Hyperbole, false assertions and attacks on city staff peppered debate Monday over a plan intended to “unstick” Juneau’s housing market.
In a 5-4 vote, the Juneau Assembly appears to have thrown Step One of that affordable housing plan out the window.
Back in 2014, the Juneau Assembly set aside $75,000 to hire consultants to write up a plan to provide a stable supply of affordable housing. Meetings were held, the market was studied, consultants consulted, and eventually they produced a 68-page housing action plan.
The very first recommendation in that document is to “Formally adopt this plan into Juneau’s comprehensive plan.”
The comprehensive plan is a long-term city planning guide. Say the owner of a property zoned for housing wants an exception to build a bar or a daycare or a pig farm. The city officials who make formal recommendations or decide whether to grant the exception are supposed to refer to the comprehensive plan to see how the request fits into the big picture. It’s one of many considerations they’re supposed to weigh.
Elections shook up the assembly. City staff drafted an ordinance to fold the housing action plan into the comprehensive plan. More meetings were held, public notices were posted, a public hearing was set, and the final step to adopt the affordable housing plan was teed up for assembly approval at its last meeting.
Assembly member Mary Becker made the motion that derailed the plan.
“I move that we accept the housing action plan by resolution,” Becker said.
That resolution wasn’t on the agenda and had yet to be drafted. Becker clarified, she explicitly wanted to exclude the housing action plan from the city’s comprehensive plan.
Assembly member Debbie White was with Becker. She cited an Oct. 26 memo from a city planner and Juneau’s chief housing officer.
“That basically says if the housing plan is simply adopted by resolution, then it’s a plan that’s aspirational, provides guidance for decision-making. It just becomes a set of guidelines to keep in mind for future actions. If it is adopted and added to the comprehensive plan, it becomes the rule,” White said.
White was echoing the memo closely, but put her own interpretation on that last bit. The memo actually says if the housing action plan is adopted into the comprehensive plan, the main difference is “the review of land use actions for consistency with the comprehensive plan.”
Assembly member Jesse Kiehl tried to straighten things out.
“It’s important that we remember the comprehensive plan itself is aspirational, says so,” Kiehl said.
Mary Becker interjected: “It is not and it does not.”
“Well, then I’m happy to pull it up,” Kiehl said.
Kiehl didn’t pull it up for Becker while the mics were hot. But the city codes confirm Kiehl:
“No rights created. The goals and policies set forth in the comprehensive plan are aspirational in nature, and are not intended to commit the City and Borough to a particular action, schedule, or methodology. Neither the comprehensive plan nor the technical appendix adopted under this section nor the amendment of either creates any right in any person to a zone change nor to any permit or other authority to make a particular use of land; neither do they constitute a regulation of land nor a reservation or dedication of privately owned land for public purpose.”
Then, White, a Realtor who owns Southeast Alaska Real Estate, said she opposed the entire housing action plan and said it would make development harder.
“Frankly, a lot of times, our city departments don’t even really appear to be open for business, because they’re looking for ways to deny,” White said.
After that claim, she bristled in an allusion to one of the non-binding housing plan recommendations.
“I don’t know where we get these harebrained ideas to make things as difficult as we possibly can on property developers. But, let the free market do its thing. Don’t force people to build a certain percentage of their project as being subsidized housing. Don’t – I mean, there’s just so many other things we could be doing,” she said.
White’s subsidized housing comment is a misrepresentation of what’s known as inclusionary zoning.
The concept is to give developers an incentive – the right to build more homes on a given property than the zoning otherwise allows – on the condition that the developer sells a percentage of the new homes at an affordable price. It’s been implemented elsewhere as a mandatory or voluntary program.
Assembly member Maria Gladziszewski, a former planning commissioner, rebutted White.
“The point is to give the planning commission and the planners tools, and more incentive to, in fact, approve these projects, because the comprehensive plan acknowledges that we want to do everything we can, to, as the consultants said, unstick our housing market,” Gladziszewski said. “So it is in fact, designed to do the opposite of making things harder.”
The assembly had a similar debate at the committee level on Halloween. This week’s lasted about 35 minutes before ending in the 5-4 vote.
Assembly members Jesse Kiehl, Maria Gladziszewski, Loren Jones and Norton Gregory voted against the resolution, with the understanding that if it failed, then the next vote would be for more formal comprehensive plan ordinance originally scheduled.
Mayor Ken Koelsch and assembly members Jerry Nankervis, Mary Becker, Debbie White and Beth Weldon voted for the squishier resolution.
The city attorney said she’d draft the resolution for the assembly’s next meeting.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Maria Gladziszewski’s last name.
