Progress on new Palmer zone slow

PALMER -- A proposed new zoning category called the T-Zone, or transition zone, a longtime item on the agenda of both the Palmer City Council and the Palmer Planning and Zoning Commission, is not yet ready for realization. A work session between the council and the commission on Thursday evening, the third in a series of work sessions dealing with the T-Zone, left the matter unresolved.

The new T-Zone would exist in addition to the current zones (commercial, residential, industrial, agricultural and public use being the main categories) employed by the city, and would be one of only a few different zones to be used for newly annexed property.

After three work sessions, Commissioner Detlef Wanke said, the commission still didn't have the document it was looking for, and more work will be needed before the zone could become official.

"We have a lot of different ideas about what a T-Zone should be," Wanke said.

Council Member Tony Pippel said he views the prospective T-Zone as more of a category for zoning that isn't set in stone, rather than a category for land that is awaiting a definite zoning decision.

"This should more accurately be called a 'to-be-determined' zone," he said. "Maybe there are multiple conflicting uses for the land, or maybe the owner isn't ready to decide what to do with it yet. I think it would be good for us to have a zone where we just say 'we're going to delay this until the future.'"

Pippel said property owners surrounded by residential, industrial, and/or commercial land should be given the right to take time to decide which zone they wanted. "It protects the owner," he said.

Commissioner Michael Kircher said he thought the commission should have the ability to zone land without a single static designation for the use of that land, and therefore approved of the idea, if not the exact wording, offered by the T-Zone amendment.

Currently, land that is for the most part undeveloped is often zoned R-1.

Pippel said he disapproved of this practice.

"R-1 carries a basket of rights and responsibilities that people expect from landowners," he said. "Devoting something to R-1 ensures certain commitments."

Council Member Brad Hanson mentioned the proposed rezoning of some land along the Palmer-Wasilla Highway near Palmer High School from residential to commercial status, and the controversy this has created among residents, as a case study that supported the new zone.

"This is a classic example of how the problem could have been avoided with a T-Zone," said Hanson, referring to the fact that the new zone would not have carried the same implications as a residential zone for homeowners in the area.

Palmer City Manager Tom Healy compared the process of instituting the T-Zone to the old parable of a group of blindfolded people touching an elephant and describing what they feel.

"For years we've been wrestling with the problem of how to deal with newly annexed, undeveloped property," Healy said. "We're trying to get the right process and mechanism to make this more fair for everyone."

The ordinance that would create the zone, in addition to stating that it could be used for newly annexed property, contains regulations on what constitutes a T-Zone and what it can be used for. These regulations stipulate that the T-Zone applies to those lands that are in transition to one of the more traditional zones.

Commissioner Jim Roberts said he'd like to "strike a balance between the best interest of the city and the best interest of the landowners," but that the wording and phraseology of the ordinance prevented him from throwing his full weight behind it.

Roberts' concerns were shared by many of his fellow commissioners.

"We still don't have a consensus for the entire document," Commissioner Richard Best said. "The meat and potatoes are not there yet."

Council Member Katherine Vanover agreed that the T-Zone was a good idea, but didn't think it was ready to hit the books yet.

"This is a really good step," she said, "but we need more before we can address the issues."

Wanke said that now, when annexation of new property to the city is such a hot issue, might not be the ideal time to walk the ordinance through the steps required to put it on the books.

"We need a T-Zone, but why do we need it right now, when we're in the middle of an annexation period?" he said.

Pippel said the new zone could be useful during the annexation period.

"We're going to be annexing people with weird and conflicting uses for their land, and this gives us another zoning option," he said.

Wanke countered with the assertion that instituting a new zone for annexation wouldn't be fair to the people who had already been zoned.

"Coming up with another zoning category would be unfair to the people being zoned now," he said.

After the work session, in the regular meeting of the Planning and Zoning Commission, the commissioners decided to state, in a written report to the Palmer City Council, their lack of recommendation for the ordinance as it stands.

Wanke agreed with the motion to put off the new zone.

"This is not something that happens overnight," he said.

The Palmer City Council will consider the commission's report at its June 22 meeting.

Contact Daniel Spoth at daniel.spoth@frontiersman.com.