Daily Sitka Sentinel

Issues Are Piling Up For Planning Panel

By ABIGAIL BLISS
Sentinel Staff Writer
    The Planning Commission’s meeting Tuesday was over within an hour after the first item on the agenda, a conditional use permit for a quarry, was postponed because the applicant was not present.
    The item was for a public hearing and consideration of a conditional use permit for “natural resource extraction and mining support facilities” at 4660 and 4670 Halibut Point Road, owned by Roger, John, and Judith Sudnikovich.
    Planning Director Michael Scarcelli said city staff had notified the Sudnikoviches about the meeting, but no one was at the meeting to represent them. The commission will take up the request when it meets on July 26.
    Before the commission moved on, however, its members heard from Valorie Nelson, a resident who had come to the meeting to comment on the conditional use request.
    “I provided you guys with 26 years of proof that there have been nothing but lies and innuendos going on with this excavation forever, and I don’t believe that any of the things that he tells you are true,” Nelson said.
    She urged the commission not to expand the “exhausted quarry,” and provided six dated color photographs and an itemized timeline reaching back to 1992.
    Turning to other business, the commission did pass the remaining agenda items, which included a minor subdivision at 114 Harbor Mountain Road, owned by Donovan and Jane Seesz; the reduction in the required on-site parking for an existing duplex at 409 Halibut Point Road, owned by Tim Riley; and a conditional use permit request for a short-term rental at the same property.
    While Tuesday’s meeting was short, the next, on July 26, is unlikely to be.
    Scarcelli said he had 17 applications on his plate, and is already looking at dates for a follow-up meeting the first week in August.
    The commission’s last two scheduled meetings were canceled because the required notice had not gone out for all agenda items.
    “In part of our process for nearly every type of permit – conditional use permit, or variance permit, or subdivision – we have to give notice to adjacent properties within 150 feet to 300-foot linear distance of the property corners,” Scarcelli told the Sentinel. “That requires doing research on that, doing buffer distances, figuring out the ownership, putting together the agenda listing, which includes, also, figuring out legal description, and for one person, just me, I wasn’t able to get it done in time.”
    Scarcelli has  been on his own in the planning office since Samantha Pierson left the position of Planner I at the end of May, and he has given notice that he will leave in early August.
    Scarcelli said the recent meeting cancellations are indications of the full workload on the short-staffed department.
    “I think that just highlights the fact that our department, we pretty much live deadline to deadline, and should any little thing mess up that balance, it’s hard to meet that deadline,” he said.
    To ease the transition, the city has hired KathyHope Erickson as a temporary planning assistant. Erickson’s first day was July 2, and her position will last three months.
    “It’s to help me, and I think it’ll also go to helping with the transition,” Scarcelli said. “KathyHope used to actually work for the city as Municipal Clerk under Gary Paxton when he was administrator, so I hired her because I felt that, one, she had the background clerk experience... plus, another major part of my office has been really trying to establish a better relationship with the Native community, and I know that she did that with her time as clerk for Gary Paxton.”
    Erickson is the chair of the Sitka Tribe of Alaska.
    Scarcelli expressed hope, too, that Erickson would be able to provide continuity for the new planner and department director, although he intends to leave additional structures in place to assist the new hires.
    “I think right now that’s really what my focus is: talking with the administrator over the next couple of days about the transition phase,” he said.