Anchorage weighs making its 49 neighborhood plans advisory only

Anchorage has 49 adopted neighborhood and district plans that currently carry the force of law. The Assembly has asked whether they should be downgraded to advice.

The Planning and Zoning Commission took the question up Monday for the first time — more than a year after the Assembly's reporting deadline passed — and didn't resolve it. Commissioners agreed instead to ask staff to schedule a work session.

At issue is whether those plans keep their place inside the comprehensive plan, where their principles and policies carry the same weight as the city's overarching land-use document, or become guidance a developer or the city can consider and set aside. "Advisory just means that it's not adopted into the comprehensive plan," Long-Range Planning Manager Daniel Mckenna-Foster told the commission. A downgraded plan wouldn't disappear — it "could still be used as guidance," he said — but no one could argue the city has to follow it.

Staff laid out a case that the current system isn't working as designed. Of the 49 plans, nearly 70 percent have never been updated. Whether any of them were actually implemented was never tracked. Some parts of the city have no plan at all.

One commissioner who has done the work says the plans are already toothless. Vice Chair Radhika Krishna, who spent three years as primary author of the Mountain View Targeted Neighborhood Plan, said the label change may just describe reality. "I think these plans are advisory anyway. That is the way that they function. They don't directly lead to a budget allocation," Krishna said — while adding she doesn't want a process that arrives at the same result with less weight behind it.

Not everything would translate cleanly. Planning Director Mélisa Babb noted the city's wetlands plan contains regulatory language that would lose its force if the plan became advisory.

Commissioner Jeff Raun asked staff to explain what the Assembly actually intends by "advisory," and said a work session would help. Krishna asked that an Assembly member willing to carry the question be invited to it. No date has been set.