The Homer City Council introduced an ordinance last week to adopt the City of Homer 2045 Comprehensive Plan. A public hearing on Ordinance 25-64 is scheduled for the next regular council meeting on Monday, Oct. 27.

Several community members commented on the draft comprehensive plan last week during the portion of the meeting where the council heard public comment on matters already on the agenda. No formal public hearing was held on Oct. 13.

Many of the comments called for further revisions to the draft plan or noted that results from public surveys conducted previously that showed respondents’ priorities did not seem to be reflected in the plan.

Jan Keiser, former Public Works director and current member of the City of Homer Parks, Art, Recreation and Culture Advisory Commission, said that the comp plan matters because it’s “more than just a plan — it’s a working tool used by the Planning Commission to guide their decision making.” She pointed out several errors and omissions in the future land use map included in the draft plan, such as the omission of the Homer Airport critical habitat area and several other public open spaces in Homer, and said that it’s “important to get the map right” because while it isn’t codified, it is a “tool that guides development.”

“Pursuant to the proposed code … zoning amendments can only be made if they are ‘consistent with the future land use map within the comprehensive plan,’” she said, with “proposed code” referring to the city’s Title 21 zoning and planning code which is undergoing revision. “This is not just a vision, it guides decision making.”

Local resident Judith Miller requested an extended public review period for the draft plan.

“There is a lot in this proposed plan that is difficult to navigate and follow to ultimately understand what some of the recommendations are,” she said.

Kachemak Bay Conservation Society Vice President Penelope Haas asked the council to “put energy” toward maintaining public open spaces in Homer, and to wait on adopting the plan and “give ourselves the breathing room to absorb some of the substantive comments coming in from the public at this time.”

“People are concerned about all the development that’s happening, and they want to see a backstop,” she said. “The Conservation Society has submitted to you some lands that we think are appropriate for open space. I would encourage you to look into that … There are tools available to us, zoning not the least among them.”

Homer resident Ed Berg, who is also a geologist and a retired ecologist from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said that the Beluga Slough wetlands needed to be classified as a conservation area, rather than general commercial, because they contain peat, a “special class of hydric soils.”

“The peatlands are very poor sites for building construction. The peat in the slough is typically 10-15 feet deep, but it can be as deep as 25 feet,” he said. “The thick peat deposits contain a large amount of carbon, much more so than a similar acreage of forests. Keeping the peat in the ground prevents the carbon from being oxidized and turned into carbon dioxide, which is climate warming.”

Another commenter said that she didn’t see that the draft plan was “very reflective of what citizens prioritized” during several previous public input sessions.

Others urged that the plan needed to address ongoing community issues such as affordable housing or short-term rentals.

Economic Development Advisory Commission chair Karin Marks said that the EDC did previously review short-term rentals but that the issue “did not have the opportunity to be promoted for any of the kinds of things that is possible to contain it.”

“Sometimes you need to look back with what has been discussed and then see if there’s some way forward, instead of thinking that it all has to go in the comprehensive plan,” she said. “In my view, a comprehensive plan is an overview, it’s not a laundry list. Now, with (Title) 21 being discussed, some of that laundry list will be covered. You can’t put everything into some kind of an overview.”

Marks encouraged the council to move forward with public hearings and then use the draft comp plan to continue working on Title 21, which she said “is the meat of the whole issue.”

During the council’s discussion of Ordinance 25-64, Mayor Rachel Lord said that she expected this would not be a public hearing process to “check a box and move along.” She noted that the council also has the ability to track all of the previous comments submitted by city staff, comp plan project contractors and the Homer Planning Commission, who passed their reviewed draft of the comp plan unanimously to the council in September.

“This is the community’s process — this is a community document, yes,” she said. “This is (also) a council process … you are going to be the six that will vote on this when it’s final.

“This is something that hundreds of people have participated in a process, and we do have staff and contractors available to help make sure that we’re couching our decisions, your decisions, in the broader context of all the work that has already happened.”

According to the city clerk’s office, the council may decide to schedule additional public hearings for the draft comprehensive plan following Monday’s meeting. There was also some discussion among council members on Oct. 13 about scheduling a worksession in order to review the draft plan before finalizing its adoption and recommending its approval to the Kenai Peninsula Borough, but a worksession was not yet on the council calendar as of Tuesday afternoon.

Find Ordinance 25-64 and supplemental materials, as well as the Oct. 13 meeting recording, in full online at www.cityofhomer-ak.gov/citycouncil/city-council-regular-meeting-345.

The next regular Homer City Council meeting will be held on Monday, Oct. 27 at 6 p.m. in the Homer City Hall Cowles Council Chambers. For more information on how to participate in public meetings and submit written testimony, visit www.cityofhomer-ak.gov/cityclerk/how-participate-public-meetings.