set of different proposals all packaged together towards one goal. The two assembly members say they’re trying to find a way to balance two competing issues in the borough. One is securing an economic future for the economy, and the other is also protecting the land, putting into place environmental protections for the community to be able to get value out of whatever economic activity is going on. And they say they want to do it in a way that is both effective and avoids litigation from firms, companies, anyone coming into the borough. 

It’s targeting large scale, what they call mega-industries. So it wouldn’t apply new regulations or payments or anything like that to small scale, local industries that are already here.

It looks to my first read to have two broad categories. One is codifying environmental protections and borough codes, so putting into place in writing things like spawning stream setbacks, or containerization that they brought up last meeting. 

And then the other half of this that I saw was ways to retain value for the borough. So that’s when companies are coming in for, let’s say, timber harvest or mining, that the borough finances see some measurable bump from that. 

So what we’re looking at is suggestions of a severance tax, which would tax goods that have been extracted in the borough, but are being exported and sold elsewhere. 

And so, there’s a lot going on here.

And so, while the Assembly is a nonpartisan body, where do Forster and Thomas generally sit politically?

They included this as part of their pitch for this legislation. They say, in their words, that often they’re on different sides of the so-called aisle. They don’t always agree on everything. And what they’re saying is the fact that they can come together and find common ground on this is a sign that it’s necessary and balanced. And so they’re hoping that’s the message that citizens residents take away from this.

Up again is cell tower regulations. This is the final vote. Tell us about that.

This could be the end of the road for now, at least for this legislation, that has been running back and forth and through and through the Assembly for months and months now. The main part of this would be a 1,500 foot setback for any proposed cell tower, setback from schools, daycares, youth centers. If it’s voted into place, which it seems like it has a lot of support from the Assembly, that’ll kind of close this chapter of cell tower regulations. 

But at the same time, it’s probably not gone for good. The Assembly said last meeting that they hope to send this to committee even after it passes, to keep trying to refine it, make edits and then maybe bring forth an amendment in the future.

Where did the borough land for conditional use permits on cell tower regulation?

If this passes, as it’s written right now, the commercial cell towers – the ones you’re thinking of, when you think of cell towers – would have to go through conditional use permitting process to to get built.

There’s an accessory dwelling unit ordinance on the agenda. We’ve seen this before. It’s come back.

This is something that the Assembly talked a lot about last year, accessory dwelling units. It’s pitched as a way to increase housing supply in the borough in a way that’s pretty low impact. That’s what the proponents of this would say. It was eventually just tabled by the Assembly last year. They said we’re going to put it aside, not vote on it. No one’s ready for that. No one wants to vote on it. Yet, it’s now come back after a few months with some changes, and so we’ll see if the Assembly chooses to take it up. And if so, that that debate will be revived again.

Let’s talk about what happened at planning and zoning with [George and Lynette] Campbell’s conditional use permit for their heliport.

If this sounds familiar to you, that’s because it probably is. This is an issue about a proposed heliport at 26 Mile that has been in and out of litigation for three years. The borough has faced four different lawsuits over this heliport. And most recently, this was brought back to the Planning Commission. Last month, the Planning Commission denied the conditional use permit for the Campbell’s heliport, and it’s back to the Assembly now as an appeal of that decision. 

And something there’s been a lot of chatter about is the public hearing on taxability of mobile homes.

Based on public comment in recent weeks, I think this is something that at least some people will want to weigh in on. There’s a proposal to change how mobile homes are taxed.

In the past, mobile homes that were on the land connected to utilities, if they were in a designated trailer park, they  weren’t taxed as as property. And now, with this change, all mobile homes, whether they’re in a trailer park or not, would be taxable as an improvement on the parcel.”