Borough / City Joint Work Session One of Many Meetings on Jackson’s Park Zoning Code

Kayla Desroches/KMXT

The joint work session between the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly and the Kodiak City Council last night promises to be the first of a series of meetings about the Jackson’s Mobile Home Park closure and related code.

Jackson’s Park falls outside city limits and one of the joint session’s purposes was for the borough to update the city on the property. Robert Pederson is the director of the borough’s community development department and says the owner of Rasmussen’s Mobile Home Park is looking into accommodating more trailers.

“He’s filed an application and the site plan shows 22 mobile home spaces in that piece of property and then also there’s a smaller piece of property. I don’t recall the acreage, but it’s mentioned in that bigger packet… and the site plan shows seven units in that piece,” says Pederson.

Assembly and council members asked questions about the population in the park, mobile home additions, and property codes. Jackson’s residents face a number of challenges besides immovable trailers and limited spaces in alternative parks. Pederson says one element is that all mobile home parks besides Rasmussen’s are nonconforming.

“But they’re all grandfathered in, and they were there for a long, long time. Many, many, many of the units in those parks are also nonconforming structures or uses by virtue of setbacks or the things that have been added onto them or are too close to the other unit,” says Pederson. “They don’t have walkways or play areas or they don’t need setbacks and all those sorts of things.”

In a packet the community development department prepared, it explains how park owners and residents have made many of these changes without department permission. Nonconforming property is just one part of zoning code local government will need to examine over the next few months.

Another issue, more specific to Jackson’s, are fees that will result from moving the trailers

“Building compliance fee for the new location and then the building, location, and plumbing fees for hooking up in the new location. There’s been discussion and I believe the sense of the assembly at the work session was that we should look at waiving fees for mobile homes that are being forced to relocate out of Jackson’s,” says Pederson.

That’s one matter the city and borough will discuss in the near future.  

The Planning and Zoning Commission will have a special work session tonight at 6:30 p.m.to discuss proposed code amendments. It will take place in the Kodiak Island Borough Conference Room.