Planning team reorganized

PALMER -- After nearly a year without a cohesive team, the Mat-Su Borough Planning Department is fully staffed and ready to face the challenges of a growing borough.

Three planners are now on staff in the department, along with new planning chief Murph O'Brien and planning director Susan Dickinson. Dickinson came on staff in May and, in July, accepted the position as permanent. O'Brien joined the staff in October after more than 20 years at the Alaska Department of Transportation.

After joining the staff, Dickinson said she reorganized the department to incorporate other offices generally involved in the planning process, such as the historical preservation office and the office of water quality, who were not considered part of the department.

"The planning team is all of the people doing planning," Dickinson said. Many times, she explained, community plans take things like local streams and water bodies and local historic areas into account during the planning process. Having the offices working together on planning efforts from the beginning allows for some streamlining of efforts, and may help speed things along.

Speed may certainly be a factor as the department works to complete the backlog of tasks that piled up in the year that has elapsed since planning chief Heather Bovat and planning director Sandra Garley stepped down. In the intervening time, the borough hired a new planning director, David Recor, who resigned a month later, after an alleged shoplifting incident. Two borough planners, Beth McKibben and Ellen Wycoff, both left the borough during that time -- McKibben to take a position in Homer and Wycoff to retire.

"There was no leadership," Dickinson said of the department. "When there's no leadership, it's really hard for staff to know what the priorities are."

As a result, the department has been working to meet the most pressing needs, while other projects were set aside.

"Some of those that suffered were school sites, traffic calming, lake management plans, an interim minerals ordinance," Dickinson said. "We're trying to take care of a lot of the deferred maintenance first. We're trying to finish up a lot of the things that were on hold when I got here," she said.

"So pretty much everything," planner Eileen Probasco joked. Probasco is working with several northern Mat-Su communities to examine community plans in preparation for growth that appears to be on their horizons. The "Y" community recently held a workshop to find out more about community planning for their area, and Probasco said Trapper Creek is also examining the process. Some of the planning is being coordinated with funding from the National Park Service, Dickinson said, and the planning staff recently completed a training workshop through NPS that will help them facilitate future community planning efforts.

Other significant projects loom on the horizon, Dickinson said. One ongoing need is for subdivision reviews. The department is responsible for reviewing subdivision plans prior to plat approval, and with 300 subdivisions approved this year alone, there's always work to do -- but it's important the work is done carefully, Dickinson said.

"So much of what makes a community a community is our subdivisions," Dickinson said.

Another significant project looming on the horizon, she said, is work related to coal-bed methane development. Dickinson, Thursday, was part of the round-table discussion with Borough Manager John Duffy and officials from state agencies. As those discussions progress, she said, she'll be working with the manager's office and borough assembly to provide research and eventually begin work on a CBM ordinance. Add to that the recent passage of several bonds that will require school selection committees to be formed and the ongoing need for long-range transportation planning -- not to mention upcoming work on the borough's capital improvement project list and, down the road, on the next round of the statewide transportation improvement project list -- the department has a lot of work ahead.

"We're up to staff, but we're still going to be very, very busy," Dickinson said. "There are certainly means to establish priorities. We need to work with the manager and the assembly to make sure the ones that are set are the ones they want us to pursue."