Seward: P&Z Regular Meeting October 20 2026

All righty. Okay, I call this 20 October 2026 Planning and Zoning Commission meeting to order. Can we start with a Pledge of Allegiance, please? And who will lead the pledge? Commissioner Charbonneau.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America And to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, Madam Clerk, can we have a roll call please? Roll call for tonight's meeting. Verhey. Here.

Charbonneau. Here. Wilder. Here. Hornsept.

Present. Hubbard and Siptron are excused. And Chair Sullivan. Here. You have a quorum.

Thank you, ma'am. Okay, next thing I'm moving on to is public comments. Is there anybody signed in for public comments?

There is no one signed in. Okay, is there anybody in the audience that's wishing to speak? Okay. Thank you. All right, then we will move on to the next item, is approval of the agenda and consent agenda.

I need a motion and a second, please. I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Oh, I have a second. I'll second. All right, okay.

Are there any changes to the agenda? No. All right, no. Okay, Miss Clerk, can we have a roll call on the agenda and consent agenda? Voting on the approval of the agenda and consent agenda.

Hornseth? Yes. Bonder? Yes. Berge?

Yes. Charbonneau? Yes. And Chair Griswold? Oh, wait, who done this?

Yes, anyway. Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. Your notes are there. Seriously, I'm so sorry. That's okay.

We have to do this consensus that has been approved. Good to go. That's the problem when you take over a note— when you use old notes.

Okay, all righty. So, um, so we have that approved on that. So we'll move on to special orders, presentations, and reports. And we don't have any, uh, special orders. Uh, we had our presentation in the work session for the most part, and we do have a report.

I'll turn it over to Community Development. All right, thank you, Chair Sullivan. Just a couple updates from us tonight. First, just thanks to the To the chamber board for joining us for our work session. I do want to highlight our upcoming public open house for the Seward Wayfinding Signage Project.

And so, as we discussed at last month's work session, we're working with a consultant firm to develop a coordinated signage system to help people navigate across town. And our consultant will be in town next week for a site visit, and we're having a public open house Tuesday, October 27th, from 5 to 7 PM at the Seward Community library's community room. So this is a great opportunity for public to learn more about the project, provide input on destinations and signage locations, and help shape a system that makes Seward easier and safer to navigate. So I would encourage the commissioners and anyone listening to stop by. And then finally, I'll just mention that we're heading into City Council budget work sessions next week, several work sessions in the evening for various departments to talk about their budgets.

Ours is scheduled for Monday. And so we'll be discussing our department's priorities, projects, anticipated work over the next 2-year budget cycle. So that's what I have for tonight. Great, thank you very much. And where's that meeting going to be?

The wayfinding? Yeah, the community room in the library. Okay, great, thanks. Okay, all right, well, what we'll do is move into public hearings, and we have 2 items for public hearing. Uh, the first is— the first is a resolution of 2026 -0015.

And Miss Clerk, would you read that title into the record? It's Resolution 2026-015 of the Planning and Zoning Commission of the City of Seward, Alaska, granting a conditional use permit to Philip Zimmerman to construct a fourplex at 2011 Phoenix Road within a multiple-family residential R-3 zoning district. This is also a quasi-judicial item. Commissioners may not discuss to discuss it with the applicant or commissioners or the public. Comments must be emailed to the city clerk or provided during the meeting's public comment period.

Okay, thank you. And since this is a quasi-judicial, uh, consideration, I'd like to ask if any of the commissioners to disclose if they have any conflict of interest or have had any ex parte communication with— on this item, or if anyone sees this qualified commissioner from participating in the decision of— on the basis of perceived conflict of interest which has not been declared as yet. And if we have no conflicts of interest, we'll move on. Is everybody good to go? All righty.

Okay, well then, from that, I need a motion and a second. I'll make a motion to approve Resolution 2026-015. I'll second. Okay, great. All righty, Administration, do you have any comments?

Sure, I'll provide a brief overview of the application. So on pages 32 through page 35 of the packet, you'll see the location property map where this CUP would be implemented for a fourplex, as well as the site plan for the fourplex and then the parking plan. So it's similar to other fourplexes that have been constructed by Phil Zimmerman along Phoenix Road. It would be 4 units, 2 one-bedroom units and 2 two-bedroom units. The conditions for this conditional use permit are found on— in the resolution on page 23.

The conditions primarily mirror What has been required on past CUPs for multifamily dwellings requiring the applicant comply with all building fire and life safety requirements as well as tariff service connections. A minimum of 4 off-street parking spaces are required. Of course, the bear-resistant refuse containers and three-sided enclosure. With roof, the landscaping requirement, which is required to be completed within 1 year following the issuance of the Certificate of Occupancy. And then, the final condition is that all the conditions must be completed prior to the Certificate of Occupancy being issued and that ongoing conditions are— will remain in effect for the duration of the approved use.

Okay, thank you. Well, it doesn't look like we have the applicant present, or else— is Phil on the phone? He is not on the phone. Okay, all right, well then we won't go there. Okay, anybody— I will open this for public comment.

Does anybody have any— is there any public comment for this at all? There is no one. There is no one signed in. Thank you. All right, well, uh, then what I will do is I will close the public hearing for now, and I will go into our deliberations here for the commissioners.

Does anybody have any concerns, questions, or otherwise? I had questions for Mr. Zimmerman, but he's not here, so I guess I don't have any questions. Are they questions that might be No, consider the passing or failing of the, or of the CUP? No. Okay, any other commissioners have any questions?

Be nice if Mr. Zimmerman was here, but yeah. Okay, well then, if that's the case, no one has anything else, then, uh, are we ready to vote? Unless— did you have anything? No. Okay, okay, well then we'll go ahead and vote.

Voting on Resolution 2026- 015. Charbonneau? Yes. Balder? Yes.

Hornseth? Yes. Verhey? Yes. And Chair Sullivan?

Yes. That resolution has been approved. Okay, great. All right, then we'll move on to the next one, which is our second public hearing item for tonight, is Resolution 2026-016. Miss Clerk, could you read that into the— to our record, please?

Resolution 2026-016. Lori Draper, Chairperson, Planning and Zoning Commission of the City of Seward, Alaska, recommending City Council amend Seward City Code 15.10.226, Land Uses Allowed, and 15.10.320, Conditional Use Permits. Legislative item. Commissioners may not discuss it with the public. Comments may also be emailed to the City Clerk or provided during the meeting, the meeting's public comment period.

Okay, so since this is a legislative item, we'd have to worry about conflict of interest. So I'll go move on to— I need a motion and a second. I'll make a motion to approve Resolution 2026-016. I'll second. Okay, we have a motion and second.

Courtney, anything else? Yeah, provide for us please. Sure, I'll provide a brief overview for the public who may be seeing this for the first time, who haven't followed in on the work sessions, although I would say anything I don't cover, if there are any questions, we had two pretty decent lengthy work sessions on this that provide a lot of information on the context and conversation that was had. I'm going to start maybe going backwards in the ordinance because that maybe makes a little bit more sense. So the first primary focus of this ordinance is to adjust the requirements of a conditional use Permit Application and the review criteria.

So you will see on page 47 that there are some additional requirements to the application that the applicant would have to provide pictures of the site, dimensioned plot plans drawn to scale and that the applicant or the representative must be present at the meeting. As seen tonight, it is helpful to have the applicant here to ask those questions and so the Commission is allowing the flexibility of the applicant or their representative and also the flexibility of being in person or on the phone. So it is quite accommodating, but a necessary thing, I think, to require. Then the review criteria has been amended or is being proposed to be amended to now address that as the Commission reviews conditional use permits, they can evaluate whether the use will have significant noise, glare, odor, or other nuisances and dangers affecting the surrounding properties that would be greater than anticipated from other permitted uses in the area, as well as a review criteria where the Commission can evaluate whether the property is current in payments owed to the city, such as property taxes, sales tax, those things. So that just provides some additional review criteria and just provide some context that when the— when the Commission reviews these conditional use permits, there's a lot of things that the public may consider in their evaluation of a conditional use permit of what they may or may not want on their street or within the community, but the Commission is strictly limited to review those conditional use permits based on the review criteria within code.

So it's essential that the Commission has substantial review criteria listed in the code that would cover the most important issues that would affect quality of life and property values and things like that. So then moving backwards in the code— I. Have one quick question on that. Yeah. On number 6 for the— for the use will not have a significant noise, glare, etc.

Are there certain guidelines that we— because if we're actually putting it in there, that we can use that, you know, or maybe subject matter experts, you know, whether from the electrical department or something like that, for questions, that we have that so we can stay in our lane, so to speak, so it's not just an arbitrary decision? Right, yeah, so it is always— and with all of these review criteria, there is a level of— gray area, I suppose you could say. And for number 6, I think the measuring factor there is that it's whether or not it's substantially greater than those anticipated from other permitted uses in the area. So that's what the Commission would have to weigh it against. So that's the comparables?

Yeah.

Okay. And then if we— If you look at the land uses allowed table, primarily shown on page 46, the Commission has gone through the various land uses and changed some of the conditional uses— conditional use permit uses to outright uses. And this was also done by very intentional, thorough discussion of what uses are primarily already covered either within code requirements in code or what uses have been outlined as requiring a conditional use permit within a zoning district where that use makes perfectly good sense to be allowed, such as auto repair within the auto commercial zoning district or recreation outdoor in the resource management zoning district, as well as like the primary ones being the different forms of dwellings that are now being allowed outright within our residential and commercial zoning districts that accommodate higher density housing. I just want to point out that the outright uses for the various dwellings have been limited to dwelling units of 3 to 5 units. So any, any type of dwelling that would be greater than 5 units would still require a conditional use permit.

So then to address those multi-family dwellings that have been allowed outright now in our Land Uses Allowed table, on page 45 you'll see in the Land Uses Allowed code, the Commission has proposed to add in requirements for those types of developments, multi-family dwellings, condominiums, and studio apartments. And so those requirements now would apply to anyone that submitted a building permit for dwelling unit of 3 to 5 units. They would automatically be required to comply to landscaping, providing bear-resistant containers, having that 3-walled structure around the bear-resistant containers, and as well as providing parking spaces. To be in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. And town— for those who may be wondering why townhomes aren't addressed in these requirements, townhomes has a whole section within our code already that addresses these requirements.

Anybody else? Any questions on that so far? Okay.

It's a lot of work there, and I like the fact that you actually put a lot of the things that we add in the CUP actually in code, so we don't have to redo it every time. It sort of makes it a lot easier, because it's usually the same thing over and over. So that's good. Thank you. Anybody have any other— any questions at this point?

No? So it says ask for the Afghan president. Where the Afghan? So we're not going to go to that. Public hearing.

Is anybody for public hearing on this? There's no one signed in. No one signed in for public hearing. Okay. So I'll close the public hearing formally.

And we can deliberate if anything further. Anybody have any questions, deliberations? I have a proposed amendment. And I will talk about it so I can get a second real fast. I would like to propose an amendment to Section 2 of the Seward City Code, Title 15.10.320, on page 47 of our packet here, under subsection— Section 2, subsection D, the review criteria.

I would like to propose adding an amendment that we add language that applicant is in compliance with previous permits, and I can elaborate on that if I get a second. Is there a second out there? I'll second. Good. Okay, uh, so we've talked about the lack of an enforcement officer before, and this helps us, uh, potentially give us a little bit more wiggle room with any applicant that is not in compliance.

What we know will well, if they have a history of not being in compliance with all of the conditions of our conditional use permit, then we have something to deny future permits based on that. So it gives us a little bit of enforcement here without having an enforcement officer. And the actual language I would like to use, which Commissioner Seward has talked about, Obviously, wordsmith more, but this is what Courtney helped me come up with, is the applicant or individual— and this is adding a review, adding to the review criteria there— the applicant or individual responsible for complying with the conditions of the proposed conditional use permit has demonstrated the ability and willingness to comply with permit conditions as evidenced by their compliance history with previously approved permits issued by the city. Okay.

Does that sound—. You have a way to make sure she was able to— oh yeah, speed writing over there. No,. No, I already have it. It's already prepared.

Okay. Okay, we have a motion, the second, and the, the amendment. Any discussion?

Um, yeah, I agree with this. I mean, if we, if we have people that continuously do not apply, do not follow through with all of the conditional use permits that are put on, it makes sense to kind of question whether they need to get another one. Sure. They are not following the rules that they said they would follow in previous conditional use permits. It doesn't make sense.

Reinforces bad behavior if you don't enforce it. Now, is this considered— this is a clarification point— is Is this considered a friendly amendment to it, or is it just a full-up new amendment to the resolution?

Can we just add that? I think it's just an amendment. Okay. Okay. Good.

That makes it easy.

Anybody have anything else to add? Nope.

Good. I'm. Good. Good. Easy crowd.

Okay. Okay. Then that's the case. Then I think we are ready to vote. On the— I'm adding the amendment first.

Okay. Voting on amending Resolution 2026-016 by adding the applicant— by adding to Section 2, 15.10.220, subsection D, the applicant or individual responsible for complying with the conditions of the proposed conditional use permit has demonstrated the ability and willingness to comply with permit conditions as evidenced by their compliance history with previously approved permits issued by the city. Wilder? Yes. Charbonneau?

Yes. Verhey? Yes. Hornseth? Yes.

And Chair Sullivan? Yes. That amendment has been approved, and back to the main motion. Resolution 2026-016. We have any other discussion on that?

Otherwise, we'll go ahead and vote on that one. No, I think we did a great job with multiple work sessions, and I think everybody's, you know, on the same page the way it came out. Clean some stuff up, clarify some things. Yeah, great. I think we're moving along pretty well.

So if we don't have anything else, we'll go ahead and put this to vote. Voting on Resolution 2026-016 as amended. Balder? Yes. Verhey?

Yes. Charbonneau? Yes. Hornsby? Yes.

And Chair Sullivan? Yes. That resolution has been approved. Great, thank you everybody. Okay then, that's it for the public hearing item, so we'll move on to unfinished business.

Listen, we don't have any unfinished business and we have no new business, which is nice. We also need to discuss one new business item, which is other, and is the work topic for November 17th. What is— do we have a work topic for that?

No, we do not. We don't. We will have that along. You'll send that down the road. November 3rd meeting.

Good, we're on it. Yeah. Okay. All right, so we'll move on to informational items and reports. So just remind everybody, Tuesday, November 3rd, in council chambers is our work session, which we'll find out what we have.

And then on, um, and then on the following, on the 17th, is we'll have— well, the first one was our, our meeting, and then the 17th is our work session. I have it reversed. Also in the council chambers. So we have any final comments, public comments?

Okay, thank you. And so now we're to Commissioner— Commission and administrative comments and responses to citizens' comments. We had a few citizens earlier, but anyway, so administration. Yeah, it's a quick double header. I like it.

So, uh, no, thanks to Courtney who, um, workshopped the amendment with Brennan, talking to the City Attorney. We'll We'll still provide the City Attorney with the new language, and so we may workshop it a little more, but I think we have a pretty good understanding of your intent with that amendment. And, yeah, we'll see what it turns out when we get it in front of City Council. But, yeah, thanks for your hard work on, yeah, multiple work sessions and getting it across this finish line. Good.

Hopefully, it'll make it across. Okay. Courtney? Yeah, no comments. Just thanks for what you do.

Andy? Thanks for the amendment there, the—.