Shooting range draws protests from neighbors
WASILLA: Residents fear that the facility will lower property values, and the noise will be a problem.

By RINDI WHITE
[email protected]

Published: June 16th, 2009 05:54 PM
Last Modified: June 16th, 2009 11:02 PM

WASILLA –– A handful of Wasilla residents who would be the closest neighbors to a city-proposed shooting range near the Menard Sports Center are mounting a protest against the range.

Bradley Laybourn, owner of the Roadside Inn restaurant in Wasilla, said this week he and others who live between Lake Lucille and the sports complex fear the facility will drive down their property values and make their "piece of heaven" unbearable.

"I feel like, as much property as the city has, there are other places that would be much better choices," he said.

Laybourn and his family members own 80 acres near the sports center. He filed an appeal June 3 seeking to overturn a May 23 city Planning Commission decision approving the city's request to build the range.

He's also collecting signatures for a petition asking the city to rethink the shooting range. So far he's collected more than 200 signatures from people who use the sports center, including some who told him they didn't want the sound of gunfire as background noise when they take their toddler to play on the indoor turf.

Laybourn's neighbors, including those outside the range of the half-mile city public notice requirement, have also signed his petition.

In his appeal to the city, Laybourn listed six reasons the proposed range should be stopped or moved elsewhere, including that it conflicts with city parks and recreation plans, that it was passed despite the objections of five of the seven property owners who live within a half-mile of the range and that the city failed to consider off-site impacts such as noise, smell and lead pollution.

He also said the city didn't address possible hazards to passing pedestrians and traffic, or provide firearm safety rules in the parking lot, which would be shared with the sports center.

Laybourn said he launched the protest as soon as he learned the city planned to build a shooting range on what was once intended to be soccer fields at the Sports Center.

Although the city has held three meetings where the range was discussed, nearby property owners only received notice of one of those: a hearing at the Planning Commission over whether to grant the city a permit to build the range.

The permit was approved. Laybourn is appealing in part because he believes more people would have protested had they known the range was planned.

The city has not yet hired a hearing officer or set up a schedule to hear Laybourn's appeal.

Details of the range, such as size and the cost to shoot there, have not yet been decided. City public works director Archie Giddings said recently that the city could do some work on the range this year, but it likely would not be complete until 2010.

City leaders have been working on the shooting range plan for several months. Earlier this year, representatives from Wasilla gun store Chimo Guns and the National Rifle Association spoke at a City Council meeting in favor of adding a new shooting range where hunters could sight in rifles.

Denny Hamann, chairman of the Alaska Friends of the National Rifle Association, told the city in April his group would pitch in with funding and other resources to help build the range.

Few outdoor ranges exist in the Valley. Mat Valley Sportsmen runs an indoor pistol range near Palmer and Grouse Ridge, off Wasilla-Fishhook Road, is outdoors, but is limited to shotguns. Upper Susitna Shooters runs an outdoor range at Mile 94.5 Parks Highway and another range is being planned near Mud Lake in the Knik River Public Use Area. But the Wasilla range could be the first one built in the densely populated area in Wasilla.

Craig Pell, whose family owns Chimo Guns, said in an interview in February that thousands of customers complain each year that the Valley lacks enough places to shoot safely and legally.

When the City Council passed a measure allowing ranges to be built in city limits, the members included stipulations to address potential concerns. The stipulations included that the ranges can only be built on lots 20 acres or larger and only in industrial or public zones by permit. The new rules require the range to be set away from property lines, install backstops to protect nearby houses from errant bullets and put in fences or other barriers to keep people from wandering into the line of fire.

City officials planned to use a large berm of dirt excavated from the Menard Sports Center to build backdrops and buffer sound. The birch and spruce forest around the sports center will help too, city planner Jim Holycross said earlier this year.

Wasilla Mayor Verne Rupright told Laybourn and other residents who turned out to speak at a City Council meeting last week the city is considering other noise-dampening measures, such as baffles.

But neighbors say no amount of baffling will completely muffle the sound. Although many of them said they use firearms, they said they don't want to live with the "pop, pop, pop" of gunfire going on for hours nearby.

Taffina Katkus, whose home is separated from the sports center property by less than a football field, said she fears the sound will drive people away from the pick-your-own berry farm she and her husband have built.

Small white signs with berries outlined on them are tacked to trees along Lake Lucille Drive, directing traffic to Katkus' yard where four kinds of raspberries grow in straight rows and birds chirp in nearby trees.

Katkus is also an artist; her painting "Clearing the Way" was picked this year for use by the Alaska Railroad Corporation.

Katkus said Friday she had a hard time believing a shooting range would be a good neighbor.

"We have spent a lifetime to finally get to this point. This is our retirement," Katkus said. "I am really disheartened."

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/matsu/story/833392.html

Isn't that the town Palin was mayor of?