HB 17 DNR APPROVE PLATS IN UNORG.BOROUGH  CHAIRMAN HALFORD announced CS HB 17(RES) to be up for considerati MR. WALT WILCOX, Staff to Representative James, sponsor, said HB 17 brings all of the unorganized borough under DNR's purview for platting of real estate. It also clarifies the meaning of subdivision and makes it standard throughout the statutes. It is supported by the surveyors and DNR. MR. WILCOX asked Mr. Savage to explain the first part of the proposed amendment. MR. CRAIG SAVAGE responded that he interpreted that to mean the State would not be charging itself for review of plats of its own land. MR. WILCOX reviewed the remaining three amendments. SENATOR TAYLOR asked Mr. Savage to explain the purpose of the last amendment which deletes all references to State plats. MR. SAVAGE responded that that is one of the reasons they have been working so hard to get a definition of subdivision - to make sure that it refers to the actual division of a piece of land rather than any survey. If you exclude open-to-entry that are done by the State or on behalf of the State, that opens up a tremendous amount of area that really isn't subdivision so much as it is boundary delineation. CHAIRMAN HALFORD asked if the amendment is adopted, does that mean open-to-entry, remote parcel, or homestead plats are, in fact, not subdivisions and it's clear in the bill they do not have to go through that review process. MR. SAVAGE replied that it was the contrary. (B) is an exclusion from the definition of subdivision and if they remove open-to-entry plats and other State parcels, they become included in the definition of subdivision. CHAIRMAN HALFORD commented that the remote parcel program, the homestead program, and the old OTE program, although surveyed long ago, were subdivisions of State land within State land and those already go through the DNR process. The surveys have to be done according to the survey instructions and everything that came with whatever program they came from. Why should that be dealt with in this bill, he asked. MR. WILCOX responded that it would be deleted from being dealt with in this bill under the amendment. MR. SAVAGE said the reason the open-to-entry plats or remote parcel plats were originally excluded from subdivisions in part was in response to some of the requirements that were placed on them by DEC, like soils testing, and that sort of thing, on extremely large parcels in extremely remote areas. And one of the things they are trying to do in this bill is standardize the word subdivision throughout the State statutes. Senator Halford is correct in that the open-to-entry and remote parcel plats are already under the supervision of DNR, but throughout State statutes there's a difference between the open-to- entry and remote parcels and subdivisions. MR. PAT KALAN, Alaska Society of Professional Land Surveyors, sa the open-to-entry program is very obsolete. There hasn't been one for 12 or 14 years and the State indicated there was a single remote parcel left which could be dealt with. He said the amendment clarifying the definition of the word subdivision was good. Number 210 MS. JANE ANGVIK, Director, Division of Lands, asked if they intended to exclude cadastral plats that are created by the State. MR. KALAN said they already do that; they go to the municipalities. A control plat doesn't create a boundary so he couldn't see that there was any affect. SENATOR TAYLOR asked if this legislation was an attempt to bring under the control of the Department of Natural Resources any subdivision occurring in a remote parcel which is not encompassed within the boundaries of a borough or city. CHAIRMAN HALFORD answered yes. He said there was an existing statute saying that DNR is the platting authority for the unorganized borough. He didn't know if that meant a filing authority or an approval authority. MR. GERALD HAYES, Chief Surveyor, responded that currently DNR has platting authority only for vacation of easements and changing of existing boundaries within the unorganized borough. The change under this bill would place creation of new parcels within existing surveys under a platting authority. Apparently, they don't have to be approved by any authority. MR. WILCOX explained the reason this came up in the area of unorganized portions is that the University was subdividing land with no access and no oversite. They are required to abide by State law, but there is no one to enforce that in unorganized boroughs. SENATOR TAYLOR asked if it became revenue neutral by charging fees. MR. WILCOX replied yes. CHAIRMAN HALFORD asked if the sponsor considered a statutory requirement amplifying the existing easement availability instead of creating a new platting authority, because he agrees with the thing she is trying to stop, but he worries about creating a new approval authority that, if the budget isn't what somebody wants, they stop approving. It increases the user fee and he's not sure what the net result is. He agrees there should be buildable, physical access to property. MR. WILCOX said that Mr. Kalan has some horror stories of subdivisions that weren't recorded and subsequently a portion of them financed and people were disenfranchised of their rights to the property. He asked Mr. Kalan to comment on some of the problems occurring from not having oversite. MR. KALAN said the biggest one is that people could create lots without provision for a legal access. When there was the idea to give DNR some power to file plats, they wanted to keep it real simple and make some rules so that it didn't get out of hand. MR. WILCOX said that Representative James shares the Chairman's concern about giving any more authority to DNR, but couldn't come up with another way to deal with this issue. SENATOR TAYLOR asked if the primary purpose was one of access or designing lots that comply with somebody's preconceived notion of what a lot should be. MR. WILCOX responded that last year the legislature took away the DEC's platting review authority and this isn't someone's idea of what a subdivision should be. The legislature's statutes and subsequent regulations promulgated by the agency would drive the requirements. MR. KALAN said he heard them mention the idea of standards and they specifically forbid DNR coming up with engineering standards, but rely on the judgement of the surveyor. They don't have any one set of rules. This covers airports and rights-of way for anything that would involve making a road or airport foundry and they expect there would be quite a few of the parcels created. CHAIRMAN HALFORD said the 45 day approval requirement is good. The question is how that actually works, but they would work with the sponsor to try to understand and incorporate the amendment and see if there is any simple self enforcing way to make it either approved or not in case there is a budget shortfall and DNR can't review them and they are approved automatically.