The Juneau Assembly began working on an ordinance that might encourage housing development during a work session Monday, but the extent to which it will reduce the city\u2019s high cost of housing \u2014 if it does at all \u2014 has yet to be determined.<\/p>\n
The proposed ordinance would loosen city regulations regarding access standards for subdivisions. Currently, city code requires developers to run a 60-foot-wide road in the public right of way to access homes on subdivided land. <\/p>\n
Steep, rugged terrain can make building such roads impossible in certain parts of town. In these cases, the city offers developers a hardship exemption, allowing them to build smaller, privately owned and maintained access roads. This is not ideal, according to Community Development Department Director Rob Steedle, but it is necessary in some cases. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn my ideal Juneau, every lot has direct and practical access off the right of way,\u201d Steedle said speaking to the Assembly Monday night. \u201cThat\u2019s the Juneau I\u2019d like to live in, but I don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ordinance before the Assembly would change city code allowing developers to use smaller privately shared access roads at their discretion. In theory, this might drive down the cost of development because building roads to city standards isn\u2019t cheap. If this turns out to be the case, city officials hope that it might spur new housing development.<\/p>\n
The catch, as Mayor Ken Koelsch found out Monday, is that the city is unsure whether this will be the case. Koelsch asked city officials how many additional housing units the city could expect to see as a result of this ordinance. City Manager Rorie Watt acknowledged that mayor\u2019s question was helpful, but he said it was \u201cunanswerable\u201d all the same. <\/p>\n
City officials aren\u2019t sure what type of housing development \u2014 single-family homes or multifamily apartment complexes \u2014 this ordinance might encourage if any at all. Unless it is passed, they might never know.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would hope that if you approve this ordinance, however you amend it, people will realize that property that is now unable to be developed will be developable,\u201d Steedle said.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not to say that the ordinance would be problem free. City officials and Assembly members alike recognized that it could have unintended consequences. One, according to City Attorney Amy Mead, is that it could create neighborhood disputes in which the city couldn\u2019t intervene.<\/p>\n
Normally, once developers build roads in public rights of way, the city takes them over and maintains them. This isn\u2019t the case with private shared access roads, meaning that it is up to homeowners to maintain them. Keeping up with roads, especially in Southeast weather can be difficult, and it could create new difficulties for homeowners tasked with splitting the maintenance costs.<\/p>\n
Another consequence, as Assembly member Beth Weldon pointed out, is that narrow, gravel shared private access ways aren\u2019t always easy for emergency vehicles, such as fire trucks, to traverse. <\/p>\n
Weldon, a former firefighter said that allowing more of these roads rather than wide, city-maintained roads \u201cseems really backwards.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also said that developers might take advantage of the road-building shortcut offered by this ordinance more frequently if it is passed, a concern Watt said was \u201cdead on.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Assembly pulled the ordinance from the coming week\u2019s agenda, where it was scheduled for public hearing. The ordinance will come back before the Assembly during a work session \u201cideally in January,\u201d according to Assembly member Jesse Kiehl.<\/p>\n
\nCruise wrap-up<\/strong><\/p>\n Cruise industry representative Kirby Day spoke to the Assembly during its work session Monday about the past season and what the industry expects for next year. <\/p>\n According to Day, port manager for Princess Cruises, the industry expects a 4.6 percent increase in the number of cruise passengers visiting Juneau next summer. That translates to about 45,000 more passengers than the city saw during the past cruise season. The total number is expected to climb from about 1.005 million to an estimated 1.05 million.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat you\u2019ll see, if that bears out, is the most passengers we\u2019ve ever had,\u201d Day said. \u201cFor the region, and for Juneau, that\u2019s really positive.\u201d<\/p>\n For the first time since 2008, the city welcomed more than 1 million passengers during the past season. If Day\u2019s prediction is correct, next year will break the record number of passengers that is now eight years old.<\/p>\n \u2022 Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Juneau Assembly began working on an ordinance that might encourage housing development during a work session Monday, but the extent to which it will reduce the city\u2019s high cost of housing \u2014 if it does at all \u2014 has yet to be determined. The proposed ordinance would loosen city regulations regarding access standards for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":26263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-26262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26262"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=26262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}