Unalaska, AK – Majority of Tuesday night's four-hour-long city council meeting focused on the details of the City's new comprehensive plan. The comp plan is a document designed to guide the development of the community for the next 10 years and looks at issues such as land use, housing, transportation, and public facilities. Unalaska's comprehensive plan has not been updated since 1993. This new version is based on the Community Vision statement developed in conjunction with HyettPalma Consulting.

During the meeting council members asked the consultants questions about the plan and asked for changes. One of the major issues discussed was the language used in the plan when referring to the Ounalashka Corporation, the largest landowner in the community. Council member Roger Rowland found the language offensive and said that the OC was unfairly singled-out whenever land needs were mentioned.

"In the land portion just make land available,' there's land that could be made available and nothing's said, yet OC is singled out as they need to make land available. And I just felt that wasn't a level playing field. And pretty much everywhere land is mentioned, OC is mentioned and the other property owners are not."

Doyle Hyett, one of the plan writers, said he did not see anything wrong with the language, but Rowland disagrees. "I don't care what the gentleman who wrote a report in New York thinks is offensive or not offensive. What I care about is what do our players think is offensive," Rowland said. "We agree that OC is the major property owner. I got it. I can look around and see that. But let's try to foster [a positive relationship], even if it's just changing the language, it doesn't change the fact that they're still the property owner, but let's change the language to where they're not as offended. We have to work together moving forward."

The council decided to have the staff review the language in the document to make it less offensive toward the OC. But the corporation's CEO, Wendy Svarny-Hawthorne, says that the language in the plan isn't as large of a problem as is the way the City involved the OC during the plan's development. Svarny-Hawthorne said that the OC was invited to a brainstorming session then to a joint meeting with the Planning Commission.

"It was so important to us [to attend the meeting] that everybody from OC went directly to that meeting from a funeral. The meeting didn't have anything to do with the plan, per se, it was just kind of a PowerPoint presentation about working together. The next time the board heard from the city, they were trying to get the Board to host and endorse this document at a public meeting, and they wouldn't let them see the document."

She says she didn't feel that the city was really working with the corporation nor did the city address some of the real problems associated with housing in the community. "One of the things that we're most upset about the city's document not addressing at all is that there will not be much, if any, private development of residential units while the city is in the housing market and while the city allows industrial complexes to rent housing that was meant for their employees only to non-employees."

The corporation submitted comments on the plan in September but did not receive a response from the city until late December. Doyle Hyett, one of the consultants who wrote the plan, noted during the council meeting that he did not feel the city and the OC had a good working relationship.

Council member Rowland also argued that two large sections of the comprehensive plan should be completely removed. One section focuses on land use conflicts. Examples include areas that could be developed but are just used as storage, areas with steep driveways, and another area where a playground is right next to fuel storage tanks. Some of the highlighted conflicts were outdated and had already been resolved. Rowland said it isn't right to highlight some potentially problematic areas in the community but not all of them.

"It's not just to pick out people and stick them in there. Let's either put everybody in or not put anybody in," he said.

Rowland also thought the section that highlighted zoning violations was unnecessary and does not aid in planning for the community's development.

"By not including it in the plan, what tool are we taking away from planning and zoning and the police department to go enforce this stuff? Are we removing title eight? No, we're just removing some pictures, and, as Doyle said, we picked 16 out of 100. That's totally unfair. If I was one of those 16, I would be screaming bloody murder."

Community member Chris Spengler spoke against the zoning violations section of the document as well. "I believe that the Unalaska Comprehensive Plan 2020 is a long term visionary document and that current code violations distract from the goal of the document."

The council decided to remove the zoning violations section, but they are split on what to do about the land use conflicts section. Some want to rename it "land use opportunities."

Council member Dick Peck objected to parts of the plan as well. He felt it was important to mention the current powerhouse and new small boat harbor facilities and list them as assets. Those will be added in by staff.

Other topics of business at Tuesday night's meeting included the number of taxi permits in the community. Currently, there are 19 active taxi permits in Unalaska and two inactive ones. Two of the permits formerly belonged to Mr. Kab, but were relinquished to the city after a court case. Director of Public Safety Jamie Sunderland said the city has enough taxis to meet the community's needs and having a random drawing for the two available permits would lower the value of the permits currently in use. The council seemed, for the most part, to agree, and will cap the number of taxi permits at 19.

The meeting closed with a short discussion of projected revenues for FY 2012. Finance Director Tonya Miller says that projections are similar to this year, despite the increase in pollock quota. Though money from fish taxes will go up, the amount made from interest income will go down.