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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2011-03-10 KRSMA Board PacketKENAI RIVER Special Management Area "Working together...for the river" CALL TO ORDER A. Roll Call; B. Minutes Approval C. Agenda Changes and Approval II. Public Comments /Presentations Introduction of New Board Members John Mohorcich, Kenai Peninsula Borough update /overview of 21.18 Kenai Peninsula Borough Habitat Ordinance III. REPORTS A. Agency and Government Reports a. State Parks Director, Ben Ellis /Sinclair b. DEC- Stevens c. ADF &G- Vania/ Begich d. USF &WS- Schmidt e. USFS/Chugach- Travis Mosely f. City of Kenai- Koch g. City of Soldotna- Micciche h. Kenai Peninsula Borough- Carey B. Committee Reports a. Presidents Report b. Guide Advisory c. Habitat d. River Use e. Permits f. Legislative /Government Activities g. Board Development h. Agenda /Board Structure /Housekeeping W. OLD BUSINESS V. NEW BUSINESS VI. CORRESPONDENCE VII. PUBLIC COMMENT VIII. ADJOURNMENT A. Board Comments B. Date /Agenda of Next Meeting April 14, 2011 at 5:30 p.m. Kenai River Special Management Area Advisory Board "'Meeting Agenda Thursday, March 10, 2011 5:30 p.m. Cook Inlet Aquacullure Center REM MAR x 2(111 Z an CLERK /T. ID `r/, rlc J Ti\ Kenai Area Office, PO Box 1247, Soldotna, AK 99669, 907- 262 -5581 Kenai Peninsula Borough, 144 N. Binkley, Soldotna, AK 99669 907 -262 -4441 Gilman River Center 514 Funny River Road, Soldotna, AK 99669, 907 260 -4882 Alaska Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation, Department aturel Resources, in cooperation with the Kenai Peninsula Borough Ilr1. 1 A )n Irn D Call to Order A. Members Present: Jack Sinclair, Joe Connors, George Heim, Max Best, Bruce King, Ricky Gease, Andy Loranger, Janet Schmidt, James Czarnezki, Kyle Kornelius, and Kevin Lyon. B. The Minutes for January 13, 2011 were approved as written. C. Agenda Changes and Approval: added Item B to New Business Cooper Landing Walkable Community Project, Added Item C to New Business Letter to Kenai Peninsula Planning Commission concerning a conditional use permit. !I. Public Comments/Presentations Joe Connors announced the new KRSMA board members are Ricky Gease and Grant Watts. 10. Reports A. Agency and Government Reports Kenai River Special Management Area Advisory Board Meeting Minutes Gilman River Center Thursday, February 10, 2011, 5:30 p.m, a. State Parks Jack Sinclair stated our middle Kenai River Ranger, Ali Eskelin has accepted another position within State Parks. Ali will be our new Wood Tikchik Ranger pilot out of Dillingham; she will be the first female pilot in the state parks system. Pam Russell and I met with the Grant Lake Kenai Hydro folks today and they are interested in coming back to have a presentation on some of the work they are purposing for the Grant Lake Project. We would like them to come back and give a presentation at the March 10 b, 2011 KRSMA meeting. In regards to the Bing's Landing project, we are currently answering calls to both, Chenault's office and Wagoner's office providing detail regarding the engineers estimate for creating the new Bing's Landing project, the road and parking area, The capital request is being crafted by Chenault's office right now to ask for additional funding to create that project. We have two projects going on this winter; Morgan's Landing will have walkway installation in the next two weeks. The Pillars dock will be rebuilt, a new design will be crafted and we are going to have better floats we can check and it will be more hydro- dynamic. The RFP is already out there. We are still waiting to get final bids. The intent is that it will be in by this summer. b. DEC- Tim Stevens was not present. c. ADF &G- Vania/ Begich, was not present. d. USF &WS, Andy Loranger, the US Forest Service and US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Refuge, the Department of Fish and Game and the partners in the interagency coordination group will be hosting public meetings as part of the public process for planning how to manage and reduce potential for negative human bear interactions at the Russian River area. Those meetings will be held the week of April 18 2011; there will be 4 consecutive days of meetings, The first one will be in Cooper Landing on Monday, April 18 2011 in the evening, then Soldotna on Tuesday, Wasilla on Wednesday, and Anchorage on Thursday. Janet Schmidt spoke regarding the River Management Society meeting and she has copies of the agenda they have posted on their website. On the River Management Society webpage, they have a very good synopsis about what this workshop is about. The Interagency River Management Workshop is May 9`" -13 h 2011 in Girdwood, Alaska. e. USFS /Chugach Travis Mosely, was not present. f. City of Kenai. Kevin Lyon the dip net report is out for the work session on February 15 2011 with City Council. It will be at 6:00 p.m. at City Hall in Kenai. There was a question last month on what our position was on Tom Wagoner's Bill for the personal use fishing permit, the city has not taken a position. Kenai River Special Management Area Advisory Board Minutes February 10, 20] 1 Page 1 of 4 g. City of Soldotna, Kyle Kornelius, nothing to report. h. Kenai Peninsula Borough, Max Best, we are moving ahead on what we are going to call Phase I! of the Kenai Peninsula Borough 21.18 ordinance re- write. We met the other day with staff and we have been working with the planning commission and had 3 separate meetings. The assembly said, go back and come up with some middle ground with your planning commission and bring it back to the assembly. We are ready to take the grandfather portion of the recommendation before the assembly. The other part would be steep slopes; we are going to be forming a committee and deciding how we want to regulate the slopes along the river. The third thing is KPB 2124 Compliance Issues we have separated that out and we are taking that on as one issue under all of our land use regulations issues we have 4 or 5 different permitting processes that follow 21.24, so we decided to re -write the whole ordinance and that would apply to 21.18, 50 ft habitat protection area. B. Committee Reports a. President's Report, Joe Connors encouraged everyone to participate in one or two of the committee meetings. b. Guide Advisory, Joe Connors stated they met today and had 19 items they dealt with from the findings in Doug Whittaker's River Use Study. We have started working through those in terms of issues we could address in the short term or something we could complete this year. We have 3 items in the short term category and 1 in the long term category. We will be reporting at future meetings on our progress. c. Habitat, did not meet. d. River Use, George Heim stated they met today and took up the 18 items that came out of the Doug Whittaker River Use Study and prioritized them on whether they were achievable in the short term or long term. One action item that came out of it is that we will be writing a letter to the agencies, regarding camping which takes place along the Kenai River, primarily in the U.S. Fish and WNildlife Refuge areas and a few places for DNR State Parks below the Killey River. We are encouraging some efforts with clean up issues such as human waste and extensive long term camping. We will be drafting a letter and bringing it to the board for action at the next meeting. The other item talked about extensively was the mandatory user education resolution that was passed by the board last April. We were thinking in the committee that we might want to actually amend the resolution because it anticipated an implementation date of 2018. If possible we would like to see that happen sooner. Jack Sinclair we also talked about it briefly in the guide advisory committee meeting as well. We will include this proposal in our regulation package this fat. We can easily just amend the implementation of this and make sure it applies to the following year and it means for those that are under 18 years that could be happening the following year. We could still have the date out there 2018, getting people under the deadline of education. We can go forward with it this next fat. He will come back to the board with a draft. e. Permits, Jim Czarnezki stated they met and we have a draft letter we will talk about a little later in new business. f. Legislative /Government Activities, nothing to report. g. Board Development, nothing to report. h. Agenda /Board Structure /Housekeeping, nothing to report. IV. Old Business V. New Business A. Draft Language supporting Senate Bill 24 Ricky Gease gave a brief overview of Senate Bill 24. He stated senate Bill 24 is creating a Sport Fishing Guide Services Board to ensure minimum standards and accountability in the guided sport- fishing industry across the state. It removes the sunset on the logbook program where information is collected from harvest and activities and catch angler days for guides throughout the state. It is a professional services board for the guide industry. It brings in guides, guide Kenai River Special Management Area Advisory Board Minutes February 10, 2011 Page 2 of 4 outfitters, guide /outfitters, outfitters; it creates a category of assistant guides and transporters. The intent is to be as inclusive as possible to get the data and scope of the industry. The other thing that the professional services board does is that it funds an executive director for the board and an investigator. This would be modeled after the Big Game Services board. Vote was taken on draft language supporting Senate Bill 24 5 voted in favor. 1 opposed. 2 abstained from voting. B. Cooper Landing Walkable Community Project Jack Sinclair stated he sent out an email to all board members, with the draft resolution supporting the Cooper Landing Walkable project. The Walkable Community Project took place about 3 years ago and they put together a really nice plan in the Cooper Landing area working with the Borough, the community, State Parks, Forest Service, and US Fish and Wildlife Service. The community was able to identify several projects that were very important to them. One that came out on top was to improve this pedestrian walkway in the community. So they put together this project and it was initially scored by the track board, which scored it 9`'" on their list. They really need to be around the 1 to 3 range to get noticed on the track funding and they are trying to find some way to get it up there. The only reason they aren't scoring higher is, one they didn't get enough money to the table as far as partnering funds and the other reason is that they haven't had a fatality to add to the list. The TRAAK board meets next month and he would like to leave it to the KRSMA board on whether to support the letter for the project. George Heim made the motion to accept the Letter of Support for the Cooper Landing Walkable Community Project (CLWCP). Jim seconded. The board discussed the Cooper Landing walkable community project. Motion and second were withdrawn. Jack made the motion that we endorse the concept of the Cooper Landing walkable community project for safer pedestrian walkways and protection of the Kenai River. Bruce King seconded. Vote was taken. 6 voted in favor. 0 opposed. 2 abstained from voting. C. Letter to KPB Planning Commission concerning a Conditional Use Permit Jim Czarnezkd stated there is a draft letter in your packet and the situation here is that we've missed the deadline to get the letter into the planning commission's packet. This will be introduced on Monday the 14 of February. If we get a letter tomorrow to the Borough River Center staff, they will hand deliver it to the planning commission at the meeting. The landowner owns a resort at mile 34 on the Kenai River and have 90 feet of river frontage, under KPB 21.18, 1/3 of your river frontage can have an elevated walkway. They currently have 30 ft of elevated walkway, so they are at what the code allows. Adjacent to the 30 if of elevated walkway the bank is being trampled and the vegetation is damaged from all the traffic. They have requested to add an additional 30 ft of walkway. In the staff report there were some suggestions that would help mitigate and reduce impacts. The letter that the KRSMA board is submitting to the planning commission will support the staff recommendations, with the addition of requesting that the permit be modified to reflect 15 ft of walkway rather than 30 ft of walkway. Ricky Gease commented it is not in the permits to maintain spruce tree revetment and maybe it needs to be included as part of the recommendations. Kenai River Special Management Area Advisory Board Minutes February 10, 2011. Page 3 of 4 Voted was taken. 5 voted in favor. 1 opposed. 2 abstained from voting. VI. Correspondence VII. Public Comment Ginny Litchfield, ADF &G, Habitat stated for spruce tree revetment projects, the permits are written to say they can maintain the spruce tree revetment as needed. The permits don't require landowners to maintain them, but if it deteriorates down to the cables and hardware, the hardware /cable portion needs to be removed. VIII. Adjournment A. Board Comments B. Date /Agenda of Next Meeting March 10, 2011 at 5:30 p.m. Kenai River Special Management Area Advisory Board Minutes February 10, 2011 Page 4 of 4