The Sitka Assembly stuck by a zoning decision it made earlier this year, after a former mayor challenged it Tuesday night.
Back in February, the Assembly approved something called a conditional use permit for a daycare center in the home of Dawn Mahoney-Menendez. It allows Mahoney-Menendez to care for more than four children and addresses a neighbor’s parking and traffic concerns.
But a former Sitka mayor and her husband challenged the Assembly’s decision.
Valorie Nelson and her husband, Connor, live about four miles away from the Menendez family. But their home on Littlebyrd Way has something in common with the First Street property where Dawn Mahoney-Menendez operates the Kids First Daycare. They’re both considered zero-lot lines: properties where the house is built on the edge of the property line. That’s not an uncommon feature in Sitka neighborhoods, where land is at a premium.
The Nelsons argued that the Assembly ignored zoning laws in granting the permit, and raised numerous issues at the Assembly table. But their chief concern seemed to be that the Assembly’s decision could set a precedent that would affect other zero lot-line property owners.
“Then you’ve got to go back and look at all of them and say, ‘Well, then in an R-2, you could have a church.’ You can say in a commercial (zone) it’s permitted to have a funeral home or a crematorium,” Connor Nelson told the Assembly. “All of a sudden we have these party-wall agreements and you buy a unit, and your neighbor turns his half into a crematorium. Obviously this is not the intent of this zero lot line.”
Not likely, says attorney Corrie Bosman, who represents the Menendez family. Bosman is also a KCAW board member.
“To make a leap that, if this one is granted that you guys are going to be granting conditional use permits for lot lines all over town, like crematoriums and churches, is really kind of ludicrous,” she said. “This goes through a very serious vetting process: in this case, three different planning and zoning meetings, now our third Assembly meeting. And I’d imagine, if someone wanted to do some kind of large commercial operation, as the Nelsons fear, that they would have the public opportunity to be involved at that point, but I don’t think it would even get there.”
Municipal Attorney Theresa Hillhouse said conditional use permits stick with individual parcels, and that the best solution to the Nelsons’ concern is for them to seek changes to the code on a broader level.
Valorie Nelson said she’s sued the city before over a zoning decision and could do so again.
“I can see where the Nelsons have some valid concerns,” said Assembly member Pete Esquiro, speaking toward the end of the 1 hour, 40 minute debate. He says the idea of an eight-child daycare in a zero lot-line house doesn’t thrill him. But he also agreed the way to address that is by changing the code.
“We should instruct our staff to do whatever we need to do to get this cleaned up,” he said. “I personally think it was a mistake to go beyond the four in a zero lot-line. But that’s something that will have to be taken up someplace else, other than in this forum.”
The Assembly voted unanimously to uphold its earlier decision.
