Assembly revives another old issue

We don’t generally like to tip our hand and talk about stories in the works, but in this case, we’ll make an exception. Sometime in the next few editions we’ll publish a story about Mat-Su Borough regulations regarding racetracks.

Astute observers of the borough’s process will notice that the racetrack regulations aren’t due to go before the planning commission until next month. That body is usually one of the first steps in the process. The commission comments on potential changes to the rules, then sends those comments and its recommendations on to the borough assembly for debate and a vote.

Rarely is an issue big enough to warrant coverage at the planning commission, and more rare is an issue we jump in to cover before it even gets there. So why this regulation?

Maybe you were paying attention to local politics the last time racetrack regulations came up. If you were, you probably recall some extensive discussions and lengthy meetings. Racetracks for us occupy a space that includes things like the coal-fired power plant, the Bogard Road Extension and the borough’s noise ordinance. These are issues that took a lot of our time to follow and ones that we don’t miss writing about after they were settled.

But as is the case frequently with this assembly, just because a previous assembly put an issue to bed doesn’t mean that’s the end of the story. This assembly also spent time and resources re-writing subdivision rules and tossing out regulations for tall towers, only to reinstate them later.

We believe a borough task force to discuss energy issues is an attempt to re-write a power plant ordinance that took up a good deal of the public’s time and resources in 2007.

We are conflicted when it comes to reviving old debates. The thought of revisiting power plants or racetracks makes us weary and apprehensive. We believe the assembly has good intentions in whittling away at some of these rules.

There is, we believe, a middle ground between the desire to protect property values and neighborhoods with regulations and the desire to not restrict activities so severely as to choke off economic development or entertainment options.

It’s not a stretch to say that when one assembly whittles away at a past assembly’s work that what we should arrive at is just that middle ground. But there is a danger as well, that the assembly could go too far and leave residents unprotected.

Our hope is that as this assembly continues to rehash the work of its predecessors, those opposing voices — folks who pushed for and got the regulations passed in the first place — aren’t as exasperated by the process and will help raise their voices again to see that any new regulations are shaped into something workable, rather than whittled away to nothing at all.