Soldotna commissioner asks if Beluga zoning skipped planners; city's rezone plan would go to them first

Planning and Zoning Commissioner Lance Spindler asked Soldotna's planning director Wednesday whether a City Council vote he read about near Beluga Avenue should have come before the commission first. Linda Mitchell, the city's director of economic development and planning, said she did not recognize the project and would look into it.

City records show no such vote. Neither of September's regular council agendas carried a zoning item. What the council did hear, at a Sept. 23 work session where it took no action, was Mitchell's own proposal to rezone the Robin Place corridor, which includes the corner of Beluga and Robin Place. Her presentation calls for Planning and Zoning Commission public hearings before a council ordinance moves forward.

Spindler said he learned of what he took to be a council vote from a local radio news recap last week. He described a mixed-use property near Beluga with both commercial and residential uses, and said the council approved converting more of it to residential use, which made sense to him.

Spindler called himself a relatively new commissioner. He said he thought zoning items like that normally came to the commission first, then moved up to the council. He asked whether the commission should have been involved before the full council voted. He said he did not want to shirk his duties.

Mitchell told him he was not. "I am actually not familiar with what project you're talking about," she said. "Thank you for bringing that to my attention."

At the work session, Mitchell told the council that a parcel at the corner of Beluga and Robin Place obtained a conditional use permit for a fourplex in early 2023, which later expired after the property changed hands. Staff recommend rezoning the corridor, which runs east of Redoubt behind the PC Mall, to limited commercial, a district that allows homes by right without that permit. She said outreach and an open house would come first.

No one at the meeting said whether the recap Spindler read described that proposal. Mitchell said she would follow up with Spindler directly.