Skagway’s assembly looks to discuss the future of its community-run medical clinic. On Thursday night they’ll vote on whether to allow the borough manager to negotiate a sale price with South East Alaska Regional Health Consortium before bringing that deal to voters for final approval. They will also look at multiple ways to combat seasonal housing shortages. KHNS’ Mike Swasey talked with Vice Mayor Orion Hanson about the agenda, he’ll be running the meeting with the mayor out of town.
Swasey – Vice Mayor Orion Hanson, thanks so much for joining us. Looks like the agenda is exceptionally long for Thursday night’s assembly meeting and the biggest topic on that agenda is the clinic. And it looks like there’s an ordinance being brought forth that you’ll vote on as to whether or not the manager can negotiate a purchase price. Tell us more about that ordinance.
Hanson – If it passes, it would authorize the manager to negotiate with SEARHC to come up with a price for the clinic and terms for sale. And then there would be a ballot question and a separate resolution that would establish a special election to ask the Skagway voters if they support selling the clinic to SEARHC for the set price that the manager would negotiate.
Swasey – How long will the negotiations take?
Hanson – You do need to get an appraisal done by a qualified appraiser. And that has to be done within six months of executing any kind of sale. So that’s a little bit tricky doing that in coordination with a special ballot there. There are some timing things that have to be straightened out. I think it’s possible to probably do it sometime this summer.
Swasey – Okay, well, let’s move on to some residential housing ordinance proposals that are going to be in front of the assembly on Thursday. One of them has got to do with the size of secondary buildings on a piece of residential property. And the other one is, how much of your property you can cover with buildings. Can you kind of break down what those ordinances look like?
Hanson – Yeah, they both originated in civic affairs, and then they also went to planning and zoning. The ordinance that discusses accessory housing would remove a maximum size. So you could build an accessory house, whatever size you wanted, as long as it met all the setbacks, parking criteria, life-safety standards, those types of things. And then also the width the height requirement, under 35 feet, which is as tall as our fire trucks go.
The other ordinance would change the maximum lot coverage from 50% to 75%.
Swasey – That’s how much of the lot that you own, you could fill up with buildings?
Hanson – That’s effectively the footprint of a building that’s on concrete. And if you’ve got a plastic garden shed, that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about permanent dwellings. The other thing it does do is it would also change the minimum size for a mobile home from 3,000 square feet to 2,000 square feet, which means you could have two mobile homes on one lot.
Swasey – Okay. Meanwhile, there’s an ordinance that would expand RV parking, you know, there’s already code on the books that allows for RV parking in residential yards for the next couple of years. But this next bill wants to go a little bit further tell us what it wants to do.
Hanson – So currently, the RV resolution would be active for the summer of 2022 and the summer season of 2023. I believe this would extend it out to 2026. One other thing it would allow is to put two RVs on a vacant 5,000 square foot lot for properties north of 15th Avenue.
And this RV ordinance is something that we’ve had in place for quite a few years to try to standardize and recognize that we have a housing issue. And it’s run through the permitting official. There are life safety checks, it has to go into a sanitary sewer system that’s part of the home and it has to have potable water, it has to have a correct electrical hookup.
Swasey – All right. There’s also the approval of a groundwater investigation for lots 11 and 12, this is new business and this is just a kind of a budgetary proposal on that. Tell us where lots 11 and 12 are.
Hanson – It’s across the street from the Public Works building on Fifth and Alaska. We have been wanting to sell those lots but it had some contamination. So this is a proposal from Cox environmental, to try to get the surveying and monitoring to make sure that the water is clean now.
Swasey – Also on the agenda we’re looking at a Harbor Master office and public restroom and shower building proposal. There’s the household waste planning, mobilization event proposal, the list goes on and on. And then you get to finish off with a nightcap of an Executive Session. Obviously, you can’t go into the details of it. But what are the generals that y’all will be talking about in the executive session?
Hanson – Berthing agreements for ships.
Swasey – Does that have to do mostly with post-March 2023? (Skagway takes control of much of its port in March of 2023 after the 55-year lease with White Pass and Yukon Route expires).
Hanson – Absolutely. We need a process, a boilerplate so that we can negotiate going forward with individual cruise lines or whatever the shipping company is.
Swasey – Vice Mayor Orion Hanson thank you for the assembly preview.
Hanson – You’re welcome.
Thursday’s borough assembly meeting can be streamed live starting at 7 p.m. at khns.org.