Proposed changes to land use rules worry residents

BIG LAKE — A Mat-Su Borough Assemblyman wants to repeal the borough’s regulations on construction of new apartment complexes and other “multi-family” dwellings.

“I know the housing market. I know the rental market. It’s egregious,” said Assemblyman Darcie Salmon, who is, by day a real estate agent.

He said borough regulations have multi-family construction to a standstill and rents, as a consequence, have gone up.

But though he wouldn’t have a shot at repeal until at least Tuesday, there’s already a very vocal opposition.

“If it were to be repealed completely that would open up the entire borough, not just Big Lake, Houston and Willow, but the entire borough, to housing that would be anything from corrugated cardboard with spray-painted curtains to a plywood shack,” said Big Lake resident Darwin Fischer. “They could buy a brand-new refrigerator for their house and put the box out front and rent it out.”

Salmon, in the legislation he penned to do away with the multi-family codes, notes that the state regulates clean water issues like septic tanks and well drilling. The state also has a fire marshal and a plumbing inspector and an electrical inspector. There’s a landlord-tenant act in place. So the borough regulations, he says, are redundant.

Fischer disagrees. He first got involved in the issue after one of his neighbors, Mike Stephens, started clearing out land near Fischer’s property off of Beaver Lake Road.

Stephens owns the notorious Felony Flats cabins at Mile 49, Parks Highway that lack basic utilities and are a magnet for law enforcement calls. The cabins are being removed to make way for a highway expansion. Fischer says he worries they’d end up on that Beaver Lake area property Stephens cleared.

There was a borough code that Stephens would have run up against — the multi-family code.

Fischer said it’s fine that Stephens provides low-income housing, so long as it’s not brought into an existing, remote community with no nearby access to public water supply, showers, bathrooms, transportation links or a grocery store such as were available in the Mile 49 area.

Since he sounded the alarm, Fischer said, a lot of people have responded. It’s not a group targeting Stephens, he said, nor is the group’s intention to stop development.

“Development in a proper manner is desired, with respect to the use of borough lands for recreational purposes included,” Fischer wrote in an email.

Salmon was also quick to note that this was not about Stephens. He said he’s never met the man, couldn’t pick him out of a crowd. He said it’s simply a matter of allowing more housing to be built. That builders simply can’t work with the new codes.

“If they could, they would be,” Salmons aid.

Fischer actually agrees on this point. He and his cohort say there are significant sections of current multifamily rules that are useless or onerous. One part, for example, mandates the construction of playgrounds once a certain number of family units are put on the same parcel. Another mandates bike paths. Both of those are things that might not fit in with the character of a given community, Fischer said.

But other parts of the code speak to basic life safety issues, requiring things like roads that are adequate to allow emergency responders to access homes.

What he and his group want, Fischer said, is for the borough to change the rules, not rip them up. And he hopes people will agree.

“We need to get the word out to residents in the community and the whole borough to contact your community council and/or your borough assembly representative and tell them that you don’t want ordinance No. 17.73 repealed,” he said.

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