Multi-family regs on hold

PALMER — After a discussion of the issues Tuesday at the Mat-Su Borough Assembly table, work to change rules for apartment buildings and other “multi-family dwellings” in the borough appears set for a March 19 conclusion.

In case you haven’t been following this one, the saga begins with assemblyman Darcie Salmon who, late last year, proposed a complete repeal of the borough’s multi-family ordinance.

“My first motion was to get rid of it as an egregious ordinance,” Salmon said at Tuesday’s meeting.

Salmon has said that he doesn’t like the multi-family rules because they drive up the price of housing. There’s very little available in the Valley for low-income residents, he said.

At about the same time he was proposing repeal, word got out that the Mile 49 cabins, colloquially known — even around the assembly table — as Felony Flats, were being moved to make way for the expansion of the Parks Highway. Fears those cabins would move into residential areas in Big Lake or Willow brought out strong opposition to repeal of the multi-family rules.

Salmon agreed to work with assemblyman Vern Halter to come up with some changes that could satisfy both Salmon’s concerns about affordable housing and homeowners’ concerns about having Felony Flats-style cabins — with no heat or running water — move in next door.

On that latter point the fix that Halter came up with is to include “primitive structures” without heat or running water under the multi-family regulations if the number of units on a parcel climbs above a certain threshold.

The changes Halter proposed set that threshold at seven units. Salmon argued for a rule that would set that threshold using a formula based on lot size.

Berkley Tilton, a real estate developer active in local politics, agreed with that formula saying it would keep a person with a vacation parcel who wants to set his kids up in cabins on a huge 130-acre parcel from running up against the multi-family ordinance.

Salmon eventually failed to get that threshold changed, but can try again later in the process if he wishes, mayor Larry DeVilbiss said at the meeting.

As for why the issue wasn’t decided that night, that has to do with the form in which the changes arrived at the assembly table.

Between Salmon and Halter and the borough’s planning commission — which reviewed the two assembly members’ changes and made its own recommendations — by the time the whole thing got to the assembly table Tuesday what members had in hand was a collection of different changes from different sources.

“It was a lot of scattered pieces the way that it was before us tonight,” DeVilbiss said in his post-meeting podcast.

Assemblyman Jim Colver seemed to speak for his colleagues in saying he wanted to wait to pass an ordinance until everything could be brought together in one comprehensive document.

“I need this in writing,” Colver said.

He and his colleagues eventually settled on March 19.

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