Borough Assembly tables Hatcher Pass plan again

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough Assembly was armed this past week with a quarter-inch-thick ordinance for a Hatcher Pass special land use district, intending to hash out a half-inch-thick pile of possible amendments.

But, just as the assembly was about to begin, the members decided to wait.

A special land use district is the first step in creating a long-discussed ski area for the Hatcher Pass and would lay out the rules for what kind of activity can happen in the area. But the Borough is not ready for that first step, assembly members said.

“This is a mess,” said Assemblywoman Michelle Church, who initially moved to table the ordinance indefinitely — effectively killing the special use district in its present form.

“We’re putting Band-Aids all over this thing,” Assemblyman Tom Kluberton added.

Cindy Bettine expressed reservations with killing the ordinance, saying that bringing up a new ordinance would be time consuming and difficult.

“To just scrap it totally I’m afraid it brings back the whole problem of we can’t have another SPUD [special land use district] without another SPUD committee,” Bettine said.

Eventually, Assemblyman Rob Wells, whose district encompasses the pass, moved to postpone the ordinance until the assembly’s second meeting in June.

The problem, most on the assembly agreed, was that the proposed ordinance was written when a developer had proposed a plan to get a ski area up and running. It was tailored to that proposal.

Wells said he’d like to wait for more information, specifically a report relating to tourism in the area and information likely to come from Ron Swanson, a former community development director who has been hired as a consultant for the project.

For his part, Borough Manager John Duffy supported holding off on the ordinance.

“Your amendments are so thick, the changes are so radical [that] at the end of the day you’re going to have a brand new ordinance anyway,” Duffy said.

The assembly directed Duffy to come back with a draft of a new ordinance, one based on the new Hatcher Pass Management Plan.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.