Community and Economic Development Committee - August 7, 2025

Wasn't going to jump back into anything. She was going to—. Good morning, everyone. I'd like to call this meeting of the Community and Economic Development Committee of the April Assembly to order. It is Thursday, August 7th, 9:00 AM here at the Kermit Center.

We'll start off with assembly member introductions. I'm George Martinez. Scott Myers on the line.

Member Brawley? She's on her way in. And I know Member Brawley is online and in, so there—. Yeah, sorry, I was finding mute. Thanks.

Right on. Thank you, Member Brawley. Uh, Member Constant? Here. Thank you, sir.

Are there any other members on the line?

Great.

And now we'll move on to, uh, regular reports. I'll just read from the agenda, uh, and then we'll have folks who are in the room representing the item come to speak. So, Planning, Development, and Public Works. We'll start off with Building Services. Thanks, Mr.

Chair. Greg Sulek, Building Services. Um, couple things to report. Um, all right, permit evaluation, just, just shy of $450 million so far for the year. Uh, permitting has been a very robust, uh, year this, this year.

Um, we just completed our first of our semiannual surveys, so we expect to have those results back The protocol historically has been to email everyone who has obtained a permit from Building Services to ask for their feedback. We've seen a pretty marked decline in our responses on that, so we're going to change our methodology here by— basically, we're going to be putting QR codes on all permit placards and at the permit counter and on the exit doors so people can give us better feedback in real time. So we have to get a little more feedback from the public from that. Um, let's see, um, we are currently developing our 2026 budget. Um, I won't go into the all the details, but one of the highlights of that will be to, uh, we have a request for an additional permit tech.

You continue to see a lot of turnover in that, uh that particular section and having an extra position there, I think, would go a long way towards keeping the permit counter operational. Um, I have, uh, Daniel King here. He was going to talk about, uh, our mobile dwelling units, the initiatives we're doing with that. And then after Daniel, Scott is going to help with some of the enforcement issues. So hang it out with me.

Great. We're working on a policy for— I'm sorry, Daniel King, Development Services. We're working on a policy currently to align with the intent of the zoning updates to allow stick-built construction and modular construction in mobile home park communities, manufactured housing communities, or as now we're going to call them, relocatable dwelling unit communities.

The benefit being that a lot of times, if someone needs to rebuild something in a mobile home park, they can't because it's not going to be compliant anymore. And so now it has to be stick-built. Stick-built is not allowed to have non-permanent foundations. We recognize that's been a problem. So the policy will update that so that manufactured housing communities— the section on manufactured housing will extend to stick-built construction.

For certain sizes, so they'll match up with what's allowed. Um, to make it simpler, we're also working on language. So if you have to rebuild completely from scratch, um, we're trying to make it prescriptive so that it is not as difficult for them to get a designer on board to design these dwelling units, because we recognize that it's very expensive to get a designer. So if we make it very prescriptive, um, cookie cutter, so that it shows how long walls need to be and what the size of the windows are allowed to be, then it'll be easier for them to show us what they're going to do, and we can approve it and it can get built. Um, there's a question for you, remember, Jones?

Oh, if you're done. Yeah, so we say that we're going to allow stick build construction. Will those be on permanent foundations, or—. They will not. Okay, those communities aren't allowed to have permanent foundations for a reason, uh, but we're going to keep them to this modular construction, or sorry, uh, manufactured housing construction, so that it could be put on the back of a truck and driven to a new location.

That's the intent of these communities, is that they're movable. No, that's the intent of this tonight. Cool, thank you.

Yeah, thank you. Hey, uh, hi, I'm Scott Campbell, Development Services, uh, Chief of Inspection, and I oversee the code abatement group. Uh, we're continuing to see, uh, quite a few vacant and abandoned buildings every day. I had 2 yesterday that we responded to, another one that we found as we were boarding the one up next door was vacant as, as well, we realized. Um, so there continues to be an uptick in DNAs.

Uh, we have had several complaints with some of our larger apartment complexes in town recently. Um, we've noticed there's some significant damage in quite a few fire-rated assemblies in these establishments. Um, it's very critical when you consider the fact that a lot of these places are 50 units or more. So as we can see from some of the fires in the past, fires when they happen in places like this, if the fire rate of assemblies are compromised, the fire spreads to the building quickly. Um, so we're continuing to keep our foot on making sure that some of our local, um, and our landlords make sure that the places are maintained.

Um, what else? We do have some enforcement actions on some larger, um, more blighted structures that you see quite a bit around town, but some more information will come out about that later. And I just wanted to thank the assembly, um, and all their efforts with Zach and Aaron and George, Chris, all of you guys for helping us, um, provide some new code languages that will hopefully be introduced soon that'll give us some more tools in our toolbox to, um, help mitigate some of the issues around town. So I just— I wanted to make sure and pass along appreciation to the assembly for helping us gather that information. Thank you.

Question from Mr. John. I appreciate your willingness to work with us on this. Yeah, absolutely. Um, you mentioned fire rate assembly. Are we talking sprinkler systems?

Is that Ceiling tiles, drywall. Okay. Yeah, we're seeing a lot of ceiling tiles and drywall that's knocked out of some of these places. So, and then we're having these multiple apartment buildings that are, are suffering this deficiency. But I, I assume when it reaches a certain level, about, um, high enough safety risk, that Fire Marshal's office or others get involved.

But they cross this to the point where it's like, clearly this is not So typically, I needed inspections. We, when we do these fire-rated assemblies to where they're extent, we always bring Long Fire with us. So it is a dual enforcement action. So we both have code enforcement running alongside of it. Um, so far we haven't had to post the notice to vacate on any of these buildings.

Um, the owners are, are working with us. Um, but it is one of those maintenance issues that have gone on for a long time. And it's an expectation that a property owner who has 50 units, they maintain this fire separation because it can be very critical if something doesn't. Yeah, so it is a maintenance issue that they fail.

Thank you. Glad you guys are on it. Thanks for the clarification. Yeah, no problem. This is Preeti Kaur.

Question, Greg, you mentioned $450 million evaluation of permitting this year, which sounds fantastic. Off the top of your head, do you know about where we were at this point last year? You, uh, we are approximately 30% higher this time last year. We were at $349 million, so $349 million, yeah, so about $350 million, so we're about $100 million over the difference. And just to follow up on that, I have a question.

What do those permits represent? As I say, last week, or I'm sorry, last month, we did— we have seen a really good uptake on multifamily, but it's across the board. It's additions, alterations, new construction, commercial, residential, institutional, governmental. So I don't have the full breakdown here, but I think— oh, actually, you were not here last week, so Yeah, I had some numbers for the—. I'll go back in a second.

I'm interested in the where, essentially, to get to the where. The where. Yeah, like $450 million in the ocean, like $450 million, like a big number in a small pond represents probably a tremendous thing. Across the whole city, I don't know what it really represents necessarily, right? And so multifamily where I think is important to me.

And I wanted to actually overlap that with the question I had for Scott, but not necessarily now, but it would be the, the where are we, where are we seeing the bulk of multifamilies or the bulk of the VNAs, the permits, where are we seeing action happening? Because I'm interested in the work that we're doing with respect to The code changes that we've made where people are picking up the interest, and then also we're looking at the transit support corridors as the next phase of work coming down the line. I'm wondering about the proximity to those types of alignments. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yeah, so that $450 million number is uni-wide. Yeah, we've seen construction all throughout Eagle River and all the way down to Kirkwood Bend. Um, that question I think would be, you know, something we could look at doing as like a GIS map that might not be public-facing per se. But, um, could I jump in? Sure.

I don't want to commit, but I think that would be a good question for Mike Knapp from the GDIC. Not sure how well the permit database, how easily accessible that information is. But Mike and his folks are wizards. I'll chat with them and see if there's a way that they could display that information graphically. Mr.

Chair, I'll be very— I can't commit to anything, but I'll talk with them. That'd be great. Also, perhaps in some of these, uh, we've been demoing, um, potential software vendors, and a lot of these new software, they have, they have that functionality where actually You can actually mine that data and it'll put it on a GIS. We don't have it published that way now. That would be something I would do.

Man, that's a problem. Yeah, thanks. Just to follow on to that too, maybe in the meantime, just getting a list by zip code or something that, that's easier to pull out, because I think that's really what, what you're getting at as well, is kind of what part of town. So that might be the interim way to do that and then work on the map as a, as a fuller project. Yeah, so just to follow up on it, it's also interesting what part of town people see with respect to what types of development they imagine going.

And a lot of what we're talking about in Anchorage is where old ideas meet new opportunities. And I'm wondering where people are seeing those opportunities and where they, where they find them. And then also we want them to go other spaces. And so we want to figure out how to better incentivize potentially where we want them to go. Well, you know, this information is basically available on the dashboard, but would you compare to last year?

I think we had our multifamily dwelling units, we saw, I don't know, 50. Um, so far this year on multifamily, meaning 5 or more, we're to over 100. So some of those incentives are working, I believe. Um, and we're on pace to equal our single family. We had 200 single-family new construction last year, and we're at just over 100 now.

So, you know, what we will continue to see those throughout the year. So, we get into that number range. Thank you. Appreciate it. Um, great question.

Can you give us an update on where we are with the pre-approved plans? Uh, former Member Cross reached out and asked me, and I said I'd ask him here. So, the chair, um, so the pre-approved plans right now are only going to be applicable to ADUs. And we do not have those yet. So that's, uh, Claire Ross is working on that program, and she, I believe, has a couple of designs that, uh, that she got from the consultants.

So we will be getting those pre-approved. We don't have anything going on right now.

Yes, Greg's correct. We have, um, we're working with Claire currently. We have 2 designers currently that we're working with. One is local and the other one is from Washington, I believe. They sent us preliminary concepts, concepts for what their design is going to be, but they need to now provide us the final designs, the calculation package, so we can do our reviews.

And then we'll be able to post those. Okay. Um, these could technically be used, um, by somebody that doesn't want an ADU, but they want a single-family residence. So technically, you would be able to use this if you wanted to have a tiny house. Um, but primarily we see these as being used for ADUs, and we have a concept together for helping people do that as an ADU.

We don't have that necessarily for a single-family dwelling. But it could be a really tiny lot too. Yeah, yeah, just to follow up on that.

And I wanted to be clear to go back to the ADU or to the additional modular non-permanent dwelling structures in the mobile park. Relocatable dwelling unit. Sure, right on. That is not a good name, but yeah, but that. Yeah.

The ADUs would work there. Is that where those preapproved plans would also work into that? As long as they align in size and shape, they can fit on the lot, and you wouldn't need to put a permanent foundation underneath it in a mobile dwelling park. And so the non-permanent foundation aspect is only an exemption for permanent— for the mobile parks? Yes, in the R-5 zone.

That's really the crux of the whole thing. Permanent versus non-permanent foundations. Yeah, the building code requires for a permanent use, for a permanent lot, for a permanent house, that it have a permanent foundation with the intent that when you buy a house, you know that it's not going to shift, you know that it's not going to move. When you're in a mobile home park, none of them have foundations. You recognize that the cribbing may shift up and down due to, uh, earthquake, due to frost heat, those kind of things you address onsite for it.

So, the expectation is for a single-family lot, you have a permanent foundation for your permanent installation. It is a permanent house. For a mobile park, it is temporary. You may move that. It's yours, you own it.

You can move it to a different park here, different park there, and you are expected to have some maintenance to lift it and drop it and change it as necessary. All right. And, Frank, yes, sir. I have one clarification. So, Any ADUs are going to be basically outside of the R-5 zone.

So those will be required to have permanent foundations still. Anything inside the R-5 zoning, which is where mobile home parks are allowed, will have to be on non-permanent foundations.

Why? Why is it required to not have a permanent foundation? Yeah, so, yeah, we passed the HOME initiative. If you live in—. Wait, just let me follow up.

We passed the HOME initiative. And it gives people the ability to essentially turn an R-1 into a duplex with the ADU.

But I don't have the ability to roll an ADU on that and actually get going. So I have to do a whole other rigamarole. What's the rigamarole? Permanent? Would be a pretty big rigamarole versus rolling up a unit.

Yeah. I would say the difference is that, um, the ADU on a single-family lot is intended to be a permanent installation, right? Um, in mobile home park, it's not a permanent installation. That, that is the big difference here. When you buy a house on a property, you expect that permanent installation.

And the difference being, if you demoed the primary structure and all you're left with is the ADU, that is now the primary structure. That primary structure will not have a permanent foundation underneath it. If you don't require permanent foundations for ADUs, there's no such thing as an ADU. It is a made-up term. It is a dwelling unit.

So you need to recognize that a primary unit and an accessory dwelling unit are the same thing when, when you're looking at it as a permanent installation.

Oh, also, I think planning can also speak to this because that Was part of the ordinance, the initial ordinance that was written. And subsequently removed, um, did not allow non-permanent foundations outside of the R-5. I would love to understand the background more than that. That's not adequate. That's a technical answer that I'm more interested in.

If we want, essentially, we're rolling back barriers. And that seemed like an arbitrary barrier. To me as a person who's thinking, we want everybody to say, put something in my backyard and I can make more. I have another unit available. It seems like that's an arbitrary distinction at this time where we're rolling back stuff.

I think there's a lot of concern that, you know, we would get significant pushback on something like that. What is the limit on an accessory dwelling unit not requiring a permanent foundation and a primary dwelling unit not requiring permanent foundation? And that is, that is the crux of this problem is If you have, if you add an ADU to your lot, because you have a primary unit, you make this little unit. Once you demo your primary unit, your ADU is no longer accessory. It's your primary unit on the lot.

It doesn't have a permanent foundation. Sounds like a good offline conversation. I don't— these were the answers are too quick for me at this point, because the question is really essentially, 'Cause I could keep rolling with that. We just bulldoze a whole home on a property, it's a VNA property, and it seems like we can roll 5 of these units up on it and call it 5 housing units. Why wouldn't that be a good idea?

Terry. So, well, I don't wanna get into it. I'd rather leave it rhetorically at this point. Because people ask these questions, no one watches these meetings. So I'm asking these questions so that over time we can maybe get answers, and maybe the answer of the why today changes over time.

But I think you all, you all have a technical why, but it's not going to suffice my curiosity. So I think a deeper analysis of the curiosity meets curiosity of other people in the community who essentially don't see a distinction between our anything or whatever. They just see space and opportunity.

Thank you. Appreciate that.

And next on the list, who's speaking up next? More, Mr. Chair. Kent Cole, Public Works. Uh, so I'll touch on Maintenance and operations, PFD, and traffic.

But first, in the broad public works arena, I know we've talked about this before. The administration continues to work with DOT regarding obtaining full management authority of 5th and 6th Avenue and I Street and L Street. Um, those— there's progress. Uh, the DOT commissioner is engaged with Federal Highways and, um, offered our mutual interest in meeting with them to talk about how we might continue to move this forward. So that's promising.

There's no meeting set up yet, but FedHighways did respond and say they're interested in sitting down with us. So hopeful that that will continue. There's a lot of effort going into that. On the department-specific front, in maintenance and operations, I'll just touch on some of the high-point projects that they have underway right now. First of all, they're, they're in their second round of street sweeping, so hopefully the streets are Looking good.

The rain will help keep the dust down a little bit. Um, some of the key facilities projects are working on— they're in the design phase of the new treatment center at Alaska, the Golden Lion facility. They're in early design on the downtown library. For those of you who've driven through the campus here, you'll see that the underground storage tank at Transit is being installed. That's a A big project that's been in the works for several years.

It's critically needed to provide fuel for the equipment over there. We were living with a pile driver running 8 hours a day or 10 hours a day, but it's all for a good cause. Several roof replacements and then street maintenance. Along with the maintenance work they do, they take on a few small capital projects every year. This year they're doing paving, repaving of streets, Angela Lace.

Zodiac Manor, Boundary Drive in East Anchorage, which is in your district, Mr. Chair. In the PM&E world, it's, uh, all construction all day. Number of projects underway there. The big ones I think would be the Northwood Snowdoke.

You'll see the second phase of that on the addendum agenda for next Tuesday. That's to award the second phase, the final phase of that project to, uh, Bass Excavation. And the intent is to have that facility open for snow deposits this winter. So that'll be a real boon for Paul and his folks. Dowling Street between Elmore and Lake Otis is kicking off.

That is probably now closed to traffic and is going to be resurfaced. 42Nd Avenue, I mentioned that at the last meeting, that's underway over here. I apologize, I don't remember whose district that's in, but that's been a long— been a high priority project for that community council, and it'll be well received when they're done living with the disruption of construction. Then the last one I think I'll mention, unless there are questions, PM&N world, is Forest Park. That's the resurfacing of Forest Park from Northern Lights up to Hipkins and the inclusion of some bike facilities along with that, the scope of that project.

And then in the traffic engineering department, really the There's a— their big effort right now is, of course, striping. They're out doing that full-time, and they work very closely with PM&E on a number of traffic calming things, except for any construction this year. That is the Public Works world. That answer any questions that anybody might have, or try to answer questions? Yes, ma'am.

Uh, yeah, I have two comments and a question. One is, um, thank you for all the work on Ford Park Drive. I've heard a lot of good feedback from neighbors, and course, a couple grumpy ones as well, but it seems like on the whole people are happy about it. And then one item that I'm not asking a question about, but just want to bring up, I've heard some complaints and seen it myself sometimes, folks driving really motorized, like motorcycles and things on trails, things that go beyond e-bike or beyond e-scooter. I asked Parks about this as well, and it sounds like there's been not incidents, but some issues.

So I'm curious, from the right-of-way side, I did contact the traffic folks, you know, like if you're driving a motorcycle on the downtown sidewalk, that's a problem, right? So anyway, I just wanted to flag that as an issue. It seems like it's coming up. And then my question is, um, I'm curious because I remember hearing, um, probably last year that we have a lot of essentially bond projects that voters have approved that are in the queue but haven't, um, you know, there's only so much capacity to do. So I'm just curious, like, what is our backlog or just in general kind of how many bond projects do we have that still need to move through the process even though they've been approved and maybe the bonds haven't been sold yet.

So, so I know that's a question on the bond side, but really more kind of what is our stack of projects as we're thinking ahead to, to the next year, budget year, you know, how much are we asking voters to approve and then how much do we still have to clear out of our queue, right? I, I don't, I wouldn't be able to answer that here, but we can gather that if Okay, yeah, I think it's something we should have by the end of the month. Thanks. Yeah, and, and thank you. And just to follow up, I don't know if it's in, in this particular space, but that question is also raised around trail repair.

They were having bond dollars associated with certain parts of trail repair. There's not work happening, um, and so it raises the question of the stack of, you know, how backlog are we meeting the community expectations. I can reach out to Shannon Gamble. And I know there's been changes there as well, but, um, the Chester Creek Trail, once you get east of, of East Chester essentially, and you start getting closer to the east side, the trail is forgotten. I mean, it's there, uh, there's orange there.

Somebody went out there and did orange stripings on all the holes, um, and it is orange. I thought it was the orange road to, uh, somewhere else, but, uh, it's not friendly on that side of the road, and people have been reaching out essentially about that. I know they have acknowledged it. I don't know if we get to— I will find out. Thank you.

Uh, I did have a follow-up question to you also about— maybe I missed this in the past though, but the, the streets that we're focused on with respect to DOT and municipal control Are these the downtown corridor streets? Because when I hear them, that's all I hear. And it would be nice to talk about if that is true, how are we citing these projects? Or these intentions, so with respect to 5th and 6th and I and L, the— it's an interesting— there's an interesting history there. The municipality owns the rights of way for those streets.

And, but for a long time, up until 10 years ago, I think both DOT and the municipality believed that DOT owned the underlying right-of-way of the streets. And that's because of some confusion over the Omnibus Act in 1959 and subsequent transfer of rights away. But it turns out that we own those rights away. But because DOT had management authority of those streets for, for history up until Well, even now, they spent Federal Highways dollars to do improvements on those streets. And once federal money is spent on streets, there are some very tight strings that go along with what we have the ability to do in the way of non-motorized— not motorized, non-transportation-related activities such as signs and the rights-of-way for businesses, things like that.

So, um, when both, both sides became aware of the of that, that conundrum that we actually own the right-of-way, but we can't manage this right-of-way that we own. That's why those streets in particular, and really 5th and 6th were the ones that were the impetus, we became very interested in gaining management control of those streets so that we could do the things that the administration and the assembly are interested in doing downtown in the way of economic revitalization. The rest of the streets in town, we generally know the ownership and there's no dispute or confusion over the ownership. With respect to state roads such as Tudor and A Street and C Street. But we're focusing on 5th and 6th because those— there's this underlying situation where they are actually our streets that we own, but we don't have the legal authority right now to manage.

Excellent. And one follow-up to that would be, essentially I heard two things: clarifying the confusion of management control over 5th and 6th, because there's an economic intentionality of having control for economic development purposes. Correct. All right. And so with respect to this, the latter, the economic development purpose, how do we use that rubric, or do we use that rubric to look at other roads that don't have necessarily confusion, but that have significant economic development opportunity, and without strong alignment to the state, we've seen no economic opportunity like Moldu.

You know, I don't speak for the administration, but I would observe that there are larger challenges. For example, the first hurdle would be getting DOT to agree to give up that right of way. It's part of their They're responsible right now for the major highway system through Anchorage. I don't know if those are part of the NHS. I suspect they are, but the first hurdle is getting them to agree that they would be willing to give up the ownership of that right-of-way.

And then the, the other side of that, Mr. Chair, the other part of that is just money. Um, we historically, when we have taken over control of DOT streets, because we have traded streets in the past where it makes sense, where We, we think that it's better for us to own the street than them, and they think the same for one of theirs. We had mutual exchanges of rights. Our position generally is that we don't accept ownership of a street unless it's been built or rebuilt to standard, because we immediately inherit deferred maintenance operations.

So, and I don't know the condition of Muldoon and Tudor, so to speak, but we're always cognizant of not taking on a kind of an unfunded liability. Beyond that, with respect to discussions with the state and the administration regarding these major thoroughfares, I'm not sure what— I don't know that anything's happening right now. And I'll close on one final note on that. There is some degree of confusion with respect to sidewalks, state roads, and maintenance, like on Muldoon, of the Muldoon wall. That says Muldoon that's constantly hit by cars, and no one knows who maintains that often.

The Muldoon wall, the, the sign at the bar there, we— I think both parties believe that that is the municipality's maintenance obligation. And I know Paul Van Linehan is aware of that. The, the current issue I think has been hit here, and he was going to send folks out to take a look at it. I'm not sure the stats of that, but I can find out. The, the rest of Muldoon, the sidewalks, and there's some small retaining walls along Boldoon.

They were built 20 or so years ago, and at that time the municipality and DOT entered into a 20-year agreement for maintenance because they, they were required to do those things as in to conform with some intent of Title 21 or other desires of the municipality. So we obligated to maintain them. For 20 years. That agreement does expire. So those are currently the obligation of the state.

I appreciate that because there are probably others like that, and I would love to get an inventory of those other sorts of patchwork agreements that made sense at a time that will inherit the liabilities now and have to figure out a better way. Thank you. I appreciate it. Um, real estate, are we there, or is there anything else with traffic? Okay, uh, nothing else on traffic.

Glad to answer any questions that folks may have. I don't see any questions. Thank you. Um, Tiffany, real estate. Good morning, Tiffany Briggs, real estate department.

Um, couple quick updates. The archives RFP, I don't remember if I mentioned last time, but the— we extended the due date for proposals to September 30th. To give people a little bit more time. And then we also did an additional question period that ends today, actually. Questions can also be submitted outside of the official question period, but all those just need to be routed through purchasing.

And then the ASD Muldoon full site has officially— management authority has officially been signed off and transferred back to General Real Estate Services inventory. That has been updated in Property Appraisal. I think it takes 24 hours for it to show publicly, but internally it's all been switched over.

First of all, thank you. Thank you for the update. To know for everyone, anyone tuning in now, listening now, hadn't paid attention to this. When the school district started having the public conversation of right-sizing, this committee asked them to bring in their real estate portfolio because right-sizing means that they could not also be real estate speculators, and in the past they had been. Sitting on properties like this, the, um, the Totem Theater property off of 36th and Muldoon for some time based on projections that population size would increase enough that we would need a new school in that area.

There are other sites across town that follow the same MO. With respect to the school district. And, uh, this site had been of interest to some folks in the past about some potential housing, workforce housing. And we saw the opportunity to introduce that conversation. I appreciate the school district and the school board for moving with, um, urgency on it.

And now hopefully we can, we can interest with the tax incentive stuff that we're doing real opportunity for workforce housing and affordable housing. So appreciate that, the update, and that's what happens when we talk to each other and we meet at committee and we can see what's, what's happening and find opportunities. So, uh, thank you. One other note, if you were paying attention to the budget conversation recently, uh, the housing fund compensation is back into interest, and so I just wanted to flag for real estate that the interest of figuring out how to get resources to lower barriers for folks that started with some appropriation 2 years ago, that interest is coming back, and that's exciting. Thank you.

And ACDA, have any updates? And I see chat with us. Thank you. Please introduce yourself. Howdy, members.

Good morning, folks. Chad Stovall, I'm the director for ACPK, sitting in for Mike today, so it's my pleasure to give the reports. Um, several efforts moving forward on our Housing Accelerator program. I'll talk about a few elements of that. Um, we have an expectation— we're working with ADA and Lassen Grove Capital on a bond for interim financing, construction financing, uh, to move, uh, housing projects along here and subsidize interest rates on those.

So, uh, we've had great meetings, we've had a lot of leadership involved in that. We have expectations that we will achieve that, um, so nothing to report, uh, detrimental to that effort, but things are moving along there. Um, we're also working with Mr. Sule staff here on the, um, Anchorage— Anchorage Neighborhood Redevelopment Initiative. Sorry, I always have trouble with that acronym there. So, um, our board's authorized us to acquire a number of those properties, and we hope to use those to attract capital and work with partners that do housing for us to put more doors online here.

Another element of that that we're going to start up—. We're not going to start, but we're going to actually take a look at—. Is we're going to work with the National Cooperative Foundation out of Washington, D.C., and the UAA Center for Economic Development to do a cooperative housing webinar to highlight some of the best practices that have been happening around the lower 48 of the country, talk about those finance mechanisms that could activate that here in our market to see see how the market responds to that and if there's interest to pursue that. Um, excuse me, another element of our housing initiatives here is on the micro units. Our RFP is closed for that.

We're in final negotiations with our finalists. We hope to have that wrapped this week and make an announcement next week. But that's moving along. We're excited. We're still holding to our October 15th deadline to have that project online.

So hope to have success in that. More on the community and economic development side here, Third Ingra, which is our RV resort that we're working on, we're in drafting of our RFP. We're also working with our industry experts to help us work that project up, and we hope to have that out in the next few weeks, that project. We're also doing some overlap, or excuse me, some participation with Choogatcha Electric. They've approached us about placing renewable energy assets on some of our properties.

As a way to diversify their energy portfolio and take advantage of some of the subsidies that still remain in the federal budget, albeit small as they may be now. So, and then we're also working on a robust student engagement effort that highlights STEM outreach opportunities, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics opportunities for our school district, for our university partners to have outlets for things like virtual reality, AI, and then 3D concrete printing as part of the material science effort here. And, and activating that, not necessarily for housing, but just for those STEM outlets. We hope down the road we can see products such as housing come out of that effort. Um, we had a great, uh, visit with some of our congressional delegation leadership.

Um, they'd like us to start meeting with them regularly on maybe a quarterly basis to coordinate with their local state directors to better understand what federal opportunities are coming down the pipe, about how we could, uh, have it, um, insights on funding policy and leveraging opportunities coming, you know, possibly for not only housing but for infrastructure and new workforce development opportunities generally. Also working with some of our tribal partners on a Village in the City initiative, which is exciting because there's aspects of tourism, housing, cultural impacts there. So very early in those discussions with broad participation, a lot of excitement about that. Then just lastly, we are expanding our development team here. It's all the projects that we're starting to get into.

We have to do that, so we hope to have a person on our development staff here and the council. So appreciate the opportunity. Before I answer any questions for ACDA, I don't see any questions. Uh, we have a question or comment? No, uh, um, a mistake on my part, Mr.

Chair. Oh, oh, oh, we're back. Mr. Wilbur's out of the office and he handed this to me and I failed. Uh, I jumped into the public works side of the house without allowing, uh, staff to comment on what's going on in the planning room. Right, so we'll go back to make sure that— no questions for you.

Thank you for the update, um, appreciate that. Hey, Lisa. Hey, Lisa Bass, Planning Director, for the record. Um, thank you, Tara. Um, I will try to keep this quick.

We have a lot happening right now. Um, I'll hit some of the highlights and then maybe hand it off to our loan rate Planning Manager, to talk about some of the upcoming code changes and efforts in that department, in that division. To start with, on the 26th, you'll see a petition for a rezone come your way. It's in Finn Creek for the Alaska Railroad. They are asking to rezone a parcel down under the, the A.C. Bridge.

Into their planned community district. It will look a little bit different from some of the rezoning that you've seen recently because it's rezoning back to an AO, a PCD that was established in 2006. So it's a little bit older than our current Title 21, and some of the references are a little out of date, but I'll be working with the railroad on that aspect of things. Later after this rezone to try to address some of the issues with the overall PCDP, Planned Community District. And that's something that we're trying to figure out at a later date.

So this is just a simple rezone in order to allow them to reclass their property.

Additionally, you may have seen in our planning newsletter, if you're receiving our planning newsletter, um, that there are 2 director's guidance memos, 2 new memos out. Uh, one of them is titled, uh, Title 21 Non-Conformities and Permitting for Construction for Site Development for Residential Uses. And the intent of that one is to, um, allow the planning director to issue a notice of zoning deficiency so that property owners can correct non-health and safety nonconformity issues at a later date if they're trying to remodel or build an ADU or do anything like that on their property. So it's still, it's still noticed as a violation, but they don't have to remedy that situation immediately if they are trying to work on a different project. So, um, the other memo addresses an error in code, um, that a strict interpretation of this particular piece implies that you are only allowed to have an accessory dwelling unit for certain very specific residential uses.

The memo clarifies that you can actually have an ADU for all residential uses. So we will also be drafting an AODA to send your way to correct that error. But in the meantime, we will be permitting ADUs for all residential uses.

Go ahead. Good chair, if I could. Daniel Foster, Long Range Planning. Just give a quick overview of some of the ordinances we have coming up on sort of some zoning changes. The mobile relocatable dwelling units, a lot of discussion with that term.

Sure, there will be more. That should be going to the assembly in August, early September. Also the nonconformities AO, which allows a little more flexibility when you're working on a property and there's some zoning nonconformities. More—. You're allowed to do more of your project without having to go through the process of, um, sort of fixing those.

That came up in the site access discussion about driveways, so that'll come back. And that part of site access was sort of tied to this nonconformance discussion, so bringing that back. Uh, the transport development overlay is moving forward. We had a—. Went to Planning and Zoning in July, come back to Planning and Zoning in September, September 6th.

That's continuing to hear. We've also been having, um, we had one working group meeting I'm going to put in the chat just our project page. We're trying to keep all the information there, all the data. We have the maps updated and any versions. We have a new version of that TSDO which changed something slightly, and we're trying to solicit as much feedback on that as we can.

There's the fees update which is coming up next week. There's some interesting stuff in there in terms of rezones and making it a little bit easier to rezone when your rezone is implementing the comprehensive plan. Taking that burden off the property owner, the comprehensive plan, make it a little bit easier to do that. Um, we also have coming up a large-scale parks rezone. So we have a lot of properties throughout the municipality that are zoned— they're used as parks, always known as parks, but it's R2M or PLI.

This is getting all those into PR, the PR zoning, to protect those as parks. Um, and then we're also looking at getting rid of some of what we're calling our legacy rezones, stuff like T, TR, B4, D2, these sort of mystery zones that only exist in code pre-2014, but there are a number of properties around town that still have that. So we have a new planner who's working on that, doing a great job. Um, so that will allow us to retire the pre-2014 version of Title 21, which is a, a big thing for us. Um, and then also we've been having a lot of discussions about temporary uses, thinking about, well, temporary uses— there's some interest downtown in allowing more flexibility to temporary uses as properties are in pre-development or post-demolition and allowing them to activate the site.

And also, bowl-wide, as we look at the recovery residences and a lot of mobile flexibility with that. So, and of course, we also have ADU and omnibus to bring that up. So that'll be a little bit further in the future. Questions? Yes, member Brown.

Um, yeah, thanks. Um, and I am really interested in the non-conforming ordinance, so I'm going to finally read that. I know it's been in my inbox for a while. Um, and I know it's process. My question is, I know we've heard, I think it was last summer, a bunch of ADU applications essentially got stuck in the process.

So I just wonder, um, what kind of order of magnitude is this issue of nonconformities with existing buildings still a problem? Are there some process improvements that have been kind of— where are we at maybe a year after that initial issue? So, um, I know Dan King wants to speak to, um, how the ADUs are getting stuck in the process. Um, and the magnitude of that, but I can say that the pairing of this AO with the Director's Guidance that we just issued should address most of those issues. So, the intent behind both of those is to allow people to complete those projects without getting caught up in the process.

And the AO addresses certain aspects of Title 21. 1 To correct that issue. And then the director's guidance addresses sort of the timing of how people— when people are required to address what are clear violations that may not be related to what they're trying to achieve with their current project. Yeah, thanks. And I think just to put this on the record again, I think we made a lot of zoning changes in the last 20 to 30 years after most of our housing stock was built, or building stock in general.

So that is a huge problem that we have to, um, address. And so that's why I think this is really important. So thank you.

If there are any additional questions, uh, say that term again. Which—. Relocatable term? It's relocatable dwelling units that no longer has mobile in the name. RDU.

RDU. Yeah, it's called redo. That's what y'all was saying, Ricky. I would just say it's interesting that you all utilize different ways to say improving code. Error in code is my favorite.

I think that it's a really interesting way to think about what's wrong with code. There was an error in the code. And so I think that's interesting. And, um, thank you for your work. Thank you for the report, and we look forward to seeing those, uh, other pieces coming forward.

Thank you, chair. Thank you. Cool. Um, now we're going into— we don't have any unfinished business today, but we have a few presentations, and we'll go into the first presentation with, uh, Nolan Cloud is here, and we'll have a presentation on AO 2025-84, property tax incentives for vacant and abandoned homes. Right, thank you, Mr.

Chair. Um, for the record, Nolan Clowder with the Mayor's Office. So wanted to, uh, give a— give the CEDC an opportunity to hear more detail about what we've proposed for this tax, uh, or this tax incentive ordinance. Um, uh, next slide, please. Uh, there's two components to the AO, and this is on the agenda for Tuesday.

This was introduced on the, on the 15th, I believe, on July 15th. And so, and then, and so it's a continued public hearing for next Tuesday. There's two components to this AO, and one is that it creates a new chapter in code that's 1280, which is, which is for incentives for rehabilitating vacant properties in Anchorage. And then the other part of it is modifying and coming up with a few tweaks to 1260, which is the multifamily property tax incentive ordinance that was passed in April. There's a few issues that have come up since then that we can work out that have been flagged by departments and by a few developers that have looked at the incentive and that are applying for it.

So I'll talk about each of those. Next, please. So first of all, you know, there's a lot of alignment between the mayor's 10,000 Homes in 10 Years strategy and the assembly's Housing Action Plan that we need to do something to encourage redevelopment and repair and rehabilitation of our existing housing stock. It's pretty, you know, I probably don't need to justify that too much to this group. I think we know that Anchorage has an aging housing stock, that we have a lot of empty homes.

And when we're in a situation where we don't have enough homes, it's kind of— it feels like a missed opportunity to see so many that are boarded up. And then, of course, boarded-up properties cause other problems. Nuisance uses become targets of arson and crime and just deterioration in neighborhoods. So the obvious, you know, effort behind this is to improve that situation, get those homes lived in and utilized. Next slide, please.

So, so what this incentive that the newly created incentive is establishing is a 10-year property tax exemption for rehabilitating vacant and abandoned properties. And those are, those are, those are, you know, on the V&A registry. And I know this group is very familiar with the V&A registry, but those are the, those are homes that are vacant and abandoned, often boarded up. And so if you, so it applies to those properties, they have to be residential properties. There are some commercial ones on there, but this applies to residential properties and it's agnostic as to whether they're single or multifamily or whether they're going to be owner-occupied or renter-occupied.

It has to be on the V&A list, structure built on or before 1995, so 30 years old at this point, no major renovation in the past 15 years, and the applicant must spend at least 15% of the assessed value of the structure, or if it's a multi-family structure, at least $3,000 per unit, whatever, whichever is greater between the 15 percent of the $3,000. So, so we want people to be able to— we want to make sure that people are spending a certain amount of money, that there's a certain amount of investment going into it that is somewhat commensurate with the amount of incentive that we're going to give them, the 10-year property tax abatement. We did do some math on this too to see if those are roughly equal, that we're giving a tax break that's roughly equal to what's being invested into it too. So there is some logic behind those numbers. 15% Is also a common threshold that's used by HUD for defining rehabilitation.

So it's an existing definition that we've leveraged there. Next, please.

So the exemption applies to the buildings, not the land. So the land would remain taxed, just like with the other multifamily incentives. So we're keeping that on the tax base. They—. There's some requirement that they have to get their certificate of occupancy within 5 years of the provisional approval, you know, to put some kind of a time limit on it.

The assessor The next step over would be the approval. So this would be something that could be approved just like the multifamily incentive at the level of the assessor. And then there's an appeal above that for people that don't like the decision that was made. And then annual reports are provided to the assembly, just like with our other incentives. So you can see what's in progress as far as applications, what the dollar value of the incentives is, who just got them.

So that information would be made available to the assembly in a formal process. Next, please. So vacant and abandoned properties, I think you guys are pretty familiar with that list, but it's mandated in code and it's got a definition of it. If it isn't being put to a commercial residential use the last 180 days, you know, it's either self-reported, the owner says, hey, this is vacant, and then they agree to do what's necessary to secure the property, or they're identified by code abatement. And my understanding you know, from talking to Scott is that it's typically— I think it's much more common that code enforcement identifies these properties are often nuisance properties, right?

They generate a lot of complaints. Now, one thing about this incentive also is that if there's a tax incentive associated with it, we think that the number of vacant and abandoned properties is probably much larger than what's on the registry. Having this tax incentive does give owners something of an incentive to actually self-report, which could be another positive effect from this too. Next, please.

So a little bit about some of the homes that are on here. So, you know, Anchorage has an aging housing stock about overall about half of our homes in the municipality were built in either the '70s or the '80s. V&A properties are actually even older than that. 80% Of the ones on the list were built before 1980, and you see there's a huge number that were built in the 1950s. And in a lot of cases, and I've talked to some owners of rental properties that are, that are now vacant and abandoned, and they said that there's a, there's an issue that we hear that a lot of times they're sitting on them and boarding them up because it doesn't really pencil for them to put that much money into it.

They're not going to get enough income out of it. And so this is a situation that can help, you know, get those homes rehabilitated and get back into, into usage again. So, so these are definitely older properties, and in some cases they may need to be demolished. This incentive could cover if they— if the rehabilitation means really just tearing it down and rebuilding it, actually would be covered by this as well. Next, please.

So, the geographic breakdown of where the BNA properties are located. You can see that about a third of them are in District 1. There's almost 60 in District 1. There's about 180 residential ones on there total. District 1 has the biggest chunk of them, but there are a decent number, 20 to 30, in most of the other districts, except for District 6 only has a small handful.

And I don't have Birdwood on here, but Birdwood has no green dots on it. They're not on the registry as of the data that's available. You can see District 2 has a good number. Eagle River, Chugiak has a decent number there as well. I've got it in a sec.

So, yeah, a lot of these are older 1950s smaller ranch-style homes. One additional benefit here is that those are some of the more affordable homes for people to buy, and you know, the kind of starter homes that are, you know, in places like Juníaca Valley and Mountain View and Fairview. And so this is something that could help with affordability. You have a more affordable home and one that also has 10 years of of no taxes on the structure. That's a pretty good situation, or that's about the most affordable home you're going to be able to buy in Anchorage.

But this will also make rental properties available too. So it's got both benefits, and it's pretty targeted to those vacant and abandoned properties. Next, please. This also has— the AO also has some changes to the 1260 multifamily incentive. And so it puts all the rehab There was rehab that was added to 1260 that the assessor's office had identified as not quite workable the way that it was written.

So we moved the rehab to its own new section, what I just described. There were a few pieces that were added by amendment, like a fee waiver provision that essentially waived all fees, all permitting fees for properties that applied for the incentive. And that is something that would be extremely costly to departments. And so we have done one fee waiver in the six-figure territory, and if we had a lot more of those, it would not be very good for those departments. The 45-day shot clock requirement that was put in there also is, which is something with that I think that the intent behind that is really good and really strong, but there's problems with the workability of it because a lot of what was being, what, you know, where you have to approve the permit in 45 days, a lot of what would what was in there would require a public hearing, like a PCC hearing, where the 45-day limit might not actually work to get onto an agenda in time for the next meeting.

So we are looking at ways to do something like that and to expedite permitting, but that's— as written in here, we didn't view that as being workable. Also, another thing is that it changes— there's an affordability bonus in there. You get an extra 5 years if it meets an affordability threshold. We've changed that from an area median income-based measure to a fair market value-based measure, and that's largely because it's a much clearer interpretation. It was actually very difficult to interpret, you know, for developers, like, what it means to be at 120% of AMI, and it's tied to family size rather than just a rent number per bedroom size.

So this fair market value-based measure is just a bit more clear with regard to that, and I think on the next slide I put a table of of that. So this would be, this would be the rents that would be required in order to get the 5-year affordability bonus for the multifamily incentive listed here.

So, yeah, with that, I'm happy to take any questions. Covered a lot of ground there. I know that Member Brawley is proposing a few amendments to the rehabilitation section so that we've been discussing and So those, those may be good additions to it too. We'll start off with Member Johnson. Yeah, thank you.

Um, like what you're doing here, I guess, uh, two questions come to mind. One, these are for properties that are vacant and abandoned. I assume those structures have some assessed tax value, but the fact that they're vacant and abandoned, do we generally assume that the structure is minimal in terms of, you know, what it's assessed for, and then therefore what current revenues we're getting. Yeah, yeah, so through the Chair, you're kind of speaking to what's the impact on the tax, on our tax base, right? So we did, that's a really important question to ask.

So there is some taxable value in there. A lot of V&A properties are, you know, behind in their taxes or haven't been paying them, but some of them are paying them, a lot of them are still, right? So we're exempting the building so that we'll keep taxing the land still, but Really important point here is that in order to actually, you know, if you exempt enough off the tax base, it does in fact raise everyone else's taxes, but you have to reach a certain threshold before that even happens, right? So we calculate the mill levy down to usually 2 decimals, and actually Jack and I were working on this yesterday and we figured, you know, as a back of the napkin, you have to exempt something like $20 million worth of revenue in order to get to where you're moving the mill levy by, like, you know, within that 2 decimal point. Places, right?

So all that to say that from an incentive like this that's pretty targeted and pretty limited, there is— it's unlikely that there would be any impact on taxpayers at all, that it would raise people's taxes.

It would have to be— the uptake of the program would have to be huge beyond what we see now in order to move anyone's taxes even a little bit. Thank you. And then I, I had another question. So you mentioned that property owners could essentially self-report their property as vacant and abandoned. Yes.

Remind me what the definition is of vacant and abandoned. I think I saw it up there, but, um, I think Scott is in the room still. The definition of vacant and abandoned, word for word, I have to look it up. Your back's ass on that. Yeah, usually they're vacant for 180 days.

Um, this is kind of the basic timeline. Um, there's—. They're not rented, they're not Um, you know, East, they're, they're vacant. No power, no water.

Okay, I guess I'm just kind of— and maybe this is just too hypothetical— could there be a situation where I have a nice house, a million-dollar house, I suddenly leave for 6 months, simply I shut down the utilities, I come back in 6 months, I say I'm going to remodel my kitchen for $200,000, and now I tax exempt for, for 10 years?

Uh, yes, so we very seldom have people— the, the snowbirders, so to speak— we don't have those usually registered. Uh, I think that, man, it is— well, we can pull up the code section and you can read exactly. Ben's got to stand up. Yeah, yeah. Um, so per code, we're looking—.

Can you identify yourself, please? For the record, thank you. Uh, Ben Bowman, Assistant Municipal Attorney. Uh, Chair Johnson, and appreciation to the chair.

Uh, for the code, we're looking at, uh, Code Section 1520.010. A vacant building means a structure designated for residential or commercial use not been lawfully used for residential or commercial purposes for 180 days. Uh, it does not include vacation properties, structures used only on seasonal basis, buildings vacated for less than 365 days if the building has been continuously offered for sale or lease or rent since the 181st day of the month when it was ceased to be used, and a building for which there are valid open current building permits.

Things like that. So, your example of a very nice home, or even the not super nice homes, but where the— it is not occupied for 180 days or 181 days, and then a significant remodel is undertaken. Could potentially qualify for exception.

Okay, it's an interesting question, John. Maybe—. I don't know if there's anyone who's so devious as to try and game the system that way. I think that's not the intent of this, but it does, you know, maybe raise a point of concern about is this creating an opportunity for abuse for people who want to try and take advantage of it? I understand, like, nobody's currently choosing to list their property that they've been abandoned in that circumstances.

But now we're kind of giving them an incentive to try and do that. So that's the question I guess I'll contemplate further. Thanks. Through the Chair, we, you know, it is likely very much an edge case. And so we have tried to think through, you know, prevent, how to prevent those kinds of abuses.

But I think that there may be additional amendments or other things we could do to tighten it up to prevent it. Issues.

Um, Member Brawley? Um, yeah, actually, I see Member Baldwin-Day had a question, so— because I, I did have a question, but then I wanted to—. We'll go to Member Baldwin-Day first so that Member Brawley can walk us through some of the amendments that she put forward. Member Baldwin-Day on the line? Yes, thank you, Chair.

Can you hear me okay? Yes, excellent. Uh, Mr., Mr. Cloutier, I'm curious if there are any provisions in this particular exemption that would prevent utilization as a short-term rental for rehabilitated properties? Through the Chair, Member Baldwin-Day, yes, this would— these properties would not be allowed to be used as short-term rentals if they use the incentive.

And the way that we do that is by ensuring that they have to have— I think Ben Bowman can speak to the exact specifics, but they have to be able, if they're rented, it has to be for a 30 days or more period. So it's over the threshold of a short-term rental.

So this would be identical to the multifamily property tax exemption. We use the same. Yes, we use the same, the same requirement. Excellent. Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Member Baldwin-Day. Member Brawley. Yeah, well, first, before I talk about amendments, I did have one question. Well, and I'll say too, like, when we first met about this ordinance, I thought, well, why, why are we looking at just these 180 properties? But I think the thing to really emphasize is we're trying to get more properties on this list because there's a bigger universe of properties that are not on the registry that look the exact same.

And I'll give one just quick example. I know of one that's not on the registry that is basically a burned-out shell of a building. It probably had multiple bedrooms. It has nothing in it now. It's— the land value is $45,000.

The building is about $60,000. But when that fire happened, it was assessed at $6,500. So in terms of the value we're exempting, and that's why we separate the land from the building, we're really talking about functionally nothing on our value record right now. My question though is one of the ways to get these properties back into useful life is if the person who owns it now can't do anything with it, they would sell it. Sell it.

So my question is, what happens to a B&A property when it sells? And then is that— so let's say like I own one of those and I'm like, okay, I can't do anything with this, someone else can do it, they put it up for sale. Does it still stay on the registry or would it be disqualified for this if they weren't the ones doing any of this work?

Excuse me. So sale of property doesn't take you off the registry. I'm looking back at this. Okay. Right.

And you have to go on the registry prior to the listing or sale. Okay, because if it's, if it's listed for sale, that is one of the exemptions under, uh, 1520— sorry, Ben Bowman is through the chair, just so we don't have a problem. Okay, um, 1520.0104, uh, or 3, is if it is listed for sale, it cannot go onto the registry. Okay, it's not listed for sale, goes onto the registry, and then subsequently is listed for sale. I It might not take it off.

Okay, thanks. I think that's helpful just to think about, like, the sequencing there. And then the amendments, I'll just briefly walk through them. They're kind of technical, but I intend to bring some version of these on Tuesday. So there's 4 of them, and thanks to Mr. Gates who helped with some of the technical details there, but essentially not changing the intent of this, but the idea is really honing in on what qualifies or doesn't qualify.

So that question about whether it's for sale is not addressed at these, but things like that, you know, making sure we understand who would get this, who wouldn't, and making sure that we're targeting the types of buildings that we're thinking about. So, so this first one is really about defining— there's a definition in there of what qualifies or doesn't for this. So that— so looking at this not undergone substantial renovation, demolition, So, so making sure that, for example, if the building burned down, half of it gets demolished, the other half is still there. That still counts as a property that could be rehabilitated versus an empty lot that has nothing on it. So that's, um, it's really trying to get to that.

So, um, so it says at least having one portion of a structure. So it's a definition issue. That's Amendment 1, um, and then it has some definitions of demolition, and, and I should say too. I've been working with Mr. Clowder on these. We're still workshopping the language, and we're also contemplating maybe a couple of these in an S version.

So anyway, just to say, these are the ideas. The second amendment, very briefly, is really saying, let's say the property— well, let's say the property is zoned R-1. We can build a duplex there, or we can build two units. How do we really incentivize folks to do that? So we talked about the idea of bonus table, which is in the other one, uh, the other, uh, item.

Now, that seemed a little more complicated. So this really just says, if you build, say, a duplex where there was a single-family home before within the current zoning, making clear that those additional units also qualify for this short period of exemption. So, um, the idea being we're trying to get people to maximize the zoning. So that's a way to do that. Um, and then there's the language around that.

I won't walk through all of the language, but that's really what it's doing. Um, and then Amendment 3 is, um, really looking at— and this is one for discussion, really— but, um, saying you have to either be on the registry, or maybe you were on the registry and 6 months ago you got removed, or up to 12 months ago. Should that still qualify? So I think that's an open question, really. Again, if maybe a structure got demolished in the last 6 months, maybe through some of the relief funding that we used for that, um, could that still qualify for this because it's been on the list?

Before reasonable. So that's, that's something to think about. And then the last one, very briefly, is just really clarifying that it does not apply to the land value. It applies to the structure, which is the intent of the ordinance. So it's just a definition.

So that's why I'd say a couple of these are really technical and could be an S version. A couple of them are really more for discussion. So that's the overview. Thanks. Great.

Thank you for the presentation. Uh, thank you for, well, giving us the amendments so we can have them in advance. And we look forward to, uh, this on the next, uh, assembly meeting. We'll move forward to our next item on our agenda. Mr. Gates.

Yes, sorry, I'll just be short. I wanted to comment on, um, a member, Johnson's concern about being on vacant and abandoned registry being abused. And, uh, should just— I guess we should be aware of that being on the registry isn't just a free thing, you know. There's also a bunch of duties and obligations and costs for the owner owner, there's a duty to sign property, duty to secure, boarding up, and so forth. From entry, there's a duty to maintain property, and then there's this annual fee, you know, and it increases each year that you're on the registry.

And so that board might be maybe smaller compared to the benefit of the tax incentive for 10 years, but I guess I just wanted to make sure we're aware of that. Getting on the registry isn't sort of free and simple. I appreciate the point. Thank you.

If there isn't anything further on that item, we'll move forward to discussion, a brief discussion on relocation of marijuana licenses. And, uh, we have a guest with us, and we will introduce them. So you can stay there, you don't need to—. Just fell back my back, everybody. Let me just some, some way where I can A little bit of people.

I'm Jana Weltsine. I'm a marijuana and liquor land use attorney. This really is just a request to update the existing code to match state code. So a couple of years ago, state code was seeing the issues with the fact that the licenses are tied to the premises. So tied to the actual real estate location and seeing some abuses when, you know, it's been almost 10 years now that these businesses have been online.

Seen some abuses with the landlord leasing issues, right? So you have to renew your leases and you're kind of really strong-armed by the landlords when you cannot pick up your business and move it. So the State Control Board recognized this, changed the regulations to allow a transfer of location. So the transfer of location still requires local government approval, notifying community council, going through the local process. You know, so you still have to get a new special land use permit, engage with the community council, hopefully still do a memorandum of understanding with the community council if they're so willing, and engage in that process.

But what it allows for is for you to not be handcuffed by your existing landlord. And one of the provisions in the state code is it allows for percentage-based lease agreement. So, when you get into these situations, your lease is up and the landlord is like, hey, I want 30% of your gross sales. Technically, that's legal under state code. And so if you're faced with a situation where you have to either shutter your business, close it all up, or engage in a hostile landlord relationship, um, that was really the only option before state changed their code.

I didn't really have this issue pop up in Anchorage until fairly recently when I tried to move a license for a client, and then Mandy correctly notified me that, hey, we don't have this code change yet, we haven't changed it in the Unicode. So I was like, ah, crap, because a lot of these people were on long leases that are coming up, and so some of them might want to shuffle around different location, or at least be on equal bargaining power with their landlord to say, I can move if I want to. And some might say, hey, you know, there's no caps on licenses, why not just get another license? Well, it's not really that easy. Like, one, you have the public perception of bringing on a new license, which, trust me, if you've been to community council meetings with marijuana, that's sometimes a difficult sell.

All right. But also, it's more than that. It's, you know, additional $6,000 to the state of Alaska versus a $1,000 transfer fee. So $6,000 is the new application fee plus the review fee. So that's versus the $1,000.

That's That's material. Setting up a new metric account, which means that you have to order all new metric package tags, plant tags if you're moving plants, and retail tags, which every single tag costs— I don't remember off the top of my head, but like 25 cents and up, and you can't reuse them. So think about all that. That's like adds up. And then if you're retail, you have to move your inventory, but you have to relabel everything.

So if you ever ran a retail store, any type of a retail store, think about the fact that you have to re-label everything with the new license number and tracking number, um, and how much time that takes your staff to do. Um, if you just had a transfer location, which again, you want to avoid the public process, you want to avoid community councils, you want to avoid any government stuff, um, you could just relocate your inventory by doing it through the manifest through Metrc and not have to relabel every single little thing. And you want to have to establish a new Metrc account, which you might not know what that is, but it's a state-required tracking system that has to integrate with your point of sale. And so you have to reset all that up. That is hours and hours and hours and hours of staff time or licensee time.

The other thing is, you know, if retails, if they have a 2-year track record of paying sales tax to the muni on time, they get exempted from the requirement to have a retail registration bond, which is expensive. But if you have a new license pop up, you don't have your previous 2-year track record. So you have to start that over again. And a lot of these licensees have worked really hard to pay their taxes on time so they don't have to renew that bond annually. It's expensive.

There's lots of other reasons, you know, reestablishing insurance. It's really hard because there's only like 2 insurance companies that work with marijuana companies. It's just burden on burden on burden on burden and burden for these marijuana companies. And, you know, we're the most heavily regulated, heavily taxed industry out there, really. So we're just asking for a little bit of common sense and a little bit of code update just to help us pick up an existing license and move it.

That also will limit new licenses, right? Because say it's June right now, or I'm sorry. Really pregnant. It's August right now. In June, these licensees paid $7,000 to renew their annual license.

If I wanted to move a license in September, I have to pay another $6,000, and then I lose the value of what I've already paid for that year. I don't get like any credit from the state or anything like that. So, um, not as exciting as housing, but still interesting. And we have a, uh, thank you for the presentation, and I think there's a probably a project Special look at coming forward, but we have a question. Yeah, so I have a couple questions and I'm sympathetic to this argument.

So I just want to— and I haven't been tracking what the state has done. I know we're trying to keep our codes consistent with the state. So you mentioned transfer of location. So just to be super clear, we're talking about existing ownership and transfer of location, not transfer of ownership. Is that correct?

Well, you're allowed to do transfer ownership right now and you You could do one in the same, in the same process. The state allows for— it's a different type of application, but a transfer of ownership and transfer of location. Again, all the same notice requires: 3 weeks in the newspaper, noticing local government, yada yada yada. But this right now, what I'm talking about is just literally picking up an existing license, existing ownership, and plopping it somewhere else. Yeah, so, and I guess the piece I want to key in on though is if we allow— and I'm not opposed to this, especially because the state already did it.

But if we allow transfer of location and ownership, that's essentially selling a license. And so if you take those pieces, and there's been separate discussions about limiting the number, that is what created the alcohol license problem, which is that you have people who sell public licenses. I mean, granted, it's to a business, but that creates the secondary market, what is called the secondary market, which means I, if I have to buy a bar license, I'm going to pay somebody $300,000. I'm not paying the state. I'm not paying the city, I'm paying that other business owner for something that the government issues.

And so that's been a huge, huge policy issue. And so I just want to say on the record that I don't see that this is doing that. But if we ever bring the discussion of limiting number, I am going to be very opposed to that because that creates a huge policy problem that has been impossible to untangle in alcohol licensing without paying a bunch of bar owners thousands of dollars of state money. To make them whole for something that they really should not have had as a private asset in the first place. So I just want to be super clear.

Are you not— you're not—. That's not what I'm proposing, but I don't want to hide the ball here. People have built brands and people have sold marijuana licenses for good money. That has happened in this city, in other cities, in the state of Alaska, which is not a bad thing because they built these beautiful brands. They've built a beautiful structure.

They built a beautiful facility and that has value and they've sold it as a regular business. And that's allowed under state and city code to do the transfer of ownership. There is no caps in marijuana state law or in the municipality. There are several jurisdictions that have invoked caps. I'm thinking like villages, Kotzebue, you know, limits to City of Fairbanks limits 30.

I'm sure I'm missing a few. Yeah, no, I think that's true. And I don't want to belabor this too much, but I think it is just really important to understand. No one's trying to get in the way of selling businesses or creating that private value, and then it transfers to another private party. But quite the place where I get heartburn about it is to what extent are we using a regulatory system to protect and enhance that private value?

Because that's really, again, the heart of the issue with alcohol. And so, so I don't see that this is— this proposal is doing that. But I just wanted to also say, like, we have to be very careful when we're talking about public regulation, what public What private profit are we creating for— by our public regulation? And I will just add that there's nothing in the state pipeline regulatory project-wise that's limiting or offering to limit licenses for marijuana. Yeah, I just know we've had other businesses ask us about that, so I just— I'm trying to make that very clear.

Like, that is the implication of that ask. Not this one, but that one. So if you're listening, don't ask this week. Yeah, that's not an item we want. Or don't ask while I'm on the bike.

Oh, they could do that. They set the date. Uh, cool. Thank you for the presentation. And, uh, right on.

And alignment to the state is the continuation of the next part of our conversation. And we have a quick presentation from, uh, Mr. Gates, uh, Assembly Council, on the final item of the agenda of business today, which is, uh, A draft AO updating Title 10 and code essentially on-site marijuana consumption against alignment with state law, and I'll turn it over to Mr. Gates for the brief presentation. Okay, thank you. I'll try to be brief here, and this is, I think, pretty straightforward except for how we're structuring this in our code with this ordinance.

We've had a little history with on-site consumption issues here in the municipality. We first allowed on-site consumption of edibles and marijuana products in 1966, and shortly thereafter, hemp stems allowed inhalation or other types of consumption of edibles. And shortly thereafter, we had this other ordinance to, I guess, the assembly instead of deciding themselves whether we should have inhalation smoking of marijuana for on-site consumption, to send that question to the voters. It's sort of like an advisory question, except in this instance, uh, they made the ordinance only effective if the advisory question did not pass. That failed at the ballot.

So at that time, at least then in April 2020, uh, voters wanted to keep the secondhand smoking, I guess, prohibition in place. And not allowing the use of marijuana in all inside consumption areas. Of course, this would include, I guess, alcohol, where you can have, of course, consumption of alcohol outside indoors and so forth, and smoking cigarettes where you can smoke outside in public. You can't with marijuana. You can't put marijuana outside.

And so this comes to Mr. Mok and his proposal in our next slide. Is this draft ordinance. And I guess I want to point out the approach we're taking here is an approach we've taken in a few other contexts—childcare licensing and some with our liquor license code in Chapter 10, uh, Title 10, Chapter 15. And this is where we incorporate by reference a lot of state law, and, um, instead of listing it out similarly, you know, and some of the advantages. And I guess pointed that out.

That's on page 2, ordinance, um, where subsection D, we incorporate by reference, but we have some modifications. And there's 3 paragraphs to modify what the state does. For example, instead of the board, the Marijuana Control Board, and we have that here for municipal endorsement, we incorporate all of this except that board. We have the assembly make a decision, and we have the clerk take applications, not the director of the MCO office. So there's little differences, there's a little bit modifications, that's on each team.

I guess the advantages of doing it this way is sometimes— I guess I tried to list those out, some of the benefits of doing it this way, and I guess I didn't list out the cons of doing it this way. The benefits, it's efficient for long term, I guess, when state regulation is changing every now and then. Do we need to change our code? Not. Do we need to do an ordinance?

We have that staff time, similar consideration. This way, we just follow whatever the state decides to do. They change the regulation, we don't need similar action or resources on our part to update our code to match all the time. And, um, this uniformity also sort of makes it easier for businesses and consumers who know we have uniform statewide, I guess, on-site consumption and state regs respond uniformly between you and our neighboring jurisdictions. Us to speak.

So that's sort of the advanced approach. I guess one of the cons is, um, it's more for, I guess, for folks like myself or Zahaab who need to connect all the dots on code, what changes, what's in the state reg and how it's changed since last time we got it. So I guess maybe that's not so much consumed for most people. Anyways, our next slide, um, I thought I would summarize what's here because I'm not listing anything here on the ordinance. We're appropriated by reference.

So it includes state regulation for onsite consumption is any attachment to what we're appropriating. And I thought it might be easiest to say what exactly is it. Just summarize in here. So this is legal advice. District Council Stanley Parker state regulation says it's not something to rely on in establishing or regulating your business.

Okay, um, so number one, consumption area, since the reg have only in retail stores, and they have these limits. Then there are two types of endorsements, and actually there's people in this room that are more knowledgeable about all of this than I am, probably have experience in some actual applications. So, I mean, if anybody wants to speak up, you're free. Anyways, the two endorsements are edible only, and that's got that limit on quantity, 25 milligrams THC. Each person, to one person per day, and then by any method, which includes two different types: water, flowers, or even possible a vaping device that has 4.3 marijuana concentrate.

They have, I guess, an allowance to sell food or beverages, and then there's at least a few machines that I haven't seen completely zero, and that's in Staten Island to come and check, but most of about, oh, we can't give away free marijuana in, you know, consumption area. We can't give it as a prize for contests and games and stuff. Um, I guess you can use other things, t-shirts, I don't know. Um, our next slide, and, uh, there's characteristics for the MCA areas, edibles only, stores need to be freestanding, but if it's an in-office marijuana consumption area, the store must be freestanding building, and the freestanding definition is in the whole regulation. It's in another part of States Statute, which I've copied here.

I'm going to take a wild guess that an engineer didn't write this definition, but I guess it makes sense for its purposes. It's basically just a separate structure, like separate ventilation and transference. And that's in States Prohibition on Smoking Through Bank of Secondhand Smoking Units.

Q2 sticks, I would say, you, um, offer DPCA is there for any method. Of course, first look through separate ventilation areas. It must be isolated from other areas of marijuana store. Must have access only from the retail marijuana store. Uh, then it's, I guess, inedible only.

It's, it's interesting, some of the regulation isn't absolutely clear to me. All these restrictions apply to inedible only. Anyways, if marijuana is indoors, the ventilation system requirements are listed in regulation. But if it's outdoors, we have these other requirements, and not ventilation, but being compatible with surrounding uses, and that the board, the marijuana control board, must consider these things. But in municipality, you have instead our special land use permit for marijuana.

Which very much considers the same things except for the last part, um, where it says, uh, consider the objection property owners who are within the Nooks area. 500 Feet is alcohol 21 requirement for Nooks. Uh, the state regulation says 250 feet of properties around the marijuana business, or whatever the local code says. So our local ordinance control consists of 500 so I guess just listing these out in these slides, I thought would be a fast revision way, uh, fits wide with sales and our normal consumption. Thank you, Dean, for the quick update.

I hope that we can get the, uh, the changes essentially in a— I think it's part of our AIM, and so when folks see the package be able to see that be on the addendum. The intent is for this to be on the addendum for the next meeting in August 12th, so you should all see that. Any questions? Yeah, thanks. So for the, the outdoor consumption, when it says consider objections or, uh, for nearby property owners, how does that, how does that work in practice?

Notice goes out, then somebody says I I live within the 500 feet. Here's my concern. Can I just pause for a second and just ask the members for the— can we go a little past the time? We're at the 10:30 mark right now. Additional 10 minutes, please.

Cool. Uh, through the chair, Mandy Yannis with Municipal Planner's Office. Um, so this would require a modification to their special land use permit. It's a change in their operating plan, um, so they would have to apply for that change, not only adding it to the license which the clerk's office would see, but they'd have to put in an application with the planning department for that modification. The planning department has the mailing list for situations like this, um, and so it's up to the applicant to, um, take the mailing list and provide that information to the neighbors.

Um, it's a— they send out a mailer from the the planning department that has postage and all of this that they sent back. So there's like green ones, I think, for marijuana. People can submit their comments on that, mail it back to the planning department, and those get included in the packet that goes for the assembly for the modification. Um, they also have the opportunity to email, um, the Mass Assembly for any comments. And if there's a comment or objection from one of the notified property owners, I mean, how does that play out in the process for issuing the, uh, license?

Um, that's part of the review process that the Assembly has, um, under their consideration. All of the documents provided are things that the Assembly can take under consideration in their delegation facts and findings and decision-making.

You might be just waiting on the state side because we've seen this kind of happen. So the state's initiation system creates a letter. So we also send that out to the neighboring property owners. And then the types of things that the control board looks at is like, hey, there's, you know, a person who objected that has 4 young kids that play outside. Okay, we need to look at that.

Or they have a home daycare so that the home daycare is not on the protected use list, but that's something that they'll want to consider. So those are the types of factors that the control board really weighs on. If it's just somebody that's like, I don't like marijuana because it's federally legal, that doesn't really get too far. But it's the kids playing outside, young kids in the nearby neighborhood, in-home daycare type of stuff. It's—.

But it raises an interesting question. I mean, I'm fine with people doing marijuana, generally speaking, right? But I discover that I live, you know, half a block away from a place where people on a daily basis, you know, 10 or 20 of them are going to be outside smoking, like, that might start to affect my ability to enjoy my property. So that's, that's a concern I suppose I have here. Cool, right on.

Uh, Member Brown? Yeah, um, I guess my general question— so, and I'm glad you laid out the history of the Um, this like smoke-free ordinance and then how it relates to this, like, um, is the— so the— it sounds like the intent of this would be to, to open that up at least for these establishments and allow smoking, meaning like combustion, and— or is it just for vaping?

I'm gonna let Mr. Gates—. I'm sorry. So my question is, how does this interact with our general, um, indoor smoking ban essentially that's been in place for a long time?

And one of those review ordinances, um, I think it was 19— one of the, uh, bills related our secondhand smoking ordinance in Chapter 16, Section 5, um, that clear definition of marijuana and smoking them including using vaping or a vape, I guess, vape marijuana. So that's covered as secondhand smoking ban. But here we create an exception similar to what state did in state outside consumption regulation. They said that I had also amended state statute for secondhand smoking prohibition and smoking, same here, an exception for on-site consumption areas that are Area 17 to be made to smoke-free and also regulations. And so we do similar things here, uh, in the ordinance being approved in 1665, saying there's an exception in 1665 for smoking indoors as long as it's in accordance with this ordinance, the new section which incorporates that.

So you have to have smoke-free area for the employees and, uh, to be able to monitor the consumption area. So I don't know about separation by a window or glass or video or whatever, but, um, you do have that to protect the employees that are so ogresome for us to really have smoke and watch.

Um, so there's that protection. I guess there is, uh, still some consumer, because indoor smoking if there's an emergency and first responders come in, there's still smoking there. But these have ventilation requirements, so I guess somewhat in theory, there's an emergency, we can't kill the smoke before responders leave and they're exposed as well. So I know some of this is hypothetical, I guess, what I'm speaking here. Um, do you have anything?

Did he answer more or less? Yeah, the gist of it. Yeah, it was much more complex than I would have answered. Alignment to the state law would essentially allow, but it's like the how to get there is much more complex, and it really is about maintaining protections that are already there, but aligning to the state law. Yeah, okay.

So I think we're good now on that part. Yeah, party is on page— but if you want to identify the reference.

Cool. Yeah, it's on page 7 of the ordinance. Thank you. Thank you, members, for this. Are there any members of the public with us today for public comments?

I don't see any. I didn't see any online. I did invite someone, and so I'll flag what they were going to talk about. We have a fellow named Tim from Airport Heights. Looking at code enforcement because they may know a fellow named Tim from Airport Heights who has had code complaints around neighbors with beekeeping.

Oh, code enforcement knows what I'm talking about. And they reached out and essentially flagging for us that, um, There were some challenges with the new update for beekeeping that the Assembly approved recently. And so I just wanted— they were going to come talk about that today. I'm— I cannot present for them, but I did want to flag that I'll be forwarding that message. And so if there's— if there's a cleanup or an update, something that we need to know about, I would love your feedback and code enforcement.

If there's nothing else, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you, everybody.