Homer Alaska - News

On Monday, after more than a month of delays, the Homer City Council may adopt the update to the Homer Comprehensive Plan.

At the Feb. 8 council meeting final approval of the update was postponed until March 22, at the earliest, to give both the public and the council a chance to dig more into the plan and to sort out any issues with it.

Since then there have been two public hearings on the plan, but neither of those were to the same packed house that appeared to testify at the Feb. 8 meeting and before.

With the heavy blizzards that pounded Homer last week, slick roads and tall drifts made simply getting to Cowles council chambers to testify no simple matter.

Council members could delay the approval of the plan update to a later meeting or approve it Monday.

The council also will have a chance to amend the update and take into consideration what the Homer comp plan working group, a group of citizens that has gone through the comprehensive plan and worked to address issues brought forward by the community, has proposed in the meantime.

Roberta Highland has spoken for the comp plan working group and outlined some of the group's findings.

One of the biggest things that the group would like to see is improvement in the comprehensive plan's land-use recommendation map.

In particular, Highland points out the need for landmarks to be added to the map, including Paul Banks Elementary School and the critical habitat area near the Homer airport.

The working group also has asked for changes in the land use that is shown on the map.

The group has asked that the transitional residential area on West Hill Road be reduced to just the lower area south of Fairview while the northern area remain rural residential.

It also has asked that the East Hill transitional residential area be made smaller.

One victory that the working group already has won is restoring the proposed West Hill neighborhood commercial zoning to rural residential after much public testimony opposed to the commercial designation.

The working group now is urging the council to take a deeper look at local wetlands than the current comp plan allows, particularly the areas around Beluga Slough.

One idea that the working group is putting forward is to combine the Cottonwood Horse Park, the Jack Gist Softball Field and the Calvin and Coyle trail system into a recreation complex, which would leave the remaining open space and wetlands in its current state.

"The other things that we're asking is that the council pass resolution 07-09 which adopted a map of the functional assessment of wetlands that has not been included in the comp plan. It's something that the city paid for and got put on the shelf and never used," said Highland.

The council may act on the working group's proposed amendments or introduce amendments of its own Monday.

Ryan M. Long can be reached at ryan.long.@homernews.com.