Borough Planning Department outlines plans to Talkeetna Community Council

The Mat-Su Borough Planning Services Division unveiled a robust series of goals this month to the Talkeetna Community Council.  Four Borough planners attended the Council’s monthly meeting and presented timelines for their work.

According to Planner Ted Eisheid, The department has not been very active in recent years.  Vacancies have plagued the group but now they are fully staffed.

The team is working towards a revision of the Mat-Su Borough-Wide Comprehensive Plan.  The last revision to the plan was completed in 2005.  Eisheid cautioned the council that the process will be slow, but they hope for a high level of community engagement throughout the creation of the plan.

A new focus for Borough Planners will be the implementation of their Transportation and Walkability Plan.  According to Planner, Adam Bradway, the driving focus is to make walking safer for students and pedestrians near area schools.

“So in the past we haven’t done a great job when we’re planning for walkability around them, and so we’re going back and assessing where the walking paths are and whether they’re safe or not.  So that then we can go in and prioritize building new walking infrastructure.  We actually just recently took a look at Talkeetna Elementary and, not too surprisingly, Talkeetna’s one of the more walkable schools in the Borough.”

The transportation plan, which was created in 2017, also includes a program called One Call – One Click.  This concept aims to provide a central dispatch for local independent transit systems, like Sunshine Transit and Valley Transit. The program will coordinate information and routing for those Borough residents who use public transportation.

Planner Leda Borys, spoke of the group’s involvement in hosting the Arctic Winter Games.

“Arctic Winter Games – it is coming to the Borough in March of 2024 and it’s a really neat international event, that’s held in a variety of locations every two years.  The focus is on heritage sports, which are typically what people think of when they think of Native Youth Olympics.  There are other sports that are big here, like hockey and wrestling and skiing, and biathlon, all sorts of cool things.”

The planning team acknowledged that with the flurry of activity, it could become difficult for the public to stay informed and engaged with their work.  Therefore, they have put together a quarterly electronic newsletter called Planner Platform.  The Planning Team is encouraging anyone who wants to be involved in any of the developing projects to subscribe to the newsletter.