ADUs return

The assembly heard a first salvo of public pushback to a proposal that would allow additional small housing units in residential neighborhoods. 

Accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, have been described as a starting point for adding housing stock to the borough.

Proponents over the past year have pitched it as a marginal change. 

For one, homeowners in residential neighborhoods are already allowed to build accessory apartments on their properties. Functionally, the ADU ordinance — though introducing a different name for the small housing units — would loosen regulations on the already-allowed accessory apartments: the maximum-allowed square footage would be increased by 400 square feet in most instances, and the apartment would not be required to be attached to the main structure of the house. 

Opponents say those changes would have an outsized effect on property values and the character of neighborhoods.

Last year, when a previous iteration of the ordinance was heard, a wave of opposition from Mud Bay residents prompted the planning commission to exempt Mud Bay and Lutak from the ADU allowance. When the planning commission passed the legislation to the assembly, the assembly declined to take a vote, instead postponing consideration indefinitely. 

The new version of the ordinance takes away that exemption, making a blanket allowance for all neighborhoods, Mud Bay and Lutak included. 

Mud Bay public commenters Tuesday night argued that was a violation of a decades-old agreement made during borough consolidation to preserve Mud Bay’s governing principles. 

Those principles, they say, include low-density rural living that would be threatened by the additional units. 

“There was an agreement during consolidation that Mud Bay code would be honored into the future, and the initial intent maintained,” said Mud Bay resident George Figdor. “I would urge you to honor that commitment, to really have us at the table if anything was to be changed about our ordinance.” 

There will be a second public hearing on the measure at the April 7 assembly meeting. 

Trouble in the garden

Discussion of a national bill Tuesday stirred up familiar local strife surrounding mining advocacy in the Chilkat Valley.

The conversation arose from a borough Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee request which asked the assembly to sign a letter of support for a national schoolyard green-space proposal. 

The proposal, the Revitalizing American Schoolyards Act, is a nation-wide policy proposal to reduce asphalt and increase green space  in schoolyards. 

The seemingly-innocuous issue, heard near midnight at the end of the marathon meeting, took a turn upon comment from assembly member Cheryl Stickler. 

Stickler said she had initially been receptive to the idea, until she researched the origins of the bill.  She said the bill was associated with the Earth Island Institute, an environmental advocacy non-profit. Upon researching Earth Island Institute, she said she found that “one of their offshoots is the Alaska Clean Water Advocacy Group, headquartered in Haines.”

Because of that local non-profit’s opposition to mining in the Chilkat Valley, Stickler said she could not support the broader bill. 

“I think you can judge an organization by who supports it,” she said. “I firmly believe that.” 

Alaska Clean Water Advocacy founder and director Gershon Cohen Wednesday disputed Stickler’s characterization of the connection between his organization, Earth Island Institute, and the policy proposal. 

Cohen said Earth Island Institute is a “fiscal sponsor” for his organization, which he said allows it to operate as a 501(c)(3). 

“(Earth Island Institute) has somewhere in the ballpark of 80 different programs,” Cohen said. “I don’t have any connection to any of the other programs. I don’t tell Earth Island what to do and they don’t tell me what to do.” Cohen said he had not heard of the schoolyard initiative. 

Some at the meeting pushed back on Stickler’s statement. 

“It’s a logical fallacy that because this entity that opposes a mine supports gardens in our schools, we can’t support gardens in our school,” Forster said. 

Forster said his reaction was linked to his recent “Safety Belt” proposal. “A lot of people have come up to me and said they support a lot of things in the Safety Belt but they can’t get behind it because Gabe (Thomas) is in on it. If people are judging policies based on personalities, we’re never going to get anywhere.” 

Ultimately, Smith and Thomas sided with Stickler, and the motion to sign a letter of support failed. 

Severance tax arguments voiced

The assembly in recent weeks has seen a spate of proposals aimed at regulating heavy industry, like large-scale mining or logging, should it come to the Chilkat Valley. 

One of those is a long-simmering proposal for a severance tax, which proponents say would ensure the borough sees a benefit in one specific case: resources taken from within borough boundaries, but exported and sold outside. 

The tax would specifically apply to ore, timber, and sand and gravel export. 

Gravel and sand would be taxed upon export from the borough at $0.20 per ton, timber at $5 per thousand board feet, and metal ore at 4% of gross product value. 

Revenue from the tax would go into the borough’s permanent fund, a large savings account that generates spin-off revenue from interest each year. 

There was some criticism from public commenters and from Stickler that the tax would unfairly burden companies. “We collect property tax from these companies, we collect sales tax from these companies, there’s a wharfage fee to get it shipped out of the borough,” Stickler said. “How many times are we going to tax the same thing?”

As Forster pointed out, severance tax and sales tax wouldn’t tax the same products twice: sales tax is charged on products sold in the borough, and the severance tax would essentially be a way to charge sales tax on products sold outside the borough. To Stickler’s point, individual companies would see an additional tax, even if not on already-directly taxed products. 

Forster and assembly member Mark Smith said they had not heard strong opposition on the measure from exporters. 

“The largest operator in town specifically told me they’re not necessarily opposed to this — they don’t pay sales tax on this stuff,” Forster said. 

Smith, while agreeing with Forster on that point, voiced a separate set of concerns. Smith and assembly member Gabe Thomas have advocated for a “payment-in-lieu-of-tax,” or PILT, as an alternative to a severance tax. PILTs would pursue the same goal — extracting revenue for the borough from large-scale industry — but would do so through individually negotiated payments from companies rather than by taking a percentage of sales. Smith argues a PILT would be easier to administer and result in more revenue. 

The proposal will go on to a second public hearing at the next assembly meeting, and will continue advancing alongside the separate, but somewhat-overlapping “Safety Belt” proposal.