Borough staff pitches subdivision rule changes

PALMER — Judging by the reaction from prominent local business interests, substantive changes to the borough’s subdivision rules may face an uphill struggle.

Mat-Su Borough staff, among them planning director Eileen Probasco, are seeking a resolution from the borough’s Transportation Advisory Board for a recommendation to consider revisions to borough code Title 43. The advisory board, which has no legislative power to alter or amend the borough code, recently tabled a resolution that would recommend some changes to the code sought by, among other entities, the Alaska Department of Transportation and the borough’s own Road Service Area Supervisory Board.

Title 43 lays out the borough’s platting authority. Those rules govern changes to property dimensions, traditionally done in massive books, known as plat books, containing diagrams of surveyed property that have the force of law. For example, if two neighbors have a disagreement over whether or not a newly constructed shed is on the correct property or not, plat books can usually provide the answer.

Title 43 entered borough code in 2012. It replaced an earlier section of code, Title 27, in its entirety. The two sections both accomplish the same task — laying out the rules by which changes to properties are made — but take different approaches to that task. Title 43 is generally viewed as pro-business, because it limits the actions platting authorities can take, while Title 27 was generally viewed as allowing officials more discretion to potentially limit certain kinds of development viewed as harmful to the public good.

Probasco testified the code revision was done without much visibility.

“Title 43 was drafted by a surveyor on the assembly with little input from the public, except selected developers under the guise of ‘providing new jobs through additional economic activity,’” Probasco’s written testimony reads in part. “When planning department and Public Works staff tried to participate, they were directed not to, even though they are the two departments most involved and affected by the subdivision code.”

When her predecessor attempted to offer feedback anyway, she was fired, Probasco told board members. Borough human resources director Sonya Conant said the official personnel file states that Christine Nelson, the director in question, resigned.

Nelson, now a planning officer with Fairbanks-North Star borough, said she was essentially offered a choice of either resigning or being fired, and chose to resign instead. She was never told why.

“I was not given a specific reason for why I was fired,” she said.

Subsequent changes to Title 43 were made after she left, Nelson said.

Chief among the problems with Title 43 are a host of changes recommended by Transportation, the RSA board, and platting staff. They include:

• Changing the purpose and scope of the existing Title 43 to include functions outlined out under Title 17, the borough’s zoning authority, and Title 15, the borough’s planning authority.

• Restoring rules present under Title 27 limiting direct access to certain types of roads known as “arterials.”

• Largely eliminating “flag lots,” or properties platted so that multiple lots — the “flags” — share a single long narrow driveway (in some cases designated “pioneer access roads”) — the “pole.” The lots create traffic congestion, and sometimes empty directly onto large arterial roads instead of first emptying into city streets. They also mean developers can avoid constructing multiple streets for small lots.

• Establish minimum frontage requirements for two both arterials and other roads, known as “collectors.”

• Re-establish provisions of Title 27 requiring a Traffic Impact Analysis for large developments

• Establish a minimum lot size of five acres for properties on pioneer access roads.

• Restore provisions requiring subdivisions constructed next to each other to interconnect.

• Clarify notifications and posting requirements for rights of way, easements, and land vacations.

• Require public use easements to be surveyed and marked.

• Eliminate the ability to move or alter the rights-of-way on a final plat up to 100 feet.

The board voted unanimously to table the resolution until July 22.

Critics, like transportation advisory board member Beth Fread, say Probasco’s testimony misrepresents the facts, and that the restrictions imposed by a return to Title 27 wouldn’t necessarily address any of the problems Probasco wants to address. For example, the examples of flag lots presented to the Transportation Advisory Board were primarily platted before the transition from Title 27 to Title 43, Fread said.

She also disagrees with the origin story for Title 43 as presented by Probasco. Instead, revisions were the work of a non-profit, non-government, for-profit group called the Mat-Su Business Alliance.

“Title 43 was taken up by the Mat-Su Business Alliance, who pulled in about 75 people,” she said. “They were farmers, engineers, and retail people, and homeowners, they were a huge mixture of land use people.”

The focus group took what they saw as the best aspects of Title 15 and Title 27, and combined them to create Title 43, Fread said.

People essentially opposed Title 27 because they felt it created unreasonable restrictions on landowners, Fread said.

She repeated a story about a farmer on Lazy Mountain who wanted to give his daughter some land and a home as a wedding present. The farmer was unable to do it because, he was told, Lazy Mountain was no longer considered rural. In order to subdivide his land to give it to his daughter, he would have to improve an existing road to “a full-blown subdivision street road,” Fread wrote.

Nevertheless, the resolution drew a critical response on Mat-Su Business Alliance letterhead, authored by the group’s intern, Malori Norton.

“I am testifying on behalf of hundreds of business owners and community leaders in the Mat-Su,” Norton wrote.

The Alliance’s letter contains six recommendations:

• “Meetings be held at a convenient time, centrally located. For example, a lunch or early breakfast at a local venue.”

• The board should incorporate all recommendations

• Adopt consistent practices

• Use relevant flag lot examples

• Contact the public

• The board use “Online space to see all administrative and community changes as they move through the process.”

Other borough officials struck a neutral tone this week. The central question is essentially a local variation on a national theme, said public works director Terry Dolan.

“Should it be development at any cost, or should it be ‘smart development?’” he said. “By ‘smart development,’ I don’t mean that the opposite is stupid. Observing it, it appears that that’s the central conflict: more government control or less government control.”

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.