Mat-Su Borough: Regular Planning Commission Meeting - June 15, 2026

I hereby bring or call the June, uh, 15th, 2026 Planning Commission meeting to order at 6 PM. Now I'm supposed to use the gavel. And Madam Clerk, roll call please. Commissioner Allen let me know he would not be able to make it tonight. Commissioner Glenn.

I'm here. Commissioner Carpenter? Here. Commissioner Collins let me know he would not be able to make it tonight. Commissioner McCabe?

Here. Commissioner Fonoff? Here. And Commissioner Scoggin also let me know he would not be able to make it. We have a quorum.

Thank you. Uh, are there any additions or changes to the agenda?

Seeing and hearing none. Are there any objections to approving the agenda as written? Seeing and hearing none, the agenda is approved. Pledge of Allegiance, uh, Commissioner McCabe, please.

Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation with liberty and justice for all.

Uh, consent agenda minutes, regular meeting minutes, June 1st, 2026. Introduction for public hearing quasi-judicial matters, Resolution 26-10, a conditional use permit in accordance with MSB 17 0.70, regulation of alcoholic beverage uses to expand operations for pre-existing alcoholic beverage dispensary or bar located at 10204 South Connect Goose Bay Road, tax ID number 7186000, uh, Lima 001, within Township 16 North Range 03 West, Section 24, Seward Meridian. Enter—. Did I miss something? Oh, staff is Wade Long, Development Service Manager.

Public hearing date is July 20th, 2026. And then introduction for public hearing legislative matters, there's none. Are there any objections to approving the consent agenda as written?

Hearing and seeing none, consent agenda is approved. Committee reports, none. Staff, uh, agency and staff reports, none. Land use classifications.

Audience participation, 3 minutes per person for items not scheduled for public hearing. If there is anyone on the phone who would like to speak about anything that is not on the agenda for tonight, please press star 3. Got anybody? Nobody? Is there anyone in the audience who would like to speak?

Sure, you bet. Okay, thank you. And could you— is he not going to speak?

Could you please— is there a sign-in sheet sitting there? There isn't, is there? Oh, you already signed in. Okay. Yeah, please turn the mic on.

Thank you. Okay, I'm Ken McCarty. And what else would you like to know about me? If you could spell your last name. Yes, last name, please.

Yes, M-C-C, that's M-C capital C-A-R-T-Y. All right, thanks for, uh, let me come before you. What you have— do you all have what just was handed out? All right. So what this is is a condensed version of close to 800 pages.

Most of it you already know because it has to deal with issues of MATSU. But what this is is that there's a group of people that are interested in breaking off from Anchorage. And there's two avenues for that. One is called— a thing called the Eagle Exit. They've been working on that for 9 years.

And the other one is this annex now, which came to Matsue in July of '24 and asked the question, has anybody come to ask the question? And hearing that nobody even came to Matsue and asked the question to explore the options of breaking off and be part of Matsue. And so looking into that and coming before the assembly that in December, and this is really key, December 16th, that, uh, Assemblymember Dimitri had a resolution to allow Mike Brown to assign projects to individuals in Matsue to research the viability of this, and if it's not viable, then it's just a dead issue. And there are people that came opposing that, the Alexa group, uh, saying that they are on the edge of getting their thing done and, you know, presented to the Boundary Commission. That was false.

And what they didn't realize is all it was was a procedural thing that Mike Brown needed. Okay, so it didn't pass. And then most recently, that there was an attempt to say, okay, let's see if the people of Mattapoisett— what do they say? Because this was submitted— not this, but 540-page document was submitted to the Boundary Commission saying you know, is this viable? And they're like very interested.

And the big question they asked is, what does Matsu say? And so that's the big question. It's like, well, what does Matsu say? And that question is not being addressed. And so there's an attempt to get this on the ballot for November through the clerk's office, and there was a response back that said this doesn't fit to get the process.

I could easily argue that point because one of the big things it said is that Matsu is not in a position to make a decision, it's really the Boundary Commission. Yet the Boundary Commission— I have the document— says, what does Matsu say? So the question that's before you, this piece here, is that if this were to happen, that would be beneficial definitely to Chugach River, but it'd be very beneficial to Matsu and be very beneficial to the state of Alaska. As example, if you open up to page 26 in the booklet there, that you'll see a breakdown of the cost or of the revenue that's coming into the area. And the area— my time up.

Okay, so do you want to give me more time or no? I can give you just a couple seconds here. Go ahead, finish up. So the key thing here is that this is a breakdown that at the bottom of this, on— you see the numbers there— that, um, uh, if this would happen, a little over $19 million would come into the borough at your discretion, whatever you want to spend. And I know that Matsui is all looking for different revenue sources to come in.

Here's an avenue there. $27 Million goes to the school district, whatever it needs to do. Of course, you have to take care of schools out over there, but it could do at discretion of the excess money there. So if you want to hear more about this, I'm happy to come back and present more in detail of these different things. Okay.

Thank you very much. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Appreciate it. Let's see.

Seeing and other— is there anyone else wishing to be heard? And nobody's online. Okay. Seeing and hearing there are no other persons to be heard. Any objection to closing audience participation?

Audience partition— or participation is closed. And public hearing quasi-judicial matters, none. Public hearing legislative matters, Resolution 26-09, a resolution of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Planning Commission recommending approval of an ordinance amending MSB 17.73, Multifamily Development Design Standards to Align Permitting and Design Standards with the Scale and Complexity of Development Projects. Staff: Alex Strawn, Planning Commissioner— or Planning Director. Mr. Strawn, can you please provide your staff report?

I'm happy to, Mr. Chair. Once again, my name is Alex Strawn. I'm the Planning Director for the borough. There's a lot in this ordinance.

I'm going to sort of COVID some of the highlights. And if you have questions, I would certainly be happy to answer questions and dive deep down any bunny hole you want to go down. Um, so I'm just going to sort of start at the top and sort of give an explanation of some of the main categories of things that this ordinance is developing. First of all, we have a threshold in our multifamily code. That dictates what size, how many units you can have without a multi-family permit based on the size of your lot.

And if you have— there's a lot of, uh, the idea was that you could have on a 1-acre lot, you could have 2 dwelling units without a permit. And we found that if you're just under 1 acre, because maybe you have an older lot, you'd only be able to have 1 unit. And so this sort of fixes that, saying regardless of the size of your lot, You can have your main residence and a mother-in-law suite without any permitting whatsoever. And then this tackles— well, it addresses a big issue that we've been dealing with in the planning department, dealing with condominium, what we call condo plats.

They're communities that are created through a state process that allows people to sell interest in land without going through our standard Title 43 subdivision process. So, if you have a 10-acre lot, for instance, you can hire a surveyor to divide up the land, and you can essentially create condo association and rules and go record it And you never have to go through the subdivision process. And so what we found is that, uh, there's a lot of times these lots are substandard. They don't follow any of our, our Title 43 regulations. We've had it for a couple of years on our list of state priorities to change to give more local voice for condominium plats of that sort, but that was actually removed.

And so that is not one of the the assembly's priorities. But this does address that. The way we've addressed in the past is in our multifamily code, under what is considered a dwelling unit, condo units created through one— through this process are considered a dwelling unit, even though there's no structure there necessarily. If you're creating squares on a map, that is an individual unit associated with the condominium development that is considered dwelling unit.. And so, uh, we have been processing multi-family development permits for these condo plats, and it's not— it's kind of a square peg in a round hole type situation.

Our, our rules don't really fit what the development actually looks like. So this is an attempt at addressing that. It's essentially saying that if you're doing a condo plat and the lots that you're creating are over 40,000 square feet, that those are just create essentially treated as parcels. Uh, uh, so if you were to put— if you had a 40,000-square-foot lot or condo unit that you put 3 structures on, you'd have to get a multifamily permit for that one unit, for instance. But if you had a 10-acre parcel and you condominiumized it into 10 units, you wouldn't necessarily have to get a multifamily permit because If they're, if they're over 40,000 square feet, and if this at some point doesn't make sense, please stop me and ask me for clarification.

Um, uh, so that is one thing it does. It's, and then it, uh, it clarifies a drainage plan. Right now with multifamily developments, the, essentially you have to show what your drainage is going to be, but there's no real standards for for what a drainage plan does. This actually requires that your drainage plan be stamped and developed by a professional engineer, and that— and then it has actually very specific standards of how much of the water you have to retain on site as a result of your development. And it does somewhat match our subdivision construction manual rules.

And No, it does, it does. The standards were derived from the Subdivision Construction Manual rules. It also, it has, it sort of strengthens the rules as it pertains to fire code. So if you have a larger parcel, okay, so when we process multifamily permits, it's We have rules that say that all of your internal roads need to match our subdivision construction manual, and it's really hard to determine, okay, what is considered an internal circulation road and what is just a driveway leading to somebody's little cabin? And so this creates a new definition for, uh, what's called a vehicular circulation road, and it has a standard that all the exterior walls of your buildings have to be within 100 feet of your of your external or your vehicle circulation road.

So this makes it— this is based on fire code. Fire trucks, when they get to your house, they don't like to go beyond 150 feet from their fire truck. I guess they start losing pressure or something happens at that point. Go ahead. So we make sure that the roads can actually fit a fire service vehicle, correct?

So two things need to happen. You either need to have a road that fits a fire truck Or you need to have— the fire truck needs to be able to get to within 150 feet of your structure, essentially, so they can put the house out when it catches on fire. That makes sense. So, yeah, we clarify rules as it pertains to ADA requirements, American with Disabilities Act. Uh, we have, uh, and then we, we differentiate that once you're above 10 dwelling units, then, then you have to have a little bit more consideration for your vehicle circulation roads.

And it has to be— your roads have to be developed to Pioneer standards, the ones that are leading to the different developments. Um, there was, there was a lot of thought put into this. We worked with Assemblymember Sumner to, to develop all of these changes, and I do feel that we, we did a pretty good job of, of cleaning up our multifamily code and making it more better fit what makes sense. It's not a one-size-fits-all. It sort of has tiers.

If you have a smaller multifamily development, which a lot of people have, you're going to have less regulations. But it keeps regulations in place for those larger multifamily developments that have potential life, health, and safety issues associated with them if they're developed. Um, it had, you know, we had a requirement that, uh, that, um, glare and illumination associated with the exterior lighting shall be contained on the subject property. I never like it when we have that rule. Essentially, they're saying not a single photon can leave your property, which is unrealistic.

So, um, it helps us to be more reasonable when we're— when we are assessing these developments. Instead, if you're gonna have exterior lighting, you have to— you have to sort of have downward directional shielding, which is a pretty, pretty normal standard. Um, flexibility in the perimeter landscaping. Our existing code says you have to have, you know, around the edge of your property, you have to keep a row of trees. Essentially, this allows you to build a— if you want to do like a cedar fence, you can do that instead of doing the vegetative buffer.

It allows some more flexibility and more reflects reality. And that's I think that's a summary of what is in there, but if you want to dive deeper into any of these provisions, I'm happy to explore that with you. Thank you, Mr. Stronda. Commissioners, do you have any questions?

Did, did you see the letter that came in for the meeting tonight from the North Lakes Community Council? I did. That's the one that, um, I, I was kind of curious, like, we do just like a quick, uh, look into it But oftentimes, especially where we live out here, loopholes are, you know, like we took a cursory look at it, but are we looking at like the wrong side of Swiss cheese? And if we turned it around, there's loopholes everywhere we look. You know what I mean?

Like, and I imagine in anything that you guys do or we do, there's going to be, you know, Yeah, I'm just trying to address what— yeah, what the concerns that that letter kind of— yeah, was asking. So if I may, Mr. Chair, so I— yeah, I like to say that any rule that you write has unintended consequences, no matter how well it's written or how well-intended you are when you write it. There's always unintended consequences and there's always loopholes to be found. I am happy to answer any of the questions within this comment.

I do actually believe that we— I have answers to all of them. Um, the fact of the matter is that if somebody did a condo plat for 40,000 square foot lots, uh, then— and I addressed this earlier— then if you did, if you had a 40,000 square foot condo unit, then you could do 2 units on that without a multifamily permit. If you go beyond that, you have to get a permit and you're subject to the provisions of this. So that answers that.

Yeah. And so any one of these questions you have, I'm happy to dive deep in if you want to specifically ask these ones. Yeah. Yeah. I believe.

Okay. Anybody else have any questions?

Okay. At this time, we will proceed with opening a public hearing for Resolution 26-09. If there's anyone Anyone on the phone who would like to speak, please press star 3. No one's on the phone. Is there anyone in the audience who'd like to speak to this?

Yes, there is. Thank you. Okay. Um, my name is Colleen Vague. I am the vice president and speaking on behalf of North Lakes Community Council.

I'm speaking for Rod Hanson, who is the president, who's unable to be here, and I believe that he's the one that sent the letter that you're referring. So I—. He asked me to come and actually read the letter into the record so that it would be a part of the record. Um, I'm going to skip the first part because it's personal to him. Moving on to the second part, the draft ordinance proposes several changes to multifamily dwelling regulations.

Many of the recommended changes close identified gaps in the current code and should be advanced. These that should be advanced include emergency fire response access, traffic movement, and vehicle circulation. Developments with more than 10 dwelling units must follow the subdivision construction manual and the bridge and culvert crossing regulations. And new regulations for drainage and stormwater management. Those are all good ideas.

Information Memo 26045 and Ordinance 2609 also identify goals of, quote, ensuring that small-scale residential projects are not subject to standards intended for larger multifamily housing and balancing the regulatory burden for small-scale developments. These seem to be worthy goals, but it is unclear how the other proposed code changes align with them. Here are some questions I recommend the Planning Commission pursue, and that's I being Rod Hanson, and, and as a board, we voted on this and we all agreed to these as well. Could someone develop a large parcel of land into lots or sites of 40,000 square feet or greater and then construct several small-scale multifamily units on adjacent lots within that larger parcel? Well, each site or lot meets the definition of small scale.

At what point does the entire development become classified as larger scale? Next, does it make sense that a fourplex on the single lot or two duplexes on neighboring lots be exempt from the new drainage and stormwater management requirements? And finally, neither the IM nor the draft ordinance mentioned using fencing instead of perimeter landscaping for multifamily developments. It appears a requirement for perimeter landscaping is being removed for all multifamily developments, including large-scale ones. Is this really what is best for the communities and neighborhoods.

If you want to remove that requirement, please be transparent about it and include it in the resolution for public awareness. Reducing regulatory burdens for truly small-scale multifamily developments makes sense. Please ensure the proposed legislation has no loopholes, and I realize that that's difficult. Um, thank you for your consideration. Rod Hanson, North Lakes Community Council, and I'm speaking on his behalf.

Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else wanting to speak to this hearing? And seeing none, I now close the public hearing. At this time, I will entertain a motion for Resolution 25-09.

Oh, excuse me, 26-09. Commissioner McCabe, I will move 26-09. Thank you, Commissioner McCabe. Commissioner Fonoff, I'll second that. Commissioner Fonoff, thank you, he seconds it.

Mr. Chair? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, sorry to interrupt here, and I should have mentioned this in my staff report. Um, I have recently discovered there's some sort of clerical errors within the resolution that's in your packet, which is probably why you said Resolution 25-09.

Okay, I've identified several and I can go over them with you. Um, uh, I don't even— I mean, you can make a, uh, uh, an amendment if you want to, but I think this is all clerical stuff. First of all, we had mention of 1702 mandatory land use permit in the title. We had the dates wrong. We had 25/09 instead of 26/09.

We referenced 25/031 instead of 26/031, and that, that is it. So I went ahead and prior to the meeting, track changes and made these changes. Um, just wanted to clarify that, that there is some discrepancies there that need to be sort of fixed. Commissioner McCabe, I'll make a motion that we accept the recommended changes. Thank you, Commissioner McCabe.

Commissioner Carpenter, I'll second that. Thank you, Commissioner Carpenter. Thanks. And is there any discussion, any more discussion on this? No more.

Are there any objections to approving Resolution— it's 26-09, is that— that's correct, right, that number? Okay, 26-09 is written.

Hearing and seeing none, Resolution 26-09 has passed. Okay, on to correspondence and information, none. Unfinished business, none. New business, none. Commissioner business or commission business.

Commissioners, do you have any questions regarding the future agenda items provided in, in your folders?

Commissioner Carpenter, if I, I'd like to, uh, add, um, the annex now to a future one so that— oh yeah, so that we get more than like, like, hey, hi, my name is Ken McCarty. Okay. And then, bing! Yeah, I'd like to see that as well. Something a little more in-depth so we get something to chew on.

And so, yes. Is that okay? So if I have— you can ask some clarifying questions. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, so are you— so are you hoping to have just, uh, a longer, um, the ability for them to talk more than 3 minutes, or are you hoping that a resolution will be prepared?

What, what is your druthers when it comes to this? I would like to see a resolution. Prepared on this Eagle River exit deal. That's what I was—. I want more information.

I want to know. I'd like to have more information that we could talk and discuss and then send it up to the assembly. It was, uh, so like the— when it went before the borough for, um, I'm correct, I, I believe I'm correct, sent it to get a signature ballot, so the booklets, so you could get signatures to put it on the ballot. And, and that was when he said nope, that was turned down. Okay, well then let's put it before the assembly and the assembly can go.

So that— I would like to do that because there's only so much time, and I— you know what I mean? Okay, if we could send them— and the last time they did it, it was overrun by a bunch of people that were like, bah, and everybody was like, what? And so this time it'd be a little more I'd like—. Yeah, I'd like more information on it for sure. So I want to learn something here.

And then I have one follow-up question. Go ahead. Yeah, so are we looking for just general support of the annexation, or are we going to be more specific about we want to see it on the ballot, or what—. What would be the take-home message barring asking Mr. McCarty? More.

I would— I would— coming before us, I think it would be worthwhile for us to, to be able to discuss it, come up with something, and give it to the assembly like, we're online with this, this is what we would like to see. Do you know what I mean? Like, yeah. So, so perhaps we can do some sort of, um, I think it's under like maybe agency staff report or commission business or something like that. We can have a longer presentation with some with some back and forth and questions like that.

And then at a follow-up meeting, we can have a resolution that will derive from that meeting. Does that sound okay? We couldn't do it in one. Yeah, no, that sounds reasonable. Time seems—.

Time is of the essence. Yeah, but it seems reasonable to me. I would— I just think that the sooner we get it, if we liked it and we were like, heck yeah, it just seems the quicker the better. Do we have to have— we have to have a 2-week publish date on that as well, correct? So if you guys get it out fairly soon.

Yeah, um, I know to get anything on the, the ballot has to be, I think, the second meeting in August. The assembly has to have something passed, so time is of the essence. I would agree. So maybe we can do both. We can schedule a back-and-forth informational session as well as a draft resolution.

Okay, yeah, that sounds reasonable. Okay, all right. Is that something that we should, like, is anybody— I mean, do we agree, like Mr. Glenn and I are like, yeah, yeah, maybe everybody else is saying no. I know, and we did agree at one of the previous meetings, so he actually called in and I have it on my form for him to be on the July 20th agenda. Bingo.

Okay, do we need to do anything about this? We don't need to vote on it. Uh, I mean, maybe you can ask if anybody has objection to—. Does anybody object to this? Okay, we're all in.

Okay, you got your orders now, Alex. Thank you. Uh, where are we at? Correspondence, none. Unfinished business, none.

New business, none. Commissioner business, that's what we just brought up. Director and Commissioner comments. Commissioner McCabe, no comment. Commissioner Carpenter?

I'm good. Commissioner Fonoff? No comment. And I don't have any comments either. Thank you everybody, and this meeting is adjourned at 6:30.

Yep, you will now be disconnected.