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January Report 2005

Planning Department

 

 

ACMP Issues 

On January 28th, 2005 a letter was sent from Eldon Hout, Director of Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management in D.C. to Commissioner Thomas E. Irwin at Department of Natural Resources regarding the approval of the State of Alaska ACMP amendment.  In Glenn Gray’s ACMP update, dated February 4, 2004, he states “OCRM identified four areas that must be changed including the Subsistence and Habitats statewide standards and the ability of district enforceable policies to apply to federal lands and waters.” 

 

The big push in January was to get the Alaska State Legislature to extend the deadline for the districts draft policies.  Mayor Schaeffer’s office has written letters to OCRM and our State Legislators supporting an extension to the July 1st deadline for our district policies to be finished.

 

Working with Representative Joule and Senator Olson

One January 3rd the Mayor and staff met with Representative Joule at the Mayor’s office with Senator Olson on the phone to discuss items before the new Legislative Session started.  One of the main issues was to get the Selawik Board Walk project back into the state budget and of course Fish and Game issues in regards to transporter activity in Unit 23.

 

Cape Blossom Road

The City has notified us that they have gotten the approval from Congress for $2,500,000 to do the design work for the Cape Blossom Road.  Herman Reich discussed it briefly at the meeting with Reggie and Donny on Jan. 3rd.  He mentioned a couple of things on this:

  1. That this project could be done by the City or Borough and,
  2. That there were a percentage (9% about $180,000) of funds needed for matching dollars, which could be in kind services.
  3. Patty Miller from DOT in Anchorage will be giving the City a status report soon on the project.
  4. A meeting will be put together between the City and the Borough when that status report comes in.

 

NANA involvement with Borough Land Selection

Kim, Willie and I met with Jeff Nelson and Frank Greene from NANA Regional Corporation.  Willie discussed several sites that the borough was interested in for selection and Jeff and Frank told us the sites that were priority with the NANA Regional Board.  With that information Willie was able to make additional recommendations to the Land Selection Committee.  With that new information the committee was able to finalize their selections.  The State will start having hearings on the Borough’s land selection proposal in April.

 

Kivalina Relocation Issue

On January 21st we had a Study Management meeting by teleconference.  The main issue we discussed was how to work with allotment owners that might be affected by the land selected for Kivalina to relocate to.  Drilling for testing the soil on potential sites will begin before spring.

 

Administrative Planning Assistant

This position notice was posted around the 15th of January for an additional person in the planning office.  Hope to have someone on soon.