Vote to support flexible land use

To the editor:

Most of the land use in the Mat-Su Borough is determined by those who live on, develop or join together to designate the uses for our lands. The major designations include, but are not limited to, unrestricted, agricultural, covenanted, conditioned and restricted, conditional use permitted, as well as special use district areas.

In Palmer, Wasilla and Houston, folks have further refined the designations for their land use by implementing zoning. This results in common land uses for specific areas of these cities. For example, single-family residences, commercial, industrial, multi-family residential, etc.

Each of these methods for designating land use is absolutely appropriate for each of the areas that use them. However, the size of the Mat-Su Borough should prohibit blanket land-use laws for the entire borough. Following are examples derived from public testimony during the Title 27 rewrite consideration, which illustrate how Title 27 was inhibiting owners’ use of the land.

Parents and grandparents who owned large tracts of land and wanted to distribute it amongst their offspring found it cost-prohibitive to subdivide, put in engineered roads and pass on the heritage of land ownership to their families.

There were those who had invested in land decades ago that, when purchased, included driveways, electrical service and were suitable for development. They found that they could not afford to subdivide because they would have to hire others to re-engineer shared driveways into roads, move or bury electrical services and design lot-specific driveways onto the new roads. These landowners were unable to reap the benefits of their foresight due to those expenses.

Landowners with holdings off the road system could not afford to ship in the engineers, heavy equipment and materials they would need to build the roads required by Title 27. They were unable to subdivide and share that land with others.

In other words, these lands were no longer a valuable investment. My observation was that development had become a rich man’s game. Additionally, there didn’t appear to be many (if any) rich men ready to invest in development.

A focus group of farmers, landowners, surveyors, builders, homeowners, business owners and representatives from the borough and the cities was formed. This group worked together with the goal of taking “the best of” both Title 16 (the first Subdivision Code) and Title 27 to create a draft revision of the code. They then presented it to the assembly.

The assembly spent a year conducting work sessions, individual member reviews and reporting, open hearings and consultations with the borough attorney, revising and refining the Mat-Su Business Alliance focus group’s work product. This resulted in passing Title 43 this past spring. In recognition that Title 43 was not perfect and would probably need additional revision, the assembly “reserved” its ability to “reconsider” Title 43 a year after its initial passing.

In my estimation, Title 27 failed because of overreach. Title 27’s overreach involved writing code that ignored the diversity and development requirements of the whole Mat-Su Borough. That overreach dictated that what was good for cities would be good for the entire borough.

I appreciate the vision demonstrated by the current Mat-Su Borough Assembly, including mayor Larry DeVilbiss, to look beyond the small portions of this vast area and prepare a foundation (Title 43) that all of our communities can build upon to meet each of their own developmental plans and goals.

I urge you to vote on Oct. 2. Only we can determine whether we will continue to benefit from the wisdom and foresight demonstrated by our current representation. Every vote is counted, and every vote counts.

Beth Fread

Palmer