A Haines ordinance cuts more code than the commission voted to change

The Haines Borough Planning Commission voted in August to trim one sentence of the borough's land-use code. The ordinance now headed back to the commission deletes far more than that, including a provision the commission never voted to touch.

The commission takes it up Thursday, with written comment closing Wednesday.

At issue is the General Use district, the zoning that covers nearly all land outside the Haines townsite, including the Upper Valley neighborhoods now under a rezoning study. On Aug. 20, Commissioner Jerry Lapp moved to strike only the first part of one sentence in the district's intent language, up to a comma, leaving the rest, including its stated aim "to allow as broad a range of land uses as possible." The motion passed unanimously.

The drafted ordinance goes further. Read against its own markup legend, it strikes the entire intent statement, both sentences, including the half the commission voted to keep, and replaces it with new language that drops the "broad a range of land uses as possible" phrasing. It also deletes, in full, a separate subsection stating there are no nonconforming uses in the district. Nothing in the commission's August motion mentioned that provision.

The distinction matters to people already living and working in the Upper Valley. A nonconforming use is one that was legal before a code took effect but wouldn't be allowed under it. Deleting the clause that says the district has none opens the door to exactly that status. "Rezoning will not make those existing uses disappear," resident Lynette Campbell wrote to the borough in August. "Instead, it can turn presently lawful uses into nonconforming uses surrounded by properties operating under a different set of rules."

The borough's agenda says staff drafted the ordinance to reflect the commission's intention and "also took this opportunity to clarify legal ambiguities in the code language." Some of the additions fit that description, writing container homes and yurts in as allowed uses and spelling out agricultural uses. But the two biggest changes, gutting the intent statement and deleting the nonconforming-uses clause, go beyond what the commission actually voted for.

Every written comment on file, four of them, opposes the rezoning. None supporting it appears in the meeting materials.

The rezoning study itself is not up for a vote Thursday. The minutes recording the narrower August motion sit on the same meeting's consent agenda, at the session where the expanded ordinance is up for a recommendation.