At this week’s Mat-Su Borough Assembly meeting, members are likely to vote on whether to refer several ordinances to the Planning Commission for review and guidance. All could impact residents.
Telecommunications towers currently must be set back from property boundaries by a distance equal to the height of the tower. A new proposed ordinance from District 6 Assemblymember Dmitri Fonov would permit the tower setback to be reduced to 25 feet if it is built to fail in a controlled manner. No habitable structures could be within the fall zone on neighboring properties and the design would need to be approved by an engineer. This could remove some limitations to building towers on smaller parcels.
Lake Management Plans are established by communities when 60 percent or more of the responding shoreline property owners agree to move forward. A new proposed ordinance from District 4 Assemblymember Maxwell Sumner would reduce that threshold to 51 percent of all shoreline landowners agreeing to the plan, provided there is currently no legal public access. If public access exists, the new ordinance would trigger the Assembly to ask for an advisory vote at the next Borough election. In addition, the proposed ordinance includes a $1,500 filing fee and requires the petitioner to cover the costs of mailing and advertising for the development of the plan. This could impact how lake management plans are implemented moving forward.
Sumner also proposed repealing the Waterbody Setback standards for one day, which means the Borough will not have standards during that time frame and the more than 700 currently non-compliant structures would be compliant. Two days after the repeal, new standards would go into effect and those structures would be considered legal, non-conforming, effectively grandfathering them in.
All proposed ordinances are on the Assembly agenda this week for referral to the Planning Commission. If approved by the Assembly, the Commission will take them up in the coming months.
