FAIRBANKS — Fairbanks North Star Borough officials asked the elected Borough Assembly to help with a review of a perennial land-auction program that, in recent years, has hit a rocky patch.
Government land managers use auctions to transfer land to private-sector developers in a process that has produced subdivisions in neighborhoods including Cripple Creek, Murphy Dome and Two Rivers.
But much of the borough’s best land — the “low-hanging fruit” close to roads and population centers — has already been sold. That, along with pushback from upset neighbors and questions from elected assembly members over how — and whether — the borough should help develop more land, has led public officials to reassess the program.
Land managers and finance officials last week extended their review by asking the Borough Assembly to weigh in on what they called “the changing face of land development” and, within it, the borough’s role.
“We need to make sure we have a policy we can adhere to,” Mayor Jim Whitaker said of the review. Whitaker said the administration senses the assembly was hoping to take a look at issues including urban sprawl and wanted to ensure its land-management practices line up with policymakers’ wishes before spending more money developing land.
The Land Management Department is the steward of roughly 100,000 acres, much of it parceled out on huge tracts near Murphy Dome and Salcha and along Chena Pump Road. It has initiated pre-development work on a 400-plus-acre tract deemed “Tanana 440” outside of town.
The borough received rights to the land roughly three decades ago through a state entitlement program available to local governments. A fraction has since been transferred to developers, with land managers looking to make the borough a profit on each auction — land sales account for one-half of the Land Management Department’s income — to pay for future development projects.
The auction process — aimed largely at creating residential subdivisions — has run into criticism. Last year, neighbors eight miles northwest of Fairbanks teamed up and outspent full-time developers to buy a 100-plus-acre tract in the Spinach Creek neighborhood. The group, which is developing the “green” Sunrise Mountain subdivision, had expressed concerns that a developer could strip the wooded tract in advance of quick-draw development.
Five months later, the borough’s Planning Commission surprised public officials by rejecting land managers’ zoning recommendations for another tract, this one located near Ester and targeted for auction. The commission instead recommended zoning rules that land managers said would make the project a money-loser — a no-no under the auction process’s unstated rules.
Assembly members raised questions about the nomination-to-auction program shortly after the commission’s vote, after which the borough suspended the program and started the review.
“If we have an assembly that believes we shouldn’t be disposing of land, we need to know that as an administration before we move forward,” chief of staff Bob Shefchik said at a work session last week.
Profits at the management department have been used to help fund parks projects and other services over the year. The major fund at the department operates largely financially independent of other branches of the borough.
The borough has asked assembly members to weigh in on the issue in writing later this month.
