Hello everyone.

We will call this January 12th, 2026 Planning and Zoning Commission meeting to order.

May we have roll call?

Jerry Gardner.

Here.

Radika Krishna.

Here.

Scott Polis.

Here.

Jeff Ron.

Alma Abaza.

Here.

Andre Spinelli and Brandy Eber, excuse you, you have a quorum.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And today I'm going to read the short board policy.

Um when there is a short five men five member commission and a postponement is offered to and agreed to by the petitioner, their case will be moved to the next regular agenda.

The postponement will occur within 30 days, which does not require re-noticing the case.

If you have any questions on Expert Partey communication or or anything of that sort, feel free to contact me.

Or if you have any additional questions for the Safer Seward Highway Design Team, so DOT and their representative, I can pass those forward.

And it looks like we are back online, so I'm just gonna give everyone a few seconds to wrap up whatever they're doing and come back to um the meeting.

All right.

Uh staff, did you have anything else to add on the Safer Seward Highway project before we open it up to commissioners' comments and questions?

Uh no, thank you.

Are there any members of the commission that have any comments or questions?

Seeing none, we will move on to our next item.

Um, which is uh okay, which is our public hearings, and I'll read the process by which the public may speak to the commission.

Um after the staff presentation is completed on public hearing items, the chair will ask for public testimony on the issue.

Persons who wish to testify will follow the time limits established in the commission rules of procedure.

Petitioners, including all of his or her representatives, receive ten minutes.

Part of this time may be reserved for rebuttal.

Representatives of groups such as community councils and PTAs receive five minutes, and individuals receive three minutes.

When your testimony is complete, you may you may be asked questions by the commission.

You may only testify once on any issue unless questioned by the commission.

Commission recommendations to the Anchorage Assembly are not appealable.

Um may we have staff's presentation in case 2026 dash zero zero zero three.

Yes, thank you, madam chair.

This is Daniel McKenna Foster, long-range planning.

Uh presenting this evening on PCC case 2026 zero zero zero three, uh food and agricultural uses ordinance.

Um covers a range of topics thematically tied together with producing food in Anchorage.

So this topic, the topic of food security, growing food in Anchorage in Alaska has always, I think, been a pretty hot topic.

And you know, we we're kind of at the end of the supply chain line.

We're always looking at how we can stabilize our food sources and look at more ways of um, you know, producing food in Anchorage.

Um again urban agriculture is always a little bit difficult, but there's always interesting ways that people can fill a niche or um you know, start a business that serves our local needs and makes us a little bit less reliant on a barge coming in or car coming into the airport.

So this there are just a couple of examples going back in time.

This is um a previous case.

Um Anchorage was looking at uh making it easier to put greenhouses on uh on top of buildings, and that did pass.

And I think this was related to um senior living in East Anchorage, Baxter Senior Living, so they wanted to do you know, get more people involved in gardening and that sort of thing.

So that was 2018.

Um in 2023 there was a case about um uh doing coffee roasting here in town, and this is something that in the B3 zone, commercial food production is a conditional use.

So I think they'd been doing the cost of your roasting here, and it was a really big burden to go through the process of figuring out how to get this done when it was something they'd already been doing.

I believe this is uh uh well I won't say the name, but it's a long time standing uh member of the community coffee roaster.

And so this is one of the changes that we also incorporated into this um because we had heard back a lot through that permitting process that this was really complicated and it seems like there might have been an easier way to do this.

Um then another one you might some of you may recall uh 2024 PCC case 24079.

This was um South Central Foundation trying to build a greenhouse uh alongside their prop property um near an elder care and child care.

So some of these are related to the the amendments um proposed tonight, but some will also just kind of emphasize that this is an ongoing interesting issue in Anchorage.

Um people are interested in food production, they're interested in getting more people involved in food food production and figuring out where we can sort of make that happen across the city.

And then last year we also saw local leaders hope to grow more food by lowering taxes.

So there were some amendments or some ordinances to talk about sort of dealing with food deserts and you know, reducing tax costs for people who are growing food.

And then more recently, uh the assembly, and this isn't really a zoning thing, but the assembly made it a little bit easier for um small businesses doing sort of cottage food production to do that in their homes.