Planning Commission discusses historic preservation plan
The Nome Planning Commission met for its monthly meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 4, opening with a discussion about the City’s Historic Preservation Plan that has yet to be adopted.
A draft of the plan has been tossed back and forth between the commission and the Nome Common Council since residents raised issues last year about the plan’s inclusivity, finding it to be lacking in its acknowledgement of Inupiaq heritage.
“I’m hoping that there will be a document that is as representative as can be within the parameters,” City Manager Glenn Steckman told the commission last week. “One of the challenges is this is not a document on history. It’s more document on buildings and facilities.”
Still, some have hoped the document could weave in acknowledgments of the Indigenous settlements that pre-date the gold rush and highlight legacies like that of activist Alberta Schenck, the Inupiaq-Irish teenager who was arrested for staging a sit-in in the “White’s Only” section of Nome’s Dream Theater in 1944.
Steckman reported that he has been going over the document with Dr. Barb Amarok, the director of UAF’s Northwest Campus who holds a doctorate in Indigenous education. Commissioner Greg Smith raised some concerns over having people review the document without public notice. “We need to get the process back to transparency,” Smith said.
Steckman said he hoped to have the draft plan back to the commission next month.
The commission then moved on to discuss whether the City’s regulations might be needed to be changed to make it easier for renovations to take place on substandard lots (anything under 5,000 square feet) in town.
“We just want small lot size not to be a trigger for a variance,” Smith said.
The discussion was prompted by a letter from Cussy Kauer that detailed all the administrative burdens she was facing in attempting to replace and enlarge by two feet, a rotting front porch addition for a building on a lot that’s only 25 feet wide and 54 feet long.
Chair Kenny Hughes added that he thought the whole variance process was cumbersome and saw the language for applying for permits as intimidating.
“I will sit down with Cliff [McHenry, Nome’s building inspector] and we will look at the language where you’re saying needs to be a little more user friendly,” Steckman said.
Commissioner Melissa Ford wanted to promote actions that could encourage development in Nome. “There’s so many people that are in difficult housing situations,” she said.
While Hughes said that people would probably like to see more small lots joined together and bigger houses built, Commissioner John Odden pointed out that the development of smaller houses on smaller lots could be a niche worth exploring. “There’s a lot of people that are trying to get ahead but they’re not getting there, and maybe that’s a way to get somebody into a house that they own,” Odden said.
The commission also discussed the permits that residents have been applying for to complete repairs to their homes after the storm. The fees for such permits have been waived.
“A problem I’m seeing is now there’s no permit fees and we’re doing our permitting online, so people have the impression that once they fill out this online questionnaire they have a permit,” McHenry said in his building inspector’s report. He said he inspected about 30 damaged properties on Front Street.
“So many people just got devastated by flooding,” he said.
McHenry also added that he’d like to see some incentive to get people to deal with vacant lots to make more housing available in Nome.
The commission’s next meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 1, at 7 p.m.