Daily Sitka Sentinel

Visitor Funds, Planner, Zoning on City Agenda

By KLAS STOLPE
Sentinel Staff
    Sitka Assembly members will face a lengthy agenda Tuesday night, with a major overhaul of the Sitka zoning code, an outside investigation of the police department, and Visit Sitka’s request for a $200,000 increase in fiscal year 2020 funding among the issues to be considered.
     At the March 19 meeting, the Assembly awarded $83,072 to Visit Sitka to round out the current fiscal year, but postponed until April 22 a decision on the tourism agency’s request for $200,000 in addition to the $300,000 baseline funding for FY2020. Visit Sitka, a department of the Sitka Chamber of Commerce, is funded by bed tax revenue, advertising sales and memberships.
    In other business Tuesday night at Centennial Hall, the Assembly will hear a report from interim Police Chief Robert Baty and review the possible selection of a third party investigator to look into the police department.
    Also, the Assembly will consider a renegotiated hiring contract with Bruce Wall as planning director. A city hiring committee recommended hiring Wall, but at its last meeting the Assembly voted against hiring him because of a disagreement over the terms in the proposed contract.
    Supplemental appropriations to be considered Tuesday night are final approval of $50,000 for city legal expenses in the lawsuit against the city filed by a former Sitka Police Department jailer, and $56,163 for upgrades to the city’s data center “to maintain uninterrupted information technology operations.”
    A couple of proposed ordinances, advanced by interim planning director Scott Brylinsky that will make major changes to the zoning chapter in the Sitka General Code, are on the agenda for introduction.
    One will amend the supplemental district regulations and development standards allowing smaller lot sizes, reduced setbacks and a higher percentage of lot coverage by buildings on residential lots, except those designated low density.
    The other ordinance for introduction will amend the zoning chapter to create a cemetery district. It will allow owners of land with cemeteries to restrict those lands to cemetery-related uses. The purpose section of the ordinance states that it is a “highly restrictive” district, but that the ordinance “adds no lands to the newly created cemeteries zoning district.”
    Other new business items include supporting the Sitka Ranger District grant application to the Alaska Federal Lands Access Program for Harbor Mountain/Gavan Hill Trail reconstruction and reroute, and discussion on beginning construction of the Cross Trail Phase 6 project, as funded and permitted.
    There also will be consideration of a memorandum of agreement on professional management of the Sitka Performing Arts Center by Alaska Arts Southeast.
    The Assembly is expected to go into executive session to receive an update from legal counsel regarding the status of the litigation arising from the August 18, 2015, landslides.
    The Assembly will hear a special report on the Alaska Children’s Trust by Lloyd Platson and vote on reappointment of  Victor Weaver to a three-year term on the Planning Commission and Scott Saline to a three-year term on the Historic Preservation Commission in the category of At Large.
    Other special reports will be presented by the School Board, Sitka Community Hospital, and municipal departments.
    A liquor license renewal for Baranof Island Brewing Company is on the agenda for approval.
    The Assembly will have a special meeting at 6 p.m. tonight to consider an appeal by the Gary Paxton Industrial Park board of directors to reverse the city building inspector’s notice of condemnation of the old pulp mill utility dock at the industrial park.