Palmer city council considers annexation

Palmer's boundaries could grow in 2003, but not by leaps and bounds.

Larger annexation plans could come up in the future, but in the meantime at its meeting tonight the Palmer City Council will consider the next phase of an annexation for its city boundaries.

The city's last comprehensive plan -- published in April 1999 -- recommended "an aggressive annexation strategy," but city council members and city officials said the current phase is anything but aggressive, and described Palmer's long-term annexation plans as comprehensive.

"I don't think I would use the word aggressive," said council member John Combs. "It's pretty much a housekeeping … It's not really broad in its scope this time around."

City Manager Tom Healy has described the so-called "phase one plan" as housekeeping as well. The council will consider the administration's phase one map tonight, and if they approve the plan, the administration will be asked to draft an ordinance. Public hearings will be scheduled for future meetings.

Healy said four different property owners applied for annexation, but the plan will affect many more than those four. The current map of phase one is a draft and a more detailed map will be available when the council approves the wording of the actual ordinance.

"I intend to get a fairly large ad in the paper describing these properties with a detailed map," Healy said.

Combs said it is likely the council will approve the plan as currently drafted, at least to the point of writing an ordinance. If they eventually pass an ordinance, the city will apply to the State of Alaska Local Boundary Commission (LBC) for approval of the annexation. The commission has public comment meetings of its own, and if it approves Palmer's plan the changes will become part of the LBC's 2003 statewide boundary changes. The statewide package is then subject to the approval of the state Legislature.

"Phase one" is a bit of a misnomer. Since incorporation in 1951, Palmer has completed 43 separate annexations. Healy said that historically Palmer has taken a piecemeal approach to annexation. The city has included individual lots when businesses and homeowners wanted their property hooked to city utilities.

"In fact, that's the objection of the boundary commission," Healy said, "The boundary commission has asked that the city come up with a more comprehensive approach."

The piecemeal approach has created enclaves and an odd shape to the city boundaries. This could become a problem for city-provided services in the future -- imagine a water or sewer line that goes 10 blocks out of the way to get from one neighborhood to the next. Combs said the long-term annexation plan will be more ambitious than the housekeeping action slated for 2003. Combs preferred to call Palmer's growth inevitable, rather than aggressive.

"There's a lot of people that want to live out here," Combs said. "I've seen predictions of an additional 40,000 people moving to the Valley over the next 10 or 15 years. They are certainly welcome and we look forward to it, and we also want to have a good plan in place as they arrive."

Combs said he'd like to see another plan for 2004, and as the Valley grows Combs figures Palmer could extend west to Trunk Road, north to Palmer Fishhook, and south to the junction of the Parks and Glenn highways. Combs believes these are geographic boundaries in which people identify themselves as being from Palmer.

"The council is very adamant that this be done in an incremental phases," Combs said. "But I do think it's important to define where were headed early on."