Does zoning protect our land rights or squanch them?

On the other hand, by Howard Bess

The passing of the conditional-use permit ordinance by the Mat-Su Borough Assembly rates an evaluation somewhere between zero and disaster.

At best, the ordinance is insignificant, innocuous and irrelevant. At its worst, it signals the ultimate destruction of any possibility of making the Valley, when fully developed, a unique place of character and beauty.

A conditional use ordinance is a form of zoning. Every zoning law is designed to define what cannot happen. Zoning performs like a drug. Once people are hooked, they can never get enough. As they get more, the destruction of their lives only accelerates.

All zoning is negative. No great community can be built on a complete diet of negatives. Most of our core area is in fact still undeveloped. We want a great area in which to live. We have time to do it right, if we will make the effort.

What is needed is a plan worthy of the name. A plan in the sense that is used by professional people to provide a snapshot of what the fully developed area will look like. A plan is stated in positive terms in contrast to zoning. Zoning should not be put in place until after the plan is adopted. Zoning should be a servant of a plan. The borough is making zoning our taskmaster. The borough assembly obviously has the cart before the horse.

In professional circles, there is a well thought-out process to be followed in developing a plan for the area. The first step is to determine the shared values of the community. The process adopted by the borough is designed to set people at odds with one another, then seek a compromise satisfactory to no one.

Even with our highly diverse population, there is a very large base of shared values that can be translated into a plan that is acceptable to nearly everyone. Once we have a plan that reflects the shared values of the community, we can begin to look at zoning and conditional-use permits as friends, rather than as enemies.

The borough has included a significant amount of money in its new budget for planning. I commend the borough assembly for providing these funds. However, the next crucial question is how that money will be spent. This money can be frittered away and wasted, or it can be used to hire the experts that we need. We need help from someone who understands planning and who can lead us all through the exercises needed to produce a plan that is worthy of our valley.

Howard Bess is a resident of Palmer.