The Borough Comprehensive Plan was last updated in 2005. Since that time, the population has grown nearly 50 percent. The Mat-Su, particularly the Susitna Valley area, is where most of the population is settling.
Borough Senior Planner Kelsey Anderson will oversee updates to this round of the Comprehensive Plan. It is a high-level overview of how the community envisions the Borough over the next 20 years. Suggested actions and policies gathered from the communities will help provide a path for implementing that vision.
Anderson says that some communities like Talkeetna and Willow have their own Comprehensive Plans. Those plans do define road standards, lot sizes, and other particular requirements decided by the residents and businesses in those areas. The Borough-wide Plan will be more of a vision document.
Issues like platting and subdivisions that impact everyone in the Borough will be included in the Comprehensive Plan. She says some of the new developments that are legally skirting the public input process are changing the character of the communities. Suggesting land use policy changes in the Comprehensive Plan might help.
“Through this process we’ll figure out Borough-wide maybe some different ways we want to approach guiding growth and some development standards with subdivisions and things like that. We’re also definitely looking at different policies that the Mat-Su Borough can take on to help promote economic development. I think for the Upper Su, that might be actually a really big way that the Comprehensive Plan could be implemented and seen up there.”
Anderson says that not only will the plan address land use goals, but will also set broad goals for the protection of community assets like recreation, transportation, and public health.
The first phase of the planning process will collect public input throughout November. That data will be compiled through the winter. Residents will have another opportunity to provide input in spring of 2024. Anderson encourages everyone to participate because the Comprehensive Plan is only updated every 20 years.
The Borough invites the Upper Valley public to provide input as the Comprehensive Plan process begins. Borough representatives will be at the Su Valley High School Library on November 16 from six to eight p.m.
