Anchorage Assembly: Planning and Zoning Commission - November 2, 2026 - 2026-11-02 18:30:00

So, I'll maybe skip the next two because these are the specifics of what's in AR 2567. But it's just saying Planning and Zoning Commission should review should the comp plan or these district plans have the same force of law as the principal policies and goals of the comprehensive plan. There's a number of questions about equitable funding. You know, some areas get more funding to get a plan and other areas don't. Thinking about any recommendations that they line up with the comprehensive plan.

And then if the assembly— assembly encouraged the administration to implement a more inclusive transparent process for prioritizing, developing, or updating district plans. That's another piece too. Plans that are now, you know, 10, 15 years old and maybe it's time to update them. But we have other areas that don't have a plan at all. And then looking at the funding piece, I think if you'll recall from our original memo, it is Anchorage has always struggled to fund these plans consistently.

Sometimes we've used sort of, I think, grants from the state. Sometimes we relied on AMATS, you know, a corridor plan becomes a land use plan. Sometimes we've had special legislative disbursements. We've used federal money. So there's been sort of a big ask for plans but not a lot of funding behind them.

I see that Chair Brawley is here. I believe she actually has some of the plans, so we might be able to reserve some of my time if she'd like to provide some background. So just overview, some parts of Anchorage have never had a plan. Some parts of Anchorage are covered by multiple plans, like West Anchorage, for example, is covered by 2040 and the West Anchorage District Plan. Based on analysis of available ordinances, resolutions, and allocations for 14 adopted plans that we have sort of the documentation for completed in the MOA since 2010, the average cost of the a district neighborhood plan is about $300,000 and usually requires about 5 years to be completed.

Many implementation items have never been tracked or difficult to track, and most plans have no time horizon for when their action items should be completed. So that's one thing as we went through these, some plans have really long lists of implementation items. We've never really tracked if those are being completed or not, and there isn't even really a discussion of are those ever going to be completed in a reasonable amount of time. So this map shows any areas in blue are the areas that do have a plan. And the areas without are the ones that don't.

And you'll see that the plan boundaries don't always align with the community council boundaries as well. So that has been kind of problematic. In the Midtown, there was a Midtown plan effort a few years ago, and it was doing a little bit of Spinard, a little bit of Northstar, a little bit of Midtown for all of Midtown. And so sometimes the plans don't line up quite perfectly with community councils. Again, the comprehensive plan, this is purely just more reference.

It was saying that in the future, you know, these neighborhood plans will be the basis for localized zoning revisions.

Long-term growth and development would be refined in subsequent district neighborhood plans components. And a lot of that never quite happened, or it happened and then the tools weren't actually used. And again, the 2040 has even more on that in 2017, talking about, oh, we're going to keep having these specific plans, area-specific, district-specific plans to really calibrate in. And then unfortunately, we just never really did that. Um, there are a bunch of big picture ideas in some of these plans that also never really came to be, and I think those because some of these plans have 60 or 70 implementation items.

So these are just a few examples of the big ones where you think, OK, this must have been a major priority. But to carry this out would have taken a lot of concentrated implementation power. Hillside District Plan wanted a new service area for roads, drainage, green infrastructure. Hillside District Plan wanted to create a new drainage management entity. You know, it's maybe like the stormwater utility.

Spinard Corridor Plan wanted a special overlay just for Spinard. We've seen how complicated it is to do anything like that. The U-Met District Plan wanted to create a special village area. So it's a type up there in U-Med. So another special overlay in U-Med.

Again, I've never seen any interest in that after the plan was adopted. U-Med District Plan wanted to create a park-and-ride. Famously, U-Med District Plan was going to sort of deal with the Bergau extension, but kind of didn't. Wanted to do the TDM plan, which AMATS paid for and then didn't get adopted in as the Conference Plan. East Anchorage District Plan wanted to create new small area plans, another thing that didn't really happen.

And East Anchorage District Plan also wanted to— it called for transitioning mobile home parks into small lot housing, which if we had followed through on that, we would have probably had to update subdivision rules, update lot size minimums, or any of that stuff. And a lot of that just never really happened. So just some high-level takeaways. I mean, a planning system built on these sort of cascading layers of plans requires significant resources for the initial plan creation and then longer-term implementation. So in the memo from September, we did— we looked at Denver, which is kind of a parallel case, and they spend a lot of money to update their plans.

They've been spending, you know, 10, 15 years just trying to get them all. And then once you do that, you've established the system that needs to be maintained over time. So that's really expensive. Most plans generally, when they've been produced, they mean more process, more complexity, and usually more time cost for all sorts of procedures. Some do result in some simplification.

Neighborhood district plans can sometimes get bogged down in the specific preferences of those involved at the time. I think Commissioner Krishna mentioned that a lot of people have put in a lot of volunteer time on these, and they're really working to make their neighborhoods better. And that, you know, that comes across in the plan. Unfortunately, sometimes when the plans get so specific and so particular, it makes it harder to implement the bigger picture stuff. And then, you know, finally, a better system might— and this is our sort of consideration— might be smaller plans with general guidance on high-level priorities that can be applied situation by situation.

So rather than, you know, make a special overlay in this area that does A, B, and C, say, support efforts that facilitate this type of development to the greatest extent possible. So if somebody comes up with a policy change or some sort of project, you say, well, does this meet this cutting developer or not. A little bit easier than saying, well, does this do X, Y, and Z, or something very specific. So again, going back to the specifics of the resolution, it asks the Planning Commission to review whether the plan should be considered advisory or not, provide recommendations for more equitable access to plans and planning resources, align recommendations with existing comp plan, and provide recommendations for more inclusive, transparent process for updating district plans and allowing opportunities for all neighborhoods. With that, any questions?

Or the chair is here as well, but we can can begin your discussion. We're available for information or questions. Thank you. Thank you. Um, I think first we just open it up to discussion.

Anybody have any questions? I have one question. On the U-Med plan, was the plan to build a village, or to— the plan recommended making a new plan for a village?

I'll have to go back and look at this, but I think in part it was to create a special type of zoning for a Yuma village. But imagine going through that process with, well, where's it going to be? Are we going to have different, you know, road cross-sections there? Are we going to put any money into the redevelopment? There's so many aspects of that that could potentially happen.

And again, since then, I don't think at least our department has ever dedicated any time or resources to that. It never seemed to be a priority again, even though you look in the plan Oh, I touched some buttons here. Can you fix that?

I'll speak faster. I get it. So I think that— I don't know exactly, but it hasn't been something that's been explored.

So the goal here is to— for the planning zoning to recommend whether whether the plan should be advisory or not, or maybe we should— I guess, are there any other questions?

Maybe we'll hear from Assembly Chair Brawley.

Following up on that question from the chair, just briefly, um, Daniel, could you unpack the issue statement and what the various actions would do, either be, you know, different from baseline? So as I understand The question is, should district plans be advisory? So if the commission says yes, they should be advisory, is that a change from current process?

Yeah, through the chair. So if, say, the commission said yes, they are now advisory, then this long list of plans, I think 20 or 30 or 40 or so, they wouldn't go away. They could still be referenced, but they wouldn't carry that potential regulatory weight. For example, some, you know, if there's a project going through and we're doing a review, we say you have to follow the adopted plans, then we have a little more weight to require that. Or as I think the director pointed out last time, the wetlands management plan is adopted in the conference plan, so it carries that regulatory weight.

I don't think, and I don't think this discussed about removing the wetlands management plan from that, but more of the other ones. So it would basically, we would have still have a bunch of information but that information would no longer having that sort of weight in terms of decision and investment decisions. Again, I don't think— well, I can't speculate whether people would use it or not, but it seems like the information is still all there, but yeah. I might just jump in here and say one question is, is this list we have on pages 2 through My gosh, 8 of our memorandum, all of the elements of the Comprehensive Plan, because the last sentence on paragraph— on page 2 says this review focuses on land use plans rather than corridor utility or policy plans, which makes me wonder if there are other elements of the Comprehensive Plan that are not land use plans.

Is this a comprehensive list of all of the elements of the comprehensive plan. So this, yeah, this is Table 2101. It's in, of course, Chapter 1 of the, um, of Title 21. But you see there's something here. So I'm showing it on, like, the utility corridor plan from 2007, or maybe the Section 36 land use study from 1992.

Um, I think the— I believe the specifics of the AR were mostly talking to district or neighborhood plans, so not those sort of functional plans, they might be called, like the Anchorage Wetlands Plan or the Utility Corridor Plan, or there's some others in here.

Yeah, so this is all the elements, and this is just the— all the elements are listed in the table, and— but this AR is focusing on the district and neighborhood plans. And I'll note maybe for the commission that I did go sleuthing around on the website, and I could not find the Chester Creek Greenbelt Plan at all, and I saw the I saw that several items in this list are listed as out of print, and so they don't appear to be findable by the public. But I think I'll ask my question, and my question also to the chair who is here today, is whether there is interest in looking more broadly at the comprehensive planning process. Because I think that is— that would be my preference for the time that we're spending here today. Um, I appreciate the specific prompt of looking at neighborhood plans, but I believe that they may be indicative of a larger question, which is whether our comprehensive plan elements have grown so large that they're unable to be updated on the schedule we'd like to keep them updated at, and whether on balance there is a more sustainable future where the department can spend more time implementing plans rather than maintaining a list of, you know, more than 50 plans that appear to still be in effect.

So that would be the larger question I would be interested in, in posing here today, and I'm curious both what the department and what the chair think about venturing down that path.

Um, I think the question was for the Assembly Chair, not, not this chair, right? Correct. Okay, um, we do have one more question from Commissioner McKee, and then I want to get Assembly Chair Brawley a chance to address us.

And mine might be just building a little bit on what the other commissioner had said, is that with this limited time, that maybe we have an opportunity to discuss some of the topics of this packet. Things like, there's a lot of language in here that's pretty vague, things like more inclusive, more meaningful, that aren't defined. And the very fact that she couldn't find some of these plans, and that means they're digital, meaning people who don't necessarily have readily access to digital mediums, internet, whatnot, may or may not even have the opportunity to participate if they're exclusively digitally available. You know, I have other concerns too when we say things should be meaningful and inclusive. Having participated in some of these types of things, typically it's people who have time, have the resources, have flexible jobs, and are primarily English-speaking that participate in these development of plans and like as a board wanted to have the opportunity or as a commission have the opportunity to discuss how we could recommend a process that addresses some of these objectives of being more inclusive and being more meaningful.

And then, you know, how once a plan is either regulatory or advisory, how are they amended as time goes on and the people who live in these areas change over time. You know, these plans are adopted for significant durations, and the demographics of a neighborhood changes, and their needs, I'm assuming, would change with that as well.

Um, I guess I just have one question. Are you alluding— were you kind of like saying that Having only a digital copy is less inclusive.

I get. And then I guess in my mind, I'm thinking a digital copy is the most inclusive. If you have internet and you have electricity and you have a data plan, if you don't have— I guess what would you have? What would another version be? That you would have?

Paper copies at the library, paper copies at the city office downtown, paper copies in high schools where parents may be picking up children also, which would encourage potentially high school students to read them and participate as future neighborhood owners potentially. I just think that, you know, a lot of what's in this packet has a lot of language that's really vague and asking for us to have recommendations on how these plans processes could be more meaningful and more inclusive, which are both pretty vague terms.

Okay. Assembly Chair Brawley.

Thank you. Thank you for having me here today. My name is Anna Brawley, currently Assembly Chair, also representing West Anchorage, also not an this capacity. I'm a professional planner, so I care a lot, and I've actually worked on some of the plans in this town. So, um, I'm going to give some brief comments.

I will both speak to the ord— or not ordinance, the resolution, because I know that's the reason we're here today. Also happy to address the bigger question. And then if you give me just a second, I'm going to pull up this suitcase because I'd like to explain what's in it. It is relevant.

Okay, so for reference, this is our comprehensive plan, this entire suitcase, and I'm, I'm going to open it very briefly so I'll be off the microphone, but I want to demonstrate it is full of paper. This is not a joke.

All that is our comprehensive plan. So I will note this is, uh, almost everything that's on your list that is in that, uh, table that Long Range Planning Manager McKenna-Foster shared with you. I will note there are 51 elements in our adopted comprehensive plan. So when we say the plan, we are talking about every single document in that suitcase, plus 8 documents that, as far as I can tell, do not legally exist at the city anymore. So to the point of ones that you can't find in print, this— so essentially, I was able to get a print copy of everything that Planning department had.

They have a library of old plans, so a lot of those are the original print plans in that suitcase. Another 15 items, including that stack of paper on the— now on the flap there, I did have to request reprint. So I got one copy each of them from our Reprographics Department. So in-house, did not have additional cost, and they're not bound, they're just really the text. There are 8 items that both planning staff have that are not in our Assembly records either.

I asked our legislative services staff to go back. We have a portal for things that go back to the 1970s. So 8 of those things, there is apparently no physical or digital copy anymore. So one question is, how are we supposed to refer to those if they don't legally exist? So to back up from there, the resolution that was originally passed— so this is one that was brought by former Vice Chair Zalatel.

And I think part of the discussion at that time was, well, some neighborhoods have these plans already and others don't. And so I know that was at the time— well, actually, it's still happening. The Midtown District Plan is being prepared. It's in process. It's the second version of that plan.

There was one about 15 years ago that was drafted and didn't get passed. There's other neighborhood plans in process. So that was kind of the equity question and saying, if we are going to give this level of attention to neighborhoods, then we should be doing that across the board. So that was kind of one genesis of the resolution. If you read it, it really talks about that.

But essentially what it asks for is what you all are doing is consider this question of should we make these advisory. So I will also note as a planner, I'm familiar with utilizing comprehensive plans in most of our plans. For example, the 2040 plan. And actually in code, it's— I was just looking at this the other day, 2101, it's 080D, I believe it's further down in that section after this table. It says essentially the most recent plan governs.

So here I have— so these are all of these are in there, but I have extra, extra copies because people have been basically giving me extra copies of plans at this point. So the question is, if I'm doing policy in somewhere like Spenard, I've got the West Anchorage District Plan. This was passed in 2012, so it was written 5 years before the 2040 plan. And then I've also got— where have we got it here? We have the Spenard Corridor Plan.

So this was passed in 2020, and it was passed after the land use plan. So the question is, whatever the land use plan says that was passed in 2017, does it conflict with this, and does it conflict with this, and which one should we be following? So the general principle in planning is the most recent one, because everything that we've adopted in that table is considered right now equally valid, and therefore when they conflict with each other, the question is, is it the really big comprehensive plan? Is it these smaller neighborhood plans? Is it the most recent plan?

If there are decisions where one says the opposite of the other, then how do you sort that out? So, so one way to do that would be to make this step and say that these kinds of plans are advisory where they conflict with the larger plan. However, that also conflicts with the logic of whatever was passed most recently should be governing. So the question is, does the Hillside District Plan, which was passed in 2010, does that get superseded by the 2040 Land Use Plan? But all of our land use plans, even back to the Anchorage 2020 Plan, which was passed 25 years ago, says essentially that any of these kinds of decisions we should be making through these neighborhood smaller plans.

So if you look at our big plans, a lot of them say go to the little plan with a lot more detail and a different policy map. And so essentially what I have concluded as a policymaker and a planner is that we are stuck in an elaborate trap. And so the question is, how do we get out of this trap? It isn't that we don't value planning. It isn't that these don't have good ideas.

Just for the record, these are other neighborhood plans— our Government Hill neighborhood plan, 2010, 2013, our Fairview Neighborhood Plan 2014. I actually did work on this one, as a disclosure. Our Mountain View Plan from 2016, and then our 4 original neighborhoods historic preservation plan, which is a very more specific type of plan. It deals with historic preservation in our oldest neighborhoods. But again, the question is, if that conflicts with the Government Hill Plan, which of these are we supposed to follow?

So essentially, I think the question before you, the narrowest one, is how do we prioritize which plans we're following and in what order? But I think the bigger question is the ones that you've already started to raise, which is how are we supposed to implement all these things? How are we supposed to update all these things? And then I will also say, just as a separate matter, then happy to take questions and further discussion. I have wondered this as well.

And so I have— I'm currently drafting— it will be introduced at the next meeting on the 17th— an ordinance that repeals portions of this comprehensive plan. So essentially, I went through and found of those 51 items is something more than 30 years old and it's never been amended. Could something be replaced? For example, a lot of things that happened down in Girdwood, we have a Girdwood comprehensive plan that was adopted in 2025. So maybe the things from the 1980s or 1990s are not as relevant anymore.

So essentially it proposes repeal of right now 24 items that will be coming to planning and zoning for further discussion well before it comes back to the assembly. So just a preview. So this conversation will come back in that form and provide more food for thought, hopefully. So happy to take questions.

Any questions?

Feel free to jump in as long as we're not jumping over each other. Yeah, my question to Chair Brawley would be, is there value in the Commission taking up the recommendation in the specific resolution that's in front of us from 2025, or do you think there's more value in us waiting to review the legislation that you are proposing starting, starting soon? I think that's a good question. I think the pro and con of proposing that our neighborhood plans are advisory is that, again, the general principle and what's already in our code says the most recent plan governs where they conflict. And so essentially essentially it would mean anything that was passed before 2017 would be considered advisory.

And so it would put that kind of hierarchy of decision-making. So I think there's, there's pros and cons to that approach. I think if you were to wait, I think this conversation around the comprehensive plan is one that will not be resolved quickly. There's a lot of pieces to it, and I know the staff are working on it. So I guess I would say if I were you, I would not feel pressure to essentially answer this one specific question tonight unless you all would like to do that and think that it's a good idea.

I think there are, again, pros and cons. It's not a bad idea. But I think the bigger question of what do we do about this entire suitcase of plans is one that it's going to take some time to sort out.

This is maybe a somewhat more specific question, but it had always struck me as a little odd, and I guess this question is for you as a as a planner, maybe more than anything else. But the notion that the more—. Most recent element of the plan should control where there's a conflict makes sense to me in a certain way. But you can envision other ways that that could be done. And one of the ways I think to me seems most natural, and I'm curious for your reaction to this, and it seems like this, this maybe fits a little bit with some of the approaches that were discussed in the packet we received in September from Bellingham, and maybe actually maybe more specifically Philadelphia, which is that in a sense the broader elements of the plan control and maybe should control from the perspective of the fact that they're more representative of the city as a whole, maybe more so than a particular neighborhood or something like that.

And I'm just— to me, that seems like that almost makes sense and is intuitive that like like the, the whole 2040 plan, because that went through a broader process that reflected input from the whole city, should be what kind of controls and sets general principles. And if a neighborhood has a more specific plan or a different plan, certainly welcome to do that. And, and maybe that's advisory, maybe it's not, but to the extent that it conflicts with 2040, 2040 would control over any more particular plan. And I'm just curious for what your—. How you would react to concept?

Yeah, I think it's a good question. I think in terms of— I mean, one would hope that the community's kind of goals, priorities, you know, different things like that, you know, obviously emphasis would look different in a place that has mostly residential versus a mix of residential commercial. So there's going to be different flavors of that. But I would say it would be rare for the goals or the high-level things to be completely different. I think I pulled this out.

I think one kind of practical issue that we have with all these plans. This is the map, so this is the Fairview Neighborhood Plan map. Um, disclosure, I did work on this. This is not my version. This was at least 10 years ago now.

Uh, but, but the question is, you know, all of these, uh, commercial intensities, residential intensities, these different kind of policy decisions about what goes where, all of these, from what I remember in other plans, look a little bit different. So if you tried to put this particular map as it's written into the main land use map, which is a policy document, the 2040 Plan, you would end up with a bunch of variations of things that mean slightly different things. And so one of them is consistency. So I think at minimum, we could explore, for example, not giving each neighborhood plan its own choice of, you know, if this is 12 units per acre and then another one says 10, another one says 8, right? Those are not consistent.

So I think that's one area. I think the most recent plan governance— do you mind scrolling to— I don't know what page it'll be. It'll be the page in the table of the Girdwood plans. I mean, the practical reality of why those— that is generally a policy.

It would— I think it's in the resolution itself, actually, just wherever the table is. Yes, to go to the Girdwood plan. Hopefully this is updated.

Uh, oh, okay. Um, I'm looking for— okay, yeah, if you don't mind going to— I think the memo also has the table. Essentially what I'm looking for when we get there— there it is. So Girdwood Comprehensive Plan. So both the 1994 plan, which has existed obviously since 1995, and then this new one that was adopted in 2025, those are both listed as, as adopted elements of the plan.

So And spoiler, I have one of those listed as repeal, because why would we need this 1994 plan? So until that's done, if you're looking at both of those and they do conflict, then that's— again, because this is saying that we legally have to consult with these things and make decisions based on them.

Daniel. If I could provide an interesting example that just came up recently. So I'm going to show on the screen here, this is the 2040 Land Use Plan. It's a 2040 Landesplan map, um, so adopted in 2017. So this is the guide.

This is the— this is the 2021 Our Downtown Plan, which has a number of other different implementation sort of areas. So you look in 2040, it says this is all city center. And if you looked at, um, so you look at the implementation table in 2040 and it says city center can be downtown zoning districts B2A, B2B, B2C. And some other items, right? So you'd look, okay, it could be what it is.

But in downtown, it's a little more refined. So you can look here in this Pioneer Slope area or East Avenues. Pioneer Slope allows B-2B, which allows unlimited height, for example. But East Avenues only allows B-2C, which is a 76-foot height. So you potentially can have higher heights here than here because going into this, it's— that's just the way this plan was set up.

So our question that we've come across recently is, is if we— if, if the assembly chose to amend the 2040 plan specifically for town center and it said clearly you could use B-2A, B-2B, or B-2C in all city center zones downtown, then that would technically supersede this, although this plan was adopted in 2021. So 2040— but the 2040 was adopted in 2017 but had an edit after 24— in 2026, basically. So it just does come to these, as the chair mentioned, I think these these particular land use plans in the district and neighborhood plans, things can get very tricky very fast. And then it isn't totally clear whether if the Assembly— and I'm not saying they would— but it would be interesting if somebody made a change to this table in 2040 that superseded this. So this is technically the newer plan, but the change in 2040 is technically newer.

So I'm just adding that as sort of a mind-bending example. Thank you. Well, and I think I might turn that back on the department as well and just I wrote the Mountain View Neighborhood Plan, and by and large, what the community feedback said was all about community and economic development items. It was about bus routes and community centers. We got to the very, very end of the planning process, and the department told me that we could not bring the plan forward for adoption after the 1,000 people we talked to unless it had a land use plan map.

So I will just say that some of this is of our own making that we we have crafted and forced neighborhood plans that may not necessarily be about land use priorities to, to fit into the shape of the land use plan map, right? So I think we want to slowly get ourselves back out to the place where neighborhood plans can provide the level of feedback that the neighborhood desires.

Excellent point.

Not fully countering the position stated by the previous commissioner, I would like to build on and question if, as a community, we've moved beyond the usefulness of neighborhood and district plans. Are there mechanisms that exist today for engagement by affected residents that didn't previously exist? Or question phrased in a different way, what does the Anchorage of Tomorrow look like absent this as a tool in the planners' and community's toolbox? Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think, as many have said, especially last year as we celebrated our 50th anniversary with all of our decade quilts behind us, we are a community of communities, right?

So I think if you, if you try to write one set of policies, one set of zoning districts, whatever that is, I think there is an argument to say, yes, we should be uniform and we are one community. At the same time, there are different conditions. So we know, for example, Chugiak State Park has its own comprehensive plan. All of these things that we're talking about are really within the Anchorage bowl. Girdwood also has its own comprehensive plan because it's a distinct community.

So I think in some sense, when— if you think of those as district plans, you know, Girdwood maybe would dispute that it's a district plan, but it is a smaller area, smaller population, specialized area with its own kind of economic issues. So I think there is a role for those. I think the issue is that we've created a lot of them that they are not feasible at this point to update in a substantive way, not with the staff capacity we have and the time. But also there's a lot of kind of expectations and sunk, sunk cost into these that they are valuable, right? We hear the Hillside District's plan is still being used.

You know, I don't hear as much about the West Anchorage District plan, but I know these plans had a lot of buy-in. And part of the point of planning is to get the community together and say, what do we want to do? And try to build enough support, not just in a political sense, but in a general what do we want our future to look like beyond political cycles, beyond individual decisions. And so I think there is a value to them. I think practically speaking, it is legally feasible to repeal all of these and just say we're going to use the Bohl Plan, the Girdwood Plan, and Eagle River Plan.

However, there are a lot of specific things tied to these as well. So like historic preservation plan, right? There's, there's some things in here that apply to these neighborhoods that would not apply to where I live in Sand Lake or would not apply to hillside, things like that. So, so I think it's a valid question to ask, you know, have we moved past most of the content in these plans? Possibly, depending on how old they are.

The ones from the 1980s, certainly. We have a 1979 area-wide library facility plan. We either built them or we didn't, right? And so, so any kind of consideration of where a new library goes should be updated. But, but I think it's tough.

And I'll give one more example. This is the part of the Spinard Corridor Plan. So again, more recent than the land use plan. It seems to have two different maps in it. This one, it's got an orange, a yellow.

It's showing different North Spenard, Central Spenard, South Spenard. And it says these are the general areas for transit supportive development, which I know is a whole other subject that we will not get into tonight. But live question and how it fits into the plan. And then I turn here and I see this is the land use plan map itself. So in theory, this is superseding the 2040 plan.

And it says most of these areas should be pretty relatively low density. They do say mixed, but really the most high density should only be along along these corridors. So this plan even is internally conflicting with itself, it seems like. So I think the short answer is yes, we should consider making those changes and having a fewer number of documents that we consider our plan. But then the more you go down, the more complicated it gets, which is, I think, why we're in this situation now, because this did not happen overnight.

Go ahead, Daniel. Go ahead. I'll just offer a clarification. To Commissioner Christian's point, I think the Mountain View plan was done before the 2040 land use plan. So at that time, there was really just no comprehensive land use.

So I can see why. But as the chair is pointing out, it gets really complicated when we had the sort of universal land use plan for the bowl, and then we kept producing the specific land use plans after that. But it still does create a sort of odd situation. It felt like maybe before the 2040 land use plan, they were like, great, you guys are doing Mountain View. Can you do this component so we can have that covered?

But it does get complicated when you have smaller and larger supposedly doing the same thing. Thank you.

So I guess it is true, looking at this list of elements of the plan and some of the examples that you guys shared of challenges of figuring out how they interact with each other, it certainly, it certainly does seem like we've created a little bit of a monster here that's tremendously unwieldy. And I guess my question is, and I don't, I don't know if, if we have the answer, but I did see the couple of references in the, in the packet here to what other cities are doing, and I, I can't imagine that we are the only city that is dealing with this in some fashion, both in terms of different elements that have been created over the years and needing to manage them, and also in terms of lack of of funding for staff to help stay on top of all of this? And how strong is our sense of where we sit relative to other cities and what other cities are doing with this problem?

I think I can offer— I've kept in touch with the professional practice, especially on plans. I think we are not alone. Many cities, for example, were in the situation we were in the 1990s, which is they had a plan from the 1980s that no one had touched. Touched and felt really out of date. So I'm aware of cities that have gone 20, even 30 years before they've updated their plan.

They had one from, say, 1982, and they finally got it done in 2007, right? So we are definitely not unique. Um, I have not looked in detail at this question of neighborhood plans. I do know that there are some cities that have really made those commitments, and I think that was where planning staff may be able to speak to that better. But, um, for example, I think Seattle maybe has one.

But I think there are other places that have kind of created the stack like this. I don't know how they're getting out of it. Yeah, I think this was kind of the professional standard back in the day. That's why for me I think Denver is the most interesting example because it's almost parallel. The years are very parallel as well except the economic fortunes of Denver are very different.

And I grew up in Denver, so I've always thought that Anchorage is very similar to Denver in many ways. But it does feel that Denver had all this economic activity And they were really able to expand their entire planning system. But now they are dealing with a very large planning system. And I think they're kind of coming down a little bit and figuring out that they don't— they need one full-time position for each plan now. And you look at their plans, and they have specific land use plans just like that that say, on this street, you can have 3 stories.

On this street, you can have 3.5 or something like that. So I think we're just coming out of that a little bit. I do think new places— there haven't been that many cities, I don't think, that have been doing doing really big comp plan updates. I'm trying to think. I mean, Homer just did one.

Homer is probably too small to have too many areas. So I think we will kind of maybe come out of that. But I— you know, as we said, I think the Philadelphia example, and there's another example, just by necessity, places are starting to fare. We got to figure something out. But I think we're all kind of in this together.

Nobody has quite figured it out. And everybody is different as well, of course. But there are some similarities. And I think it just financially, if it comes down to we would love to implement all of these, but we'd probably need one person for every one or two plans, and then to track it and implement it and that sort of thing. And it does— it just doesn't seem like the planning department as it is now is going to get to that anytime soon.

This is maybe not a question, but just an observation that maybe staff or the assembly chair might want to think about, but it strikes me that the code refers only to two things, which is adopting and updating There's no mention of tracking or reporting or implementing or sunsetting. And I just wonder if we're going forward into creating a better system in the future whether we work those things in so we've got some measures to work towards that reflect what we want to see happen after adoption.

Go ahead. Thank you. Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up. There is some sections of code about implementation. Some of that was really, I think, a transition, you know, to say we put all this in place, here's how we should deal with it at that time.

It does call for updates because I should have said before, we do legally need to have a comprehensive plan that is in state law. It is very well baked into state law since the 1920s. It's the Comprehensive Planning Act, if you want to go back and look, 1928, I believe, or 1924. So the general idea that we should have a plan and that should be driving how we both make our land use decisions and our transportation investments. That's why it's tied to the capital improvement program.

I think that's pretty well baked. Built in. But the question is, we don't— it doesn't say what the plan needs to look like. And so I think the profession in general, I think, has been recognizing the need to be more adaptive, even having shorter timeframes, you know, building in performance measures, things like that, looking at them more like strategic plans, using adaptive scenario planning to say we can't predict the future, so let's think about what we need regardless of whether we get future A or future B. Those are all kind of things that are happening in the profession generally.

And if I can offer one more kind of thought, I think the two biggest kind of structural problems or failures in our plans, specifically in Anchorage, and I'm sure this is true in other cities, one of them is that they really try to be very specific and influence or control things that the government, or at least the local government, doesn't have control over. So I think if you write a plan in a neighborhood, you would get 100% of people that say, yeah, I would like a really nice coffee shop and some fun shops to walk to, right? Like everybody would say that. There's nothing in the local government's purview that can make that happen. Like, we can encourage it, we can incentivize it, we are not opening a coffee shop.

And so that's one kind of, I think, failure to think about as we read these plans is the intention versus what we can actually do. And then the other one, and I'm holding up, this is page 50 in the Anchorage 2020 plan, our land use policy map. I encourage you all to look at this and then go back and look at our actual current policy map. Part of the reason we have the 2040 plan is because this map made a bunch of choices to not make political decisions, right? And so that's the other thing is when we have plans, I think that the tendency we have is to say, okay, we know this is going to be spicy, we don't really agree on this, let's write it down in concept, let's use some really vague language that everybody can agree on, and then any of that disagreement or any of that when someone has to make a decision on something, we're going to kick that down the road.

And so what you'll see on this map is a bunch of squiggles, some stars. This is not a functional land use policy map, even though it's called that. And it took us another, what, 12 years to get to the point that we have one that you can use for individual parcels. I mean, if you zoom in, really, you would see that this is cutting through multiple parcels. And in fact, we've had that issue on a number of land— I mean, this one won't go too far down.

But I think that what this says to me is there were a bunch of decisions that we did not get granular enough on, that we decided on something and said, this is what we're doing. And then basically there's multiple things that have happened since then that have gotten into that uncertainty and tried to answer those questions, and then the controversy comes even though, as I said, it's— some of these policies have been in these plans for a long time. So I think that's something to think about. The failures of the plan are trying to overreach and do things that we can't do and overpromise, and then where they are not making the actual decisions or, you know, picking a path essentially, it leaves this uncertainty that then becomes a headache later on when somebody does to implement it. So I'd say if we can figure out how to avoid doing those things, whether we have a bunch of plans or one plan, we would be in a better place than we are now.

In the legal requirement to have a comprehensive plan, is it— when we talk about the difference between advisory, like, is it legally required that it has to be policy, or could the whole thing just be advisory?

Um, I would definitely defer to attorneys on an official position for that, but I think generally we need to have something that is a comprehensive plan that covers things like land use, transportation. There's kind of a broad area, um, that could probably be a 5-page general document. It does not need to look exactly like this. And I think so what we could have is an overall plan, and then it says we have all these other advisory plans that are meant to be be, you know, good ideas that we should implement versus what we have to implement. And I'll note too, so there is this 2940.030 in state statute.

This is a good benchmark for local governments in Alaska, but as a home rule municipality, we are actually not directly subject to this. And there was actually a state bill that I worked on. I was not the sponsor, obviously, but it was Senate Bill 50 that added housing as one of the elements that is required, which again doesn't doesn't apply to Anchorage per se, but the equivalent of this— not that language, but the equivalent requirement is in charter. And it's the same section that says the assembly must adopt a comprehensive plan, and then it also creates you all, the planning commission, as having a key role in that process. And that basically mirrors what's in state law.

There's other sections that are similar.

Uh, well, Commissioner Keith McCormick is in the queue. Q. So, hi. So, but I think you kind of touched on what my notes that I had written down was that, like, maybe the comprehensive plan is too detailed and too into the specifics and that it takes a really long time and a lot of resources to develop and to have consensus, and that maybe something that's very broad would be beneficial and then allow smaller regions to have very specific goals that align, you know, financial resources and could be implemented in those shorter time frames so that they match up with who's working on them. So it kind of seems like that is what you're saying would be beneficial.

How would that work? I think— I guess in my professional— if I was writing this plan from scratch, you know, I would certainly do a public engagement process. This. I would aim to have some goals. I would have a vision statement that's one sentence and not an entire chapter.

I would have probably different categories of actions or policies. I would prioritize them to say, okay, this is really important, we need to do this first. This will take time, you know, this is something we'll come back to later. So I would have some kind of sense of what, what staff would need to do first. I would identify things that other agencies need to be part of.

You know, we can't just tell them what to do, make sure that they're part of the implementation. And then in terms of measures, I think There are a lot of other plans that are looking at that, so it could be looking more at outcomes, you know, like are we seeing population growth, are we seeing more of the things that are happening potentially as a result of policy but not something we can directly control, or you could have measures that are more on outputs, you know, like did we, did we finish this study, did we make these zoning changes, you know, whatever it is. So I think there's different ways to measure it. And then I would certainly put, if there was any kind of technical information, I would make it an appendix, you know, so you could still have a fair amount of depth depth in basically receipts or footnotes that are backing it up. But the actual plan could be much shorter.

And I guess I'm not suggesting that this is the same as a comprehensive plan. The assembly passed a housing action plan that's 6 pages, and it footnotes basically most of these plans, a bunch of other work, and it's really focused on what we're doing, what are the actions, and not trying to write a long narrative. And so I think that's the other extreme. There's no photos in it, right? It's not, you know, it doesn't look quite like this.

But that's another kind of format that could be utilized to synthesize a bunch of information from prior plans.

Um, yeah, we have our meeting starts in 8 minutes, so we do need to take a break unless somebody had something they really had to say before we end.

I guess I have a question question. Based on everything, are they looking for us to amend the— these proposed resolutions before we put them forward? I'm sorry, I was talking to Lori about— was that a question to me, or—. I think the question was about what actions the Commission will take following this work session.

What actions— does any of the commissioners have any strong feelings about the actions you'd like to take? I, I'm not sure if staff has any input on that, but I think it would be either up to staff or the commission.

I'll, I'll voice my preference, which is I think not to take this item up up and instead to let the current Assembly and Assembly Chair propose legislation that might be more timely than this that we might weigh in on.

I'd suggest that the Commission do in fact take this up. I think there is value in the resolution, or at least elements of the resolution, in terms of advisory or not. Not knowing where Chair Brawley's efforts may go with what she has put forward in the future, and think that we have something before us today that perhaps we could find consensus with and make a decision on. I'm presuming that it would need to come back before the Commission as a case to be heard, though.

From— we could do any— anything anyone likes. We just had to bring the resolution. We could prepare more information. We could prepare additional information. We could bring a case back, I think.

We could hold another work session for you all to decide what you want to do with this, if you would desire—. If you desire to do so. But we are happy to also bring the case back if that is the commission's desire, so you can discuss it as a, as a body more formally. Okay, we have 1 minute, but I will say that I, I do see something that eliminates or reduces the amount of documents in the comprehensive plan as different or separate from the question of what should be priority or what should be advisory versus not, and which ones take priority. As kind of two separate things.

So might be easier to tackle in two separate cases. Mr. Chair, may I offer a thought? Go ahead. Okay.

I know you're running out of time. I have the resolution open. I will say the only person who sponsored it is now no longer on the body. So most of the members are not aware that this is a thing. But the Section 1 does speak to requesting your, your guys' review, what you're doing, and then a recommendation, which it doesn't specify, but it could be, yes, you should do this, no, you shouldn't do this, or we aren't taking a position at this time and anything in between.

It does say that if the recommendation does happen, that it would initiate probably through staff to text amendments to update the comprehensive plan and the code to reflect that change if they were made advisory. So beyond that, I think that's, that's really the only concrete action that you would be required to take. And there's no— it does say by September 25th, 2025. So I think we're a little past that date. So I think you are— it's up to you on the timeline.

Okay, we, uh, we'll adjourn the work session. We have 4 minutes till our regular meeting, so let's have a break and we can discuss this in the future.

She's not exaggerating, actually. It could be approximately 100 million.

Let's call this meeting of the Planning and Zoning Commission to order. May we please have the roll call? Andres Spinelli. Here. Jared Gardner.

Here. Radhika Krishna. Anna? Here. Scott Pulice?

Here. Jeff Raun? Here. Amma Baza? Here.

Megan Mills? Here. Edith McKee? Here. And Brandy Eber should be calling in shortly.

Thank you. You have a quorum.

Okay, may we have a motion to approve the minutes of Monday, October 19th?

It's moved by Commissioner McKee. Seconded by Commissioner Pulice. Are there any corrections to the minutes?

Hearing and seeing none, the minutes are approved.

Next item, special order of business disclosures. Are there any commissioners with any items to disclose?

Hearing and seeing none, uh, next item, consent agenda. May we have a motion to to approve the consent agenda.

It is moved by Commissioner McKee, seconded by Commissioner Mills. Anyone wishing to pull any items for discussion?

Hearing and seeing none, any objections to the consent agenda? Hearing none, the consent agenda is approved.

Approved. Now we will move on to the public hearings, and I will read the procedure by which the public may speak to the Commission. After staff presentation is completed on public hearing items, the Chair will ask for public testimony on the issue. Persons who wish to testify will follow the time limits established in the Commission rules of procedure Paul Hatcher. A, petitioners including his or her representatives will receive 10 minutes.

Part of this time may be reserved for rebuttal. Representatives of groups, community councils, PTAs, et cetera, will receive 5 minutes. Individuals will receive 3 minutes. When your testimony is complete, you may be asked questions by the Commission. You may only testify once on any issue unless questioned by the Commission.

May we please have the staff presentation? Oh, oh, sorry. If anyone is here for Case 2026-0136, it has been postponed to November 9th, and Case 2026-0120 has been postponed to December 14th. Now we will move on to Case 2026-0140. 6-0132.

May we please have the staff presentation? Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is a rezoning request initiated by the owner to amend the zoning map for two parcels from R-5 low-density residential district to R-2D two-family residential district. The land use designation in the 2040 land use map for these parcels is a single-family and two-family R-2D is an implementing zoning district of the land use designation, and the rezoning is following the abbreviated rezoning process.

The department mailed 18 public notice and received no public comments. There were also no comments opposing the rezoning from the review agencies, and no comments were received from the Abbott Loop Community Council. The Planning and Zoning Commission will provide a recommendation to the assembly on this rezoning request via resolution. The assembly is the ultimate decision-making body for rezoning. The department finds that the rezoning request meets all 3 approval criteria for an abbreviated rezoning and therefore recommends that the Planning and Zoning Commission forward a recommendation of approval for the rezoning request to R2-D to Assembly.

I am available for questions, and the owner's representative is present tonight to speak on the petitioner's behalf.

Are there any questions for staff?

Uh, hearing, seeing none, we'll invite the petitioner to introduce themselves and perform your presentation. Through the chair, good evening, Commissioners. My name is Tony Hoffman. I prepared this application. Um, this, this rezone is an ideal situation with the abbreviated rezone.

It's provided with water—. The lots are fronted on public right-of-way, improved roads, water and sewers there, utilities are all in place. It's an excellent use of the new land use plan in this process. So other than that, I actually don't have much to add. I'm open to any questions.

Any questions for the petitioner?

Um, I see none. You have 9 minutes and 26 seconds for rebuttal. Thank you.

Well, with that, we'll open the public hearing. Anyone from the public wishing to testify?

Uh, hearing, seeing none.

Do you have anything to offer for rebuttal?

Petitioner giving up their time. We'll close the public hearing. What is the will of the body?

Commissioner Abaza, would you like to state your motion? I move in case 2026-0132 to recommend to the Anchorage Assembly approval of the rezone of 2 parcels of land from R-5 to R-2D.

That's seconded by Commissioner Mills. Commissioner Baza, would you like to speak to your motion? Uh, I intend to support this motion. Um, it meets all 3 approval criteria, and we have not heard any opposition or agency, um, comments.

Thank you. Anybody else wishing to speak to the motion?

Hearing and seeing none, we'll call for the vote.

That motion passes.

Next on the agenda, Title 21 discussion.

Do we have any Title 21 items to discuss? If I could, Mr. Chair, this is Daniel McKenna-Foster, Long Range Planning. I apologize, we had to postpone the omnibus, the second omnibus this year where we have somebody out, so we're sort of shifting around our cases. But I wanted to address your attention to a few months ago there was a discussion in the Commission about the parks uses and whether something was accessory or not.

Not. And something you all identified is now a major component of the omnibus. So we're, we're making the changes because all throughout our code it says an accessory use, but it wasn't listed in the accessory use. So we're changing that to components of this use for a number of use definitions. So thank you to the commission.

It was really cool that you all identified that, and none of us have ever, had ever really thought of it, and it was a big problem throughout Chapter 5. So thank you. That'll be the omnibus.

Yes. Um, next item, Commissioner comments. Any Commissioner comments? Commissioner Rahn.

Thank you, Chair. Um, not wanting to let our good work, uh, in the work session to go, uh, stay Well, I would like to test the Commission's interest in putting forward a recommendation to the Assembly for the question that they've asked of us.

As directed in AR-2025-67, Planning and Zoning Commission should review whether district and neighborhood plans, just district and neighborhood plans within the Municipality of Anchorage, should be considered advisory to the Comprehensive Plan and not have the same force of law as the principles, policies, and goals set forth in it. That was the singular question put before us tonight that we discussed in a work session. It was recommended that in fact the PCC have and schedule a work session. We've done that. And I'm not sure which— what form it should take, but again, would like to test the commission's interest in putting forward a recommendation to the assembly that yes, in fact, neighborhood and district plans should be advisory.

Um, I would just jump in and say I'm open to it and love to hear what other commissioners' thoughts are.

Commissioner Pullis. Um, I will second that. That for sure. I would love to hear it. Commissioner Krishna.

May I ask a question to staff or to other commissioners at this point? Absolutely. I think I am open to it too. And I think my question is, I am not sure we have had before us Assembly legislation that is not actively sponsored and moving forward. And so my question is, starting on page 17 of our memorandum, we have two different assembly resolution drafts.

Is our— would our recommendation be structured around these, or would it be more general? How, how much are we looking at the, the specific language?

If I could respond to the commissioner's question, my interest is in putting forward a recommendation that is specific to the question asked of should neighborhood and district plans be advisory, full stop.

Commissioner Mills.

I guess I will add that I too am open to what is being proposed today. I think there's value in the presentation we received and the effort that 2026-0129, um, would bring forward.

And yeah, I'll just add that similar to some of those older plans, um, just because the assembly members might— the sponsors might no longer be around, it might have still been a valid idea. And I do think that if the commission felt strongly about it, even without the prompt from the assembly, it would be our place to just say, for example, that we wanted to weigh in on more skate parks in Anchorage or something along those lines.

Commissioner Christian. My one suggestion or request that I think I would be in favor of is is using the language that's seen in Table 2101-2, which is referring to them as area/issue-specific plans. I believe that this would follow the language in code, and I think give a more— from my perspective, a more accurate description of what I believe we're trying to recommend. But that's a preference. Thank you.

If I may respond to the Commissioner's question, while I think I understand its intent, I would put forward that it's more expansive than the interest that I'm trying to put forward. 2101-2, That table has plans, utility corridor plans, transportation plans, specific parks and facilities plans. As we discussed during the work session, there may be a need, and so mechanism forthcoming to acknowledge and perhaps improve upon that subset of plans. Um, so I would like to limit our action specific to the neighborhood and district plans.

Does staff have everything they need as far as feedback from from the Commission.

Let me read my notes. It sounds like the Commission is open to a simple question, not focusing on the particular 2025 AO that was proposed in the AR. And I guess if we could clarify the last piece about area or issue-specific the interest is looking at all of them or just certain parts of the table?

Some competing views by the Commission, I think, on that point. Two of us have weighed in.

As I put forward, my interest was specific to neighborhood and district plans. I'll let the other Commissioners speak to their interests. Commissioner Christian, do you want to elaborate?

No, I'm fine with taking up that specific question.

Cool. Okay. So we— I guess we can bring an item back for discussion as under case number. Does that sound about right? Is that— would that work with you all?

Probably in 2 months or so or something like that?

I could speak for the Commission and say, yeah, that will work. Work. Cool. Commissioner McKee. So in Section 1, there's kind of two things, and one is what's been brought up is that we say that they are advisory or make that recommendation, and then there's a second component that says to create a clear mechanism for the areas of Girdwood and Eagle River to amend their respective elements of the comprehensive plan.

Sorry, we are only going to make a recommendation on the advisory component.

Will you repeat that? I couldn't hear the second part of what you were saying. In our packet on page 17 and 18, there's a second component to Section 1, and Section 1 would be— we are saying it is advisory, but then there's a second component there that's asking for the creation of a mechanism to allow Girdwood and Eagle River to amend their respective elements. Elements of the comprehensive plan.

And then they attach the exhibits A and B. So I think what we are saying is we are only going to recommend that they be advisory and not address the second component that is requested. And that was what Commissioner Rahn put forward. And I guess the— as a commission, we can decide together. So if anybody had any different ideas, they could put those But yeah, anybody else?

Chair, if I can jump in. Go ahead. Just to provide some background information on the second element of that question, after receiving this AR from the assembly sponsor, we did work with the sponsor. We being the department worked with the sponsor a little bit on the mechanisms to update plans, and we did not reach any final conclusion on that particular aspect of this, this question. And if I remember correctly, the sponsor decided not to move forward with that piece of this, but that did leave And forgive me, staff can correct me if I'm wrong, but that did leave us with still the question, the first question of whether or not the neighborhood and district plans should be advisory or not.

I guess that brings up a question for me. Is the mechanism for Girdwood and Eagle River to change their comprehensive plans mean— is that code for a way for the city to pay for it? It? Because I'm assuming that there's a mechanism for those areas to change their comprehensive plans if they wanted to, but through working with the assembly. The, the code right now has sort of two ways.

There's like the administration, um, sponsored, or the department sponsored, or an outside group can bring it. So that AO in 2005 was what created that process for the outside group to bring it. But then it does kind of go through a different— it kind of comes as a case. It gets evaluated as case, and then it has to be approved or not. Whereas internally, it's more like it could last much longer.

We don't have those timelines. If, if a group came to us and they said, we want to do this— like when Girdwood came, they did it that way. So they came as an outside group, did it, and then we have a certain amount of time to review it, a certain amount of time to bring it here, and everything has to go through that. Whereas if the muni does it, you're right, the cost is on the muni, but it can also be an agency review forever and this and that. I think what we could look at in this proposal is look in Chapter 3, and Chapter 3 is sort of the procedures chapter.

If there does need to be a third new section or something, so we have like the comprehensive plan amendments made by the, the municipality, comprehensive plan amendments proposed by an outside group, and then Eagle River and Girdwood just changing their comprehensive plans. Because there's another piece here too, is I— and we've kind of been talking about it as if Girdwood and Eagle River are district or neighborhood plans, but Girdwood, I think, was pretty clear in their last update that they want— theirs is now a comprehensive plan. So they're really asserting that their plan is sort of its own autonomous thing. And I think Eagle River, with their update right now, will probably do something similar. So we could— I think that's a good question.

We could definitely look at that and see, do we need another section in Chapter 3 just to prepare for the situation where Girdwood or Eagle River can maybe we do their process separately for— because it's really like them updating their comprehensive plan. And a lot of this is elements of the 2040 or the Anchorage Bowl plans, even though it's not all like that. You know, Girdwood has Crow Creek and some other master plans. So maybe when we put something together, I'll put that on our list of things to consider. Do we need to have another section of Chapter 3 that speaks specifically to those sort of like big comprehensive plans that is separate from these amendments to components of other plans, if that would work.

Yeah, I mean, I, I still just don't like— do we need to make a way for Anchorage to change its comprehensive plan too, or just Girdwood and Eagle River? I guess I, I'm just like, the comprehensive— I, I— we don't need to talk about it anymore. Uh, Commissioner Mills is in queue. I promise it's short. I was just listening to your comment.

I was thinking to include with your text in the event that there's ever a conflict between, say, Anchorage and Girdwood or Anchorage and Chugiak State Park, Eagle River, to have it be clear, in my opinion, that it would, it would go back to Anchorage's master plan.

Commissioner Gardner. Thanks. I just wanted to confirm kind of what we're talking about, process here, and make sure I understand. So, um, I know we had discussion about making this advisory, this being, um, some of the elements of the plan advisory, but this will come back to us as a specific agenda item, during which point we will discuss that more fully and have an opportunity to vote and make a final decision as commission, right? That's what we're talking about.

That's, I think, our understanding as staff, is that we'll put something together And now since I have you here, I'll just pop up that you can see. So here's Chapter 2103, and we'll be looking at— here's comprehensive plan amendments. But then I think there's another section that's about neighborhood or district plan amendments. So we could just see if where that fits and if there needs to be something special. But, um, yeah, that's our interesting— we'll bring back a package for you all to look at and discuss, and maybe we have another work session.

But there's no pressure on this, I think. Thanks. Through the chair to Commissioner Gardner, I I think what my understanding of this is, is that we have a question that the, the Commission would like to—. Us to bring back as a case, which is the advisory or not for the district and neighborhood plans. And then we have the separate question, which is about the updates to those plans.

And I would maybe recommend that they are handled separately, just to keep the waters from getting muddied on the first question. Thanks. That makes sense to me.

Any other commissioner comments?

They don't even have to be about this. They could be about anything. I have a general comment on this, is that in general, these— they're now therefore resolved— there's a lot of terminology in here that's really vague that I would love it if they would have better definition. Definitions than things like inclusive and meaningful, which isn't— aren't defined and very interpretable.

Commissioner Krishna. I have one request.

At the discretion of the department, I would be curious to see a very short summary about how this, um, proposed recommendation would change the department's work plan in the future. Thank you.

Commissioner Baza. Um, I want to second what Commissioner Krishna just said, um, and I would appreciate some clarification of— and maybe this is something I can look into too— but when we make them advisory how easy is it to go against them? Would it— would they have to be in conflict, or would there have to be like a practical reason? Just some clarification on what the results of this move would be. And I guess I just first clarify that what we would be doing is making a recommendation to the assembly, so we wouldn't be doing anything other than saying this is our opinion, this is what you should do.

And then the assembly would take it from there. Then if— I guess staff can answer the second part of if the assembly agreed with us, what would happen?

Through the chair to Member Abaza, that is an excellent question and something that we will prepare for, for the discussion when this comes back to the commission. And just a thought on that topic. You, I'm sure, have seen some of the discussions at the assembly level about CASA and some of the projects related to CASA, the Chugach access issues. And in a lot of the materials, there is—. There are many references to the Chugach State Park access plan.

Which was actually tabled indefinitely by the assembly. So it is— I would consider that an advisory plan. It is not part of a comp plan. It was not adopted by the assembly, but it is still quoted as a community plan and used to some extent for decision-making by the departments.