Borough works from industry suggestions

PALMER — In its ongoing quest to rewrite rules for subdivisions, the Mat-Su Borough Assembly has taken the step of starting its work off a draft of subdivision rules prepared by the Mat-Su Business Alliance.

“We serve as the information and communication resource for the Mat-Su business community to help articulate their needs and concerns on key public policy issues,” according to MSBA’s website.

The debate has been between two competing sets of rules, Title 16 and Title 27. Title 27 was adopted a few years ago, and replaced Title 16, which had been law for decades.

Developers and people seeking to subdivide land have since complained frequently that the rules Title 27 imposes have hurt their businesses. Families who want to break up land to deed it to their children have also complained, saying that the newer codes require them to do things like build roads and put in access, things that take a big chunk out of the value of that inheritance, if not eliminating it altogether.

“He wants to inherit it to his children and he can’t do that because he is held to that standard of bringing up that road,” John Murphy said in relating his father’s story to the assembly at a meeting Sept. 29. “The cost of bringing up that road far outweighs the value of the property.”

On the other side, people worry that removing the requirements of 27 will allow people who subdivide land to put in poor-quality roads the borough will then be on the hook to upgrade. It’s happened before, people have testified to the borough assembly.

“We cannot let these road systems go back to what they were 20 or 30 years ago,” Jim Norcross, who sits on the board of supervisors for the Greater Willow Road Service Area, testified at that same meeting. He said his road service area has had to do $3 million in improvements on substandard roads the borough took over in the 1970s. “The developer left, pocketed the money.”

According to the MSBA, the document it submitted to the borough incorporates elements of Title 16 and Title 27.

The assembly didn’t just take the MSBA ordinance and enact it as law. Instead, on a suggestion from assemblyman Ron Arvin, the body will use the MSBA suggestions as a starting point for the upcoming process to revamp that section of code.

“October the 18th we’re going to take this up again and be working on a single document and start wading through the process,” borough mayor Larry DeVilbiss said in his weekly Mayor’s Minute podcast.

Assemblywoman Cindy Bettine said she likes the idea of starting from the MSBA’s ordinance.

“Up until this point I don’t think we’ve had anybody say that this is what we’d like to see,” she said. “We only had people testify to say what they didn’t want and what they didn’t like.”

In comments after the assembly agreed to put off making further changes, assemblyman Warren Keogh said he’s “bemused” at the process the assembly has followed to reach this point.

“We now have this growing conglomerate behemoth of a thing that’s over 130 pages long,” he said. “I guess I’ve given up predicting where we’re going as an assembly. I hope in the end we wind up with a good product, but it’s going to take a bit of work to get there. I guess that’s my solitary comment.”

Assemblyman Mark Ewing, who is leaving the assembly this month to eventually run for the state House of Representatives, thanked Murphy and his father for coming out.

“You really did bring forward a real problem a lot of people that homesteaded are facing today and never thought the government would be standing in the way of them giving their children what is rightfully theirs,” Ewing said.

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