Anchorage zoning board backs letting director approve bigger setback fixes without a hearing

The Anchorage Zoning Board of Examiners and Appeals voted unanimously Thursday to recommend letting the planning director clear setback encroachments of up to 15% without a public hearing, up from the current 5% threshold.

The change trades cost and delay for public process. A minor modification costs $135. A variance runs $710 to $3,965 depending on type and use. Municipal guidance says a board-heard variance typically takes three to four months, planner Elizabeth Appleby told the board. But a minor modification is decided administratively, without the mailed notice and testimony a variance hearing requires. The only recourse is an appeal to the board. The department's memo says 10 variance cases over the past decade could have been minor modifications had the 15% threshold been in place.

The proposal also rewrites three of the eight variance criteria. Criteria A and B would broaden what counts as an extraordinary circumstance, to include survey error or unusual lot shape. Criterion G would clarify that the Americans with Disabilities Act standard applies only where relevant.

The board worked the proposal through two meetings. Alaska News covered its earlier postponement, when members asked for threshold data. The routed draft ordinance still carried 10%, Appleby said, though the department's recommendation has changed to 15%.

The board sent along two changes. Board member Jonathan Lang, a surveyor, asked that the criteria cover construction mistakes too. "As a surveyor, I find errors that the builders make all the time, like not following the stakes that I set or building without getting a survey, and then the survey discovers the errors," Lang said. Appleby agreed the wording should read surveying or construction errors.

Board member Christopher Constant moved to drop new draft language letting the director push a denied minor modification into the full public variance process. "I do think that the way it's drafted now where it has the automatic process that kicks it back to ZBA is adequate," Constant said.

Thursday's meeting took no public testimony. The Planning and Zoning Commission holds a public hearing on the change Sept. 21, and the Anchorage Assembly will make the final call.