April 30, 2026, by Michael Armstrong

Special to The Seward Folly

Although the Seward City Council passed several resolutions on its action agenda, much of Monday’s meeting centered around discussions of the heating system of the new harbormaster building and short-term rentals.

Under the new business section, city council members can raise issues they might see as important, with the idea of seeking advice from other members or the administration. Often the result will be an ordinance brought back to the council for public debate and consideration or work sessions to discuss the issue with civic input.

Council Member Lori Draper raised the question of what kind of heating system the new harbormaster’s building should use. The current office is mostly heated using waste oil generated by marine vessels, and that’s the proposal for the new building. Draper said that as design of the building proceeds she thought it would be a good idea to look at the merits of heating systems, including heat pumps. She said she had been told that design was too far along to reconsider heating options.

“And that concerns me, because good planning should not mean that we lose the opportunity to evaluate important decisions,” Draper said. “I think this is an important decision, and I’m not here tonight advocating for one system over the other. What I’m asking for is to make a decision having complete information.” 

Draper raised environmental concerns about handling and burning waste oil. She said Seward citizens had not been asked about what they valued about how the harbormaster’s office should be heated.

“They deserve transparency on a long-term public investment like this,” Draper said. “If our electrical utility can offer a cost recovery rate for municipal facilities, that may materially change the economics of a cleaner technology that deserves to be understood as part of the analysis, too.”

Deputy City Manager Jason Bickling said that in designing a heating system for the new harbormaster’s office, the city wanted to avoid the problems of the Seward Community Library’s heating system.

“So going into the harbormaster’s office, we knew what we wanted was a simple design, easy to maintain and operate, and really like just something we can work on ourselves, cheap to fix. And so that’s why we we went with the used oil,” he said. 

Bickling said he talked with engineers about heat pumps and that a heat pump for a large public building would be complicated to maintain and not heat as well. One engineer cited the example of a Sitka public building with a heat pump that struggled to keep the building heated at 65 degrees. If a heat pump was used it would need a backup system, Bickling said.

Speaking to Draper’s point about design of the harbormaster’s office being too far along to consider other heating options, Seward City Manager Kat Sorensen said there is time to have a conversation about that.

“But if we look at like a longer term study, that’s when the time crunch would actually begin,” Sorensen said. “So if the conversation happens and we go in one way or the other, like that can be pivoted. But if we look at towards doing a detailed study, that’s what I would get nervous about, not following, not reaching timelines.”

Council Member Casie Warner suggested a middle ground in continuing the discussion for future projects like the new police or fire station.

“Where we could potentially put heat pumps in the future, where we could potentially do solar panels or any other renewable energy in the plan that we currently have in place, where could that go?” she asked.

Warner had raised another issue for discussion: short-term rentals. She had pulled together information about short-term rentals in Seward and found the city has 98 properties with 168 units. Of those, 41 are in residential zones and another 24 are nonconforming rentals in residential zones. Only 17 short-term rentals are owner occupied, that is, on the same lot as the owner’s home.

“One of the things that kind of struck me about these numbers is there was some changes made back in 2022 around the short-term rentals, and we had put in some some requirements about owner-occupied short-term rentals,” Warner said. “However, that only took place in our residential zones and not in other zones such as auto commercial or central business.”

Seward has a high number of non-owner-occupied short-term rentals, Warner noted. Also of concern is the high number of whole-house short-term rentals: 81.

“That’s 81 houses in our community, that is, that are no longer available to our year-round residents,” Warner said.

She also looked at hotels and motels in Seward. Most of them are in zoning districts that have whole-house short-term rentals.

“So it just concerns me that we have a very high number of full-house rentals that are not owner occupied, that are in zones that could easily be converted into hotel/motels,” Warner said. “And so I wanted to bring this before council, because my question is, why? What is it that we’re wanting in our community?”

Vice Mayor John Osenga said he thought the idea with allowing only owner-occupied short-term rentals in residential zoning districts was to protect those districts.

Warner acknowledged Osenga’s point, but said, “These properties that are down in the downtown area that have historically been single-family homes, where people live there year round, and now, because of their zoning, they’re able to be this whole-house rental. And that’s fine, if that’s what the community wants.”

Perhaps the city should consider short-term rentals in the context of not Title 15, land use, but Title 8, the code under which the city regulates businesses like marijuana, she said.

“That’s a conversation we have, too. And how do we want to manage marijuana businesses?” Warner asked. “Well, is this the same kind of conversation that we need to be having with short-term rentals too, especially when we’re seeing the majority of our downtown area that’s historically been a year-round community space now becoming a primarily short-term rentals?”

Mayor Sue McClure suggested having a council work session on the issue.

“I think there are definitely two sides to the conversation, and not that we’re going to act on anything tonight, but I’m just wondering if public input might help, because I have no idea how people feel,” she said.

Council Member Mike Calhoon talked about the history of short-term rentals and how the city got to this point.

“And so we ended up with this conversation because we ended up with a housing shortage for family housing, and that’s what drove the discussion,” he said. “… I think there needs to be a discussion about a cap. A lot of communities in this country have done that. A lot of tourist destination communities have done that, and in some in Alaska have done that. So it’s not a bad conversation to have.”

Michael Armstrong is a retired journalist currently volunteering as the editor of the Homer Independent Press. Reach him at wordfolk@gmail.com.

The Seward Folly co-publisher Robert Barnwell is a current member of the Seward City Council, but he did not participate in the editing of this story.