Jacob Resneck, CoastAlaska

Alaska Gov. Bill Walker will deliver his third State of the State address at 7 p.m. Wednesday. The annual speech to the Alaska Legislature and public will outline his administration’s priorities for the year.

But for residents of Juneau, the speech also means the public can meet elected officials, legislative staff and community leaders in an informal setting.

The 32nd annual Legislative Welcome Reception will be held from 5 to 6:30 p.m. at Centennial Hall. The event is free and The Prospector Hotel will provide food.

This year’s reception is sponsored in part by the Juneau Chamber of Commerce, Travel Juneau, The Alaska Committee and the City and Borough of Juneau.

The Juneau Assembly is moving ahead with a proposal to exempt the cruise industry from sales tax for goods and services sold on board while ships are in port.

The finance committee voted 8-1 Wednesday evening to approve a motion by Mayor Ken Koelsch to amend the tax code and formalize the exemption.

The tax exemption isn’t a done deal.

The proposed ordinance will have to be drafted and brought to a public hearing before it can be enacted.

Deputy Mayor Jerry Nankervis said he strongly supported the mayor’s initiative.

“Having the cruise industry in Juneau has been very beneficial for this community,” Nankervis said. “I think with the potential job loss of state employees looming in the very near future it behooves us to try and be good neighbors with the folks that like to come here and do business and try to continue to keep them coming here and doing business.”

A long-standing agreement requires third-party tour operators aboard cruise ships to pay sales tax and that would not change, the city’s Finance Director Bob Bartholomew told the committee.

The mayor’s initiative will certainly be welcomed by the cruise line industry, which says its passengers pay nearly $8 million in sales tax while onshore in Juneau, but has historically not paid sales tax for goods and services sold aboard its vessels.

“The cruise lines believe the practices for the last 15 years have been correct; that incidental sales on board the vessels, while in port, are exempt from sales tax,” John Binkley, Cruise Lines International Association Alaska president, said in a written statement before the meeting.

He noted a similar exemption exists in Ketchikan and claimed it created an incentive for cruise ships to dock longer in a community.

Cruise ships close their shops while ships are in port, Binkley added.

The lone dissenting voice came from Assembly member Jesse Kiehl, who argued that it was a question of fairness.

“My barber has to collect and remit sales tax and bars around here have to collect and remit sales tax,” Kiehl said. “It’s only fair to ask others who provide those goods and services in the borough to do the same thing.”

Meanwhile, a lawsuit brought against the borough by the cruise ship industry over the spending of a $5 per head tax remains pending in federal court.

Juneau Assembly members asked pointed questions but didn’t indicate whether they would support amending Juneau’s camping ordinance to empower police officers to cite people sleeping in front of downtown businesses and move them on.

Police Chief Bryce Johnson told the Assembly on Monday night that current law only allows officers to move people sleeping on private property if the owner complains to police.

“We as a department have felt a little frustrated to provide a level of service because we haven’t felt that there is much we can do,” Johnson told the Assembly.

The proposed ordinance would make it an infraction to sleep on the street between midnight and 7 a.m. in the downtown waterfront between Fourth Street and the cruise ship terminal. The city attorney said a broader law likely could be struck down as unconstitutional.

Some downtown business owners have complained of makeshift camps in their alcoves, which are warmer and shielded from the wind. The police chief told the Assembly that a permissive atmosphere was preventing people from seeking long-term help. Juneau’s downtown homeless shelter screens for inebriation and doesn’t allow anyone inside with more than a 0.1 blood-alcohol level.

“I just think that enabling people to take that alcove right there in the business front and bypass all the services, we’re making it very easy for them to not take advantage of a very compassionate community that provides a lot of services to people,” Johnson said.

Much of the impetus comes from downtown business owners who say the problem has reached crisis proportions.

Juneau’s Downtown Business Association supports the ordinance as a necessity, said DBA chairwoman Jill Ramiel.

“Homelessness is an unfortunate issue but the DBA has one very small job, which is to protect our member businesses,” she said in an interview. “This camping ordinance would help them conduct business better, it would protect their employees and it would make all of downtown a more inviting place for our customers to come and spend money which is what is important to our membership.”

But advocates for the homeless disagree that an anti-camping ordinance is part of the solution to a wider problem.

Mandy Cole, chairwoman of the Juneau Coalition on Housing and Homelessness, told the Assembly that existing laws already criminalize vandalism, public intoxication and other nuisances that are drawing the bulk of complaints.

“Our public safety obligation is not to criminalize the behavior that is the very last refuge of somebody that doesn’t have any other options,” Cole said. “Adding tickets or adding fines to someone who is already at the end of their rope is, you know, it’s not something that is going to benefit any of us. We’re still going to have the essential problem.”

The overwhelming testimony Monday night was in opposition to the ordinance. Some of this came from the homeless community. One of those was Mary Bailey, who stays in the downtown shelter but said she herself had been forced to sleep outdoors.

“I ended up sleeping on the cement in a doorway and that’s very dangerous for a woman to be like that and scary,” she said. “I’m not a vandalous person, I’m not trying to mess up someone’s place. I’m just trying to survive.”

The ordinance is scheduled to go to a full vote on Jan. 23 after the Assembly holds a public hearing.

Editor’s note: This story has been expanded.

Extensive work rebuilding Douglas Harbor is 85 percent complete with contractors projected to finish work by the end of March or early April. That’s according to the City and Borough of Juneau, which has invested millions to renovate the 120-slip harbor on Gastineau Channel.

Deputy Port Director Erich Schaal said the new dock is a superior design.

“The new floats will have new LED lights that will illuminate the docks really well. That will sit on the docks this time, the old lights were up on the poles, so as the tides went up and down the lighting changed,” he said. “The LEDs will use less power but will also provide better lighting but should not throw so much light up the hill at the neighbors.”

Following demolition work and dredging the harbor, the upgrades of Douglas Harbor are in their third and final phase. Trucano Construction is the lead contractor with several subcontractors completing the electrical and plumbing to service the slips. Schaal said most boaters are hunkered down for the winter, but Juneau Docks and Harbors reminds the boating public to steer clear of the work area.

“Trucano’s almost done and so they have their barge and crane kind of out at the end of the headwalks out at the end of D or C float right now,” he said, “and so there’s not a lot of maneuvering room back in there and and they need some space so we just ask that the boating public not venture into the construction zone at Douglas Harbor.”

The new $6 million design has no wooden pilings in the water and uses less metal that could rust. The new dock is projected to last 40 to 50 years.

It’s the stuff of nightmares. Watching a loved one fall through the ice and being unable to save them.

It happened recently to one Juneau man who lost his 4-year-old dog shortly before New Year’s. James Brooks, 31, and a friend were walking their dogs on Mendenhall Lake near Nugget Falls.

“There was a lead of open water at the time and the other dog jumped in. My dog is not much of a swimmer,” Brooks said. “She likes to wade but she doesn’t like to swim.”

The first dog was a husky mix. Brooks’ 60-pound rottweiler/beagle mix named Cookie, went over to watch.

“She walked up to the edge to see what he was doing and the ice just gave way under her front paws and my initial reaction was to smile because I assumed that she would come up splashing, paddling — maybe a little panicked — but I’d be able to reach in and pull her out without any trouble,” Brooks said. “But she never came up.”

Brooks’ friend stripped down and jumped into the water. But neither man could find any trace.

Not even bubbles.

“I walked along the edge to see if I could see anything but there was nothing there,” Brooks said. “It just happened in a split second.”

“It was as if a cosmic eraser had come in and just erased her from existence,” he said. “Because there was no trace after she slipped in. It was there one moment and gone the next.”

Rescuers in Juneau say the ice around the Mendenhall Glacier area can be risky.

“Three people that I know of now have gone through the ice and fell in — all around the face of the glacier and over by Nugget Falls,” said Jayme Johns, an engineer with Capital City Fire/Rescue.

Johns is the lead water rescuer for the department and will be demonstrating rescue techniques at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center.

“When other people venture out, other people see that and think the ice is safe,” he said. “We’re just going to give them some pointers and some clues on ice that’s not safe and stuff that they can look for if they do fall in or if someone does fall in what they can do to help out.”

Brooks and friends held a memorial recently for his dog.

No trace of her was found.

He says the experience was tragic but also instructive.

“It could happen at any time without any warning because I had no warning,” Brooks said, “and there’s no way to tell from one moment to the next what might happen in the next second.”

A few weeks before Brooks’ dog perished in the lake, a Juneau man fell through the ice.

Houston Laws, 31, went into the water last month.

Fortunately he was able to pull himself to safety and assist a 61-year-old grandmother who had ventured into dangerous territory.

The area where he’d slipped is a popular one for selfies.

And like Brooks, he said there had been no warning.

There’s been more turnover at the top of Juneau’s daily newspaper. Publisher Rustan Burton has left the Juneau Empire after nearly four years at the helm, according to a brief article posted Wednesday afternoon on the newspaper’s website.

His departure follows the managing editor and two reporters in recent weeks. Top editor Charles Westmoreland left at the end of December after five years at the paper. And reporters Lisa Phu and Sam DeGrave also left at the end of last month.

The Juneau Empire article gave no reason for the publisher’s departure. The article said he’d left to take an unspecified job in the Midwest. Burton said he was on a family vacation and declined further comment.

Deputy editor Emily Russo Miller has been serving as interim managing editor since Christmas Eve. A new cops reporter started work this week.

The article quoted Burton as saying he was “grateful” for the opportunity at the Empire. The Juneau Empire is owned by Georgia-based Morris Communications. The article said Kenai-based group publisher Deedie McKenzie will serve as publisher in the interim.