By ARIADNE WILL
Sentinel Staff Writer
The Assembly, acting as the Board of Adjustment, voted Tuesday to overturn a private sewer line variance previously approved by the Planning Commission.
The variance would have allowed 11 lots to be served by a single private sewer line in a new subdivision at 300 Kramer Avenue.
The variance that was overturned was passed by the Planning Commission Sept. 21, adding three lots to the eight already allowed on the private sewer line. City Administrator John Leach appealed the decision on behalf of the city, and the question before the Board of Adjustment was on whether to grant his appeal.
A photograph included in an Assembly packet shows a private sewer corridor off Kramer Avenue. (Photo provided)
After hearing arguments for and against the motion, the board voted 5-2 to grant the appeal overturning the variance.
Steven Eisenbeisz, Kevin Knox, Rebecca Himschoot, Crystal Duncan, and Dave Miller voted in favor of granting the appeal. Thor Christianson and Chris Ystad voted against.
Leach suggested in his presentation to the Board of Adjustment that the commission’s approval of the variance set a precedent that’s not favorable to city interests. He said it “marginalizes the intended purpose of our code and encourages circumvention of the major subdivision process.”
But planning department staff said the commission did consider the precedent issue when it approved the three-lot variance on Sept. 21. Planning Director Amy Ainslie said the commission’s majority opinion was that precedent was established last April when the commission passed a variance allowing eight lots on the private sewer utility in question.
City code allows a maximum of four lots on private utility easements, including sewer. When the commission approved the Sept. 21 variance, a variance was already in place allowing eight lots to be served by this private sewer line. That preexisting variance was not affected by the appeal.
Conversation on the issue Tuesday centered around the language of the Sitka General Code and the implications the variance would have on precedent. City staff also said the lots could be served by pumps connected directly to an extension of the city sewer system.
Such an extension is yet to be built, but would have to be constructed in tandem with the housing development along Kramer Avenue. The extension of the line would be adopted and maintained by the city as part of the city’s infrastructure after its installation by the subdivision developers.
Leach said in his presentation that his case was supported by the city code in its definition of allowable variances. He maintained that developer Todd Fleming did not prove that denial of the variance would cause — in the words of Sitka’s general code — “undue and substantial hardship” to property owners.
“The applicant’s material states that the variance ‘will allow future property owners to have gravity sewer and eliminate the need for a sanitary pump,’ but during the meeting of September 21, 2022, stated that the sanitary sewer pump is the lower cost option for development,” Leach told the board.
Ainslie said in her staff report that there’s no question about the integrity of the sewer line or its capacity to serve 11 lots. The main concern was that it wouldn’t be in the city’s interest to adopt the line, which is hard to access.
Under public comment, Planning Commission Chair Chris Spivey told the Board of Adjustment he had voted in favor of the variance because it would provide a good opportunity for land development.
“This makes sense,” Spivey said of the variance during his comments. “I voted for this because it makes sense.”
He said he voted in favor after considering staff’s recommendation of denial.
Planning Commission Vice Chair Darrell Windsor, who had also voted in favor of the variance at the commission’s Sept. 21 meeting, spoke to the board under public comment as well.
“If you’re going to go strictly by the book and by code, you don’t need (the Planning Commission),” he said.
Leach told the Sentinel Wednesday that “99.99 percent of the time” Planning Commission decisions aren’t questioned at the city administration level.
“This is the .01 percent time that a decision warrants further discussion,” he said. “My appeal is rooted in ... proper application of the code. It has nothing to do with who built the infrastructure or the suitability of the infrastructure, or if the city should or should not adopt the infrastructure. This is (about) whether the Planning Commission applied the variance code properly. I felt the applicant did not sufficiently prove the requirements to be granted the variance.”
Although the potential risk of the sewer line failure wasn’t directly up for discussion, many on the Board of Adjustment brought up concerns about what might happen if the line did fail. All who participated in the discussion said such a failure wouldn’t be likely for several decades.
Crystal Duncan described her outlook as one of “risk management,” and emphasized that should something go wrong with the line, the city — and the Assembly — likely would become involved.
Duncan and several others said they could imagine a case in which the city would be called in for emergency repairs, and there would be a controversy over how the cost would be shared among the individual property owners.
Others on the board mentioned Sitkans often have a hard time sharing responsibility in private utility matters.
Dave Miller said that when he was at the fire department, he often had to “make concessions” in order to serve Sitkans who were hindered by issues arising from private utility maintenance. This was mostly related to instances in which neighbors didn’t plow snow from shared driveways, making ambulance access difficult.
Rebecca Himschoot and Leach also provided examples of neighbors not being able to work together to take care of private utilities and ending up asking the city for assistance.
But even with those examples, most on the Board of Adjustment returned — as Leach suggested they do — to city code.
“I’m trying to find what the hardship is,” Himschoot said of the reason behind the variance request. “It’s not topographical and it’s not size and shape, so it doesn’t meet the standard.”
Miller agreed, and suggested that if Sitkans want these sorts of variances to pass in the future, then the city should instead consider revising the code.
“For me, it all comes down to that big book,” he said during deliberation. “If we want to change that, we can work on that.”
