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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2009-04-01 Council Minutes Partial VerbatimKENAI CITY COUNCIL MEETING APRIL 1, 2009 PARTIAL VERBATIM PORTER COMMENTS /ORDINANCE NO. 2393 -2009 PORTER: Any other comments from council? I'll just go ahead for a second and just throw out my opinion here. Just, just to be fair. You know, I'm a person who, every person up here on the city council cares about this community or they would not be here. Trust me. It requires a lot of hours of work. It requires mostly a lot of people not being satisfied with what you've done. You hear far more negative than you ever praises. Okay? So the people who are sitting up here are here because they want to be. They believe in this town. And one of the things that I found happening in our community, someone made mention, that a lot of the business was going over to Soldotna. That is exactly true. There was nothing to draw people to come here to this community. So it has been the goal of the council for at least the last five years to do whatever they can to attract business to come to town. We have really very limited areas that people can go and build a new piece of, a new business. We do have old buildings in this, in this town. I do agree with that. That was one of the things, when I first became mayor, that I attempted to take care of. It was one of the things that I said I was going to do when I was elected mayor was to find out why there was empty buildings, what could we do to fix that. I guarantee you, there are reasons there are empty buildings. There is a huge blue building in town that is empty and it was empty for many, many years because the owner of that building didn't want to do anything with it. You cannot force people who own buildings and have chosen to leave them vacant, for whatever, if they're just waiting for the land, the property value to go up, you can't force them to say, oh there's a dentist office that wants to come to town, a doctor's office, this is the lot we have, there's where you have to go to fix our center of town. That is not what a business person does when they want to come to your community. Location is very important to them. And ah, so, pretty much all of the empty buildings issues we tried to deal with, we tried to look at our town to see what needed to be fixed, what needed to be done. One of the things that needed to be done was a limited commercial district. That was developed after the Comprehensive Plan was put into effect. But a plan is a plan. It does not mean that you can never deviate from that plan and do something else. Ifs a plan. We all have a plan for our life but we go off in different directions. KENAI CITY COUNCIL MEETING APRIL 1, 2009 PARTIAL VERBATIM /ORDINANCE NO. 2393 -2009 PAGE 2 So I look at the Comprehensive Plan, by the way, I was one of the people that helped be a part of forming that comprehensive plan. I'm not, I'm going to support the rezone and the reason I am is I am not voting to rezone the whole entire MAPS neighborhood. I will be voting to do limited commercial on the highway section of it only. I have done nothing but drive up and down that part of the neighborhood many, many times looking at access where people, if they, for the Mental Health Land, the Borough land, the land that is owned by some of the individuals of that area. There, there is not really, except for one parcel, two parcels of property, which are actually owned by the same individual, that would have a road, an access road that would drive through to Magic. That actually, the rest of them have a 33 foot easement on the back side that aligns that piece of property that could be vacated. It's, its an access road that isn't needed and so therefore, there is nobody ever, if they purchased the whole entire piece of property that Mental Health owns, nobody could ever drive through because there are people that own the property back there. So I really, and the Borough property as well. So there is no direct access into anybody's property that is going to take them over to Magic Street. So I looked at the traffic pattern that would be created by any businesses that might locate on the highway section of it and I did not find where it was going to actually impact the neighborhood at all. I, I have not, not listened to the people who have come here to speak. But it is my job, as a council person up here, to represent the entire town and to not make a decision based on emotion. I too have lived in this community and I know I'm kind of preaching to you, but I should stay with the facts but I feel it in my heart too, I'm a, a woman up here and so I have a little different feeling than the guys, I too have lived in this community since 1969. It is where I've raised my family. There are three generations that live here as well. Actually, my daughter and I live right next door to each other. But, believe me, I think that the limited commercial is a, is a, a zone that was established for the purpose of a transition between the highway and a neighborhood. I think that this particular section of the 22 acres is well protected and you are going to find hardly any increase in traffic at all within the neighborhood. I think you would have seen a huge gigantic increase had that piece, blank piece of property that is now owned by Dr. Wortham, had become a church. Churches usually are in, in open seven days a week with all kinds of different of things going on and at all different times of the day. So, I think the things that are in a limited commercial can work very well with this neighborhood. KENAI CITY COUNCIL MEETING APRIL 1, 2009 PARTIAL VERBATIM /ORDINANCE NO. 2393 -2009 PAGE 3 I like the, I really care about beautification. Those of you that have known me for all the years I've lived here, and I'm not trying to brag about myself, but I've not only thought about beautification, I've put my own heart and soul into making this town a better place. I am not going to sit here, as a representative of this town, and watch it go downhill because we decide to rezone 22, 22 acres. I think it's in the best interest of the city to help move Kenai forward and answer some of the questions about why is Kenai dying. Why don't we have things, space that's available to that's going to attract business here. We've seen a lot of things go over to K- Beach. That's not good for our community. Growth is good. Growth in your city is good. When you do not open up areas that can have responsible growth, your city will not grow and be healthy. You cannot force people to go into what you call a core of downtown Kenai. I want that core fixed up just as much as you do, but you cannot force business people to buy certain lots and make them stay in that area and if you do, you run them out of town. There are other options. In Anchorage there are no other options, but there are options here. I want people to stay in Kenai so I am going to support this limited commercial zone as well. Now, seeing any other comments from council? Councilman Molloy. END OF VERBATIM. Verbatim prepared by: Carol L. Freas, City Clerk