The City of Sitka is rewriting its vision for the future. It’s called the Sitka Comprehensive Plan, a document intended to shape development for the next 15 years. Last night (02-07-16), the Planning Commission sought public input on three draft chapters focusing on land use, economic development, and housing.
About 20 Sitkans attended the meeting. Their testimony will be added to months of citizen input, gathered at similar meetings, a open house in November, and through “meetings in a box.” All 50 boxes, which about the comprehensive plan for small groups, have all been picked up and five returned so far.
The Housing chapter largely loosens regulations, with an emphasis on increasing density, reducing lot sizes, and providing incentives for mixed and affordable housing. The commissioners took issue, however, with tiny homes on wheels.
They want to see tiny homes attached to the ground and in compliance with building and safety standards. Otherwise, Commissioner Darrell Windsor said, tiny homes on wheels should be considered RVs.
The chapter on Economic Development focuses on keeping residential money within Sitka, by increasing year-round jobs. Garry White, director of the Sitka Economic Development Association, commented that welcoming outside money was equally important.
“We’re going to have so much leakage, just by the size of the community that we are. Nobody here is making shirts or shoes or microphones or any of that. Our money is always going to leak out. So a good thing to probably add to that would be to attract new money into our economy,” White said.
Speaking from the public, Anne Pollnow asked for specific language to promote historic preservation – both for social benefit and economic growth.
Assembly member Steven Eisenbeisz supported this idea. If you look at a town like Skagway, last year they received almost 800,000 visitors basically on historic value alone. There’s not much more to Skagway than that. So that is an important consideration here. I know that we are a little far gone compared to Skagway to potentially get to that point, but if we start now, perhaps in 50 years we can have some our historic feel back.”
The Comprehensive Plan is devoted to thinking ahead in broad strokes. Which posed a challenge for commissioners during the land use section. They talked about adding a disclaimer about how future hazard and landslide mapping could modify the plan.
After nearly three hours, Commission Chair Chris Spivey adjourned the meeting around 10 p.m. The Planning Commission approved moving all three chapters into the Comprehensive Plan draft. They postponed reviewing area maps that outline future growth for a later date.
In March 2018, the Commission will seek public input on arts and culture, parks and recreation, and historic resources. The April meeting is dedicated to transportation, and the May meeting to utilities and capital improvements. Consultant Barbara Sheinberg and the city’s planners aim to finalize the comprehensive plan draft in June and bring it before the Sitka Assembly in July 2018.
