Sutton residents react to Jonesville Management Plan

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough Assembly voted to postpone Ordinance 21-006 by a 4-3 vote on Tuesday. The ordinance was presented in order to provide a management plan for the Jonesville Public Use Area in Sutton stemming from years of work from community members and the passage of District 9 Rep. George Rauscher’s House Bill 6 in 2018 establishing the Jonesville Public Use Area.

“I was able to witness the formation of this plan from the very grassroots of the community. The community council designated originally the Slipper Lake committee which became the Jonesville Public Use Area planning management committee,” said former Assemblyman Jim Sykes. “Representative Rauscher and I did ask a lot of the people outside the area and within the area and it was an open process where everybody had the opportunity to participate with the committee as it was developed and it was an amazing grassroots process.”

Sykes noted during his public comment that in 2018, House Bill 6 unanimously passed both the House and the Senate with a zero fiscal note. Emerson Krueger, the Borough’s Natural Resource Manager in the Community Development Department, presented the staff report to the Assembly on the long history of Ordinance 21-006 prior to it’s arrival in front of the Assembly for public hearing on Tuesday. Krueger began by thanking Brian Largent, Chair of the Jonesville PUA Planning Committee, for his years of work in organizing around the area. Krueger showed drone footage from Jonesville captured last fall. Krueger informed the Assembly about the 14,600 acres of both state and borough land with enhancements for both non motorized and motorized trails as a measure to meet Alaska Statute 3A.04.065D which would allow the Department of Natural Resources Commissioner to adopt the management plan. While Krueger provided his staff report, drone footage captured at Jonesville displayed the immense natural beauty of Eska falls with the surrounding landscape of deep yellow leaves and the distant Chugach Mountain range, which then cut to scenes of garbage in puddles, people shooting at targets and other leftover debris from vehicles.

“The overriding goal of the Jonesville management plan is public safety, promoting motorized and non motorized recreation, protecting fish and wildlife habitat as well as recognizing the rights of the subsurface coal lease owners, and the primary public safety concern at Jonesville is the uncontrolled recreational shooting. The plan designates areas for development of shooting ranges. The plan also recognizes the existing coal leases and provides management guidelines to minimize conflicts between future coal mining activities and public recreation,” said Krueger. “This is not a typical borough plan. A lot of the typical borough plans are community plans that have to do with private land and public aland and public facilities. The state is the majority landowner in the Jonesville Public Use Area.”

Presented at the Assembly meeting on January 5, IM 21-009 outlined that the state does not have sufficient time or funding to participate in the planning process, and the first draft of a project management plan after the formation of the citizen’s action committee in 2016. As a neighbor to Jonesville, Laurel Flynn said that she has participated in cleanup days each of the last 20 years and applauded the borough for stepping up. Flynn said that the National Guard is often called to haul vehicles out and one summer had to remove more than 50. Flynn is a retired public health nurse and said that noise of shooting and explosions happens at all times of night during the summer months.

“In my opinion the DNR has been irresponsible in its duty to oversee the area and provide active management or cooperate in developing the management plan. We have followed the DNR process to the letter and invited them to meet and participate many times without success,” said Flynn. “We have an opportunity to get this right before any more severe damage is done to this very unique area. I realize this is a difficult moment in the history of our country but there is a narrow window of time to establish this area for future generations. Jonesville Public Use Area could be developed for the local economy to benefit in a balanced manner. We have a large variety of user groups that could bring visitors to stay and utilize the trails and facilities to make this possible. This is a public health concern as the health and safety of our community lie in the balance.”

Krueger noted that after passage of OR 21-006, the state Department of Fish and Game and DNR may have additional amendments that would need to be adopted by the Assembly again. Once finally adopted after state amendments, the borough would be able to negotiate a management agreement with the and work out details of the area with a primary focus on public safety improvements.

“A priority for the Sutton community council and the borough is to focus on the public safety improvements by both building a shooting range and limiting the location and duration of recreational shooting in the rest of the area. If you haven’t been out there on any given day it gets kind of eerie with all the gun shots that are going off as you’re walking through the woods. There’s no designated shooting, there’s no signage and anybody can do anything they want anywhere and it gets a little scary,” said Krueger. “I may be back here in however many months it takes to get through that state review with a slightly amended version of this management plan for adoption one more time, but we can’t wait for that. I’ve been working for two years with the community of Sutton to address some pretty heinous issues in the Jonesville area and I think it would be irresponsible of the borough to step back and say no, this is a state problem. This is very clearly a borough community and it’s a community that’s asking anybody for help.”

The improvements funded by reallocated land management funds for implementation would go toward constructing a shooting range, restrooms, a parking area, day use area, and signage to alert what was permitted. Krueger estimated the cost of operation and maintenance after construction to be $3,000 per year and based the estimate off of the operation of Jim Creek public use area.

“This is a document that can establish the groundwork for the state to take over control. As a borough citizen, I don’t want the borough to have to do everything in Jonesville. The state should be doing that,” said Brian Largent. “As the chair of the committee I know almost all of the comments we’ve received are positive. There are some even in Sutton who don’t like some of the restrictions that the plan would bring about and I understand that because it’s different, it’s not like it has always been but those restrictions that are in the plan I believe are just simply allowing everyone to recreate.”

Largent thanked five other community members and borough staff for their assistance. Out of the nine people that offered their public comment telephonically or in person, five were in opposition and four were in favor.

“This is not what was presented to us in the community of Sutton at the Sutton Elementary School. Me and several of my colleagues came in and made sure that this was wrote and that no uses would be taken away. The original House Bill 6 right here says to provide opportunity for the public to enjoy the area and a full spectrum of uses including in maintenance and enhancement of off road vehicles and non motorized recreational opportunities for the public,” said Andy Andersen.

Andersen questioned the restriction of motorized boats and noted that the most problematic area in Jonesville was a small portion of the 14,600 acres designated. Andersen felt that the community was not accurately informed and that he had received overwhelming support online after posting about the ordinance. Lloyd Nieman also noted that he had only recently found out about the document that is over 200 pages thick.

“We see our motorized use rights get taken away all the times and that kind of verbiage kind of bothers me on where could that lead, how far do they go with that later. The gun use there, safety is a huge concern. I’ve been around guns a lot and when people use verbiage like they’re eerie and stuff like that it’s a little bothersome. I just feel like that’s an infamiliarity with the issue,” said Nieman.

After discussion by the Assembly, a 4-3 vote postponed Ordinance 21-006 for over six months until the meeting August 3.

“This is deception at its finest. Somebody’s throwing this under the bus,” said Andersen. “I just don’t feel that this was submitted in a manner which should be moral for public things. I don’t think you guys understand the methods and how this was deceived to the public of Sutton.”