Lakeidra Chavis, KTOO

The tourist season is over and many downtown Juneau shops are closed, but that’s not keeping other businesses from working to make it a more vibrant place.

This week, the Downtown Business Association met with Kathy La Plante. She’s a hired consultant with Main Street America, a national program that’s helped cities around the country enhance their downtowns for nearly 30 years.

According to the Juneau Empire, the DBA spent about $6,500 for the consulting job, and will have to pay an annual fee of $250 to stay in the program.

La Plante said it was great to see the community work together on a plan. She said she knew Juneau was a tourist town and was surprised to see events still going past the tourist season.

“I thought, ‘Oh, they’re very cruise ship oriented, I’m going to go there and see half the stores closed up because it’s a summertime economy,’” she said. So I’m really impressed that it does still remain a very vibrant place in the downtown.”

On Halloween, for example, dozens of businesses passed out candy to trick-or-treaters.

La Plante’s met with more than 100 business owners and community members. At a meeting Tuesday evening, attendees voted on their priorities.

“The number one was increasing the housing stock, and affordable housing, housing that could happen,” La Plante said. “We know that there are a lot of upper stories in the downtown area that are vacant and unused and we have to look at what’s preventing those from being developed or what new housing construction can happen here (and) what business amenities go with that.”

Other priorities included improving parking and marketing Juneau as a destination spot for Alaskans. La Plante acknowledges that traveling to the capital city is expensive.

She said she’ll create a summary report based on her visit and share it at a Downtown Business Association meeting in early January.

Colleen Goldrich, owner of Annie Kaill’s and a Downtown Business Association board member, said downtown Juneau’s been changing for the better.

“There’s been a lot of growth in downtown with new stores opening, new restaurants opening and shops and services, and things like that,” she said.

City Manager Rorie Watt attended a couple of the meetings this week, and said he believes in the program.

“You know, I appreciated is that Kathy and main street’s program sort of provides structure for bringing people together,” Watt said.

He said addressing some of the social ills that cause problems like homelessness, or housing and parking availability, are complex.

But he stresses that efforts continue to be made on the city level.

Days before the election, Justin Parish, 33, is taking time off from his day job to focus on his campaign.

He’s running against Juneau Republican and incumbent Rep. Cathy Muñoz for House District 34.

At a coffee shop in the Mendenhall Valley, Justin Parish is ordering tea — chamomile citrus to be specific.

He’s taking a break between speaking at a chamber of commerce meeting and door-to-door campaigning.

He describes his experience running the campaign in one word.

“Transformative is the word I keep coming back to,” he said.

A part of that transformation was chopping off his long, red hair, at the advice of his campaign advisers.

“It had finally grown long enough for me to donate to wigs for kids, so that was alright,” Parish said. “And hopefully now it’s adorning the head of some kid in the nation.”

He’s had to sacrifice time with friends and family to focus on the election.

Parish said that’s just a part of public service.

“That’s alright,” he said, “because the cause is just and I think that anyone considering entering public service should.”

He was inspired to run for office after seeing how decisions at the state-level affected local residents, like the students he works with as a para-educator.

He recalled participants in the school’s free breakfast program, and one of his students who otherwise wouldn’t have had food, thanking him.

“There’s that level of need all across our state, and people like him are being jeopardized by the fecklessness and irresponsibility of our legislature,” Parish said.

After that, he worked for the Bernie Sanders campaign in Juneau and began attending Democratic Party meetings in town.

Echoing the sentiments of Sanders’ national campaign, Parish wants a more transparent state legislature that works for the communities they’re elected to serve. He wants more state jobs in Juneau and to continue economic growth.

He plans to start early Election Day.

“Well, I’ll probably start out by waving signs, because that’s pretty fun, honestly, please honk,” he said with a laugh. “And then I’ll probably see what the volunteers are doing, I want to be able to support the people that’re supporting me.”

But before then, he says he might write a column for Juneau Empire to pitch his case one more time before Election Day.

“After the coffee shop, I’m going to go out and knock on some doors and try to have some conversations,” he said.

The Juneau Assembly is one step closer to a housing plan for the city.

During its work session Monday evening, the assembly voted to create an ordinance that would add the city’s housing action plan to its comprehensive plan, but not without heavy disagreement among assembly members.

The comprehensive plan outlines the city’s goals and policies. Although the plan addresses housing, the housing action plan is a more detailed and expansive document with specific suggestions for how to implement the solutions.

The Affordable Housing Commission received $75,000 of city funding to draft the plan a few years ago, and worked with city officials and housing specialists to complete it.

Assembly member Norton Gregory formerly served on the Affordable Housing Commission when the plan was being developed and supported its adoption.

“I feel like it’s important that the CBJ take action, and one thing that we learned from this plan is that we have to make some changes on how we do business,” Gregory said, “and change is often times not easy, and I think that this plan will help guide us through that.”

Assembly member Loren Jones was conflicted about adopting the plan.

He said he recognized its significance, but there were some items that lacked clarification.

“There’s issues in here about whether or not a developer should do 20 (percent) or 30 percent of their development at low-income and then we’ll give them some kind of develop bonus but it doesn’t say what that develop bonus is,” he said.

All of the assembly members agreed the plan was a good step forward. But some members disagreed on whether it was the right step to take.

Assembly members Mary Becker and Debbie White worried that adopting the plan would make its recommendations binding.

Becker said she’d prefer something more flexible, like a resolution, which doesn’t carry as much weight.

“I don’t think it’s ready for that kind of firm interpretation and I could not vote for that,” Becker said. “I could vote for it as a resolution, but I don’t think it’s ready to be something you can’t do anything about — you just have to do whatever it says or whatever it’s interpreted to say.”

Assembly member Jesse Kiehl disagreed.

“You know, the comprehensive plan is explicit, it says it’s aspirational,” Kiehl said. “We are not, in fact, required to do each and every little thing in the comprehensive plan. The comprehensive plan, among its implanting actions, at one point, says we’ll build a performing arts center. You’ll notice we have not yet appropriated 10-15 million bucks for a performing arts center.”

After more than an hour of discussion, the assembly voted 5-3 to draft an ordinance. If passed, it will adopt the housing action plan into the already existing comprehensive plan.

The ordinance will be introduced at the Nov. 21 assembly meeting.

The Juneau Assembly will postpone a proposed ordinance restricting fireworks use in the capital city until April 2017.

During the next six months, the Juneau Police Department is encouraged to enforce the use of fireworks under the city’s disturbing the peace code.

Assembly member Jerry Nankervis motioned to postpone the ordinance at the assembly’s work session Monday evening.

The draft ordinance would restrict the use and possession of fireworks to holidays, such as New Year’s and the Fourth of July.

The city should focus on enforcing a previously passed noise ordinance, which fireworks would fall under, Nankervis said.

“If there hasn’t been any enforcement action under the current ordinance that the (police) could cite for fireworks,” he said. “I don’t know why we would expect there would be any different action under a fireworks specific ordinance.”

The assembly passed the noise ordinance in 2014, which amended the disturbing the peace code. The amendment defined “unreasonable noise,” and included factors like proximity to residential areas and the time of day.

The use of fireworks within residential neighborhoods has been a contentious issue in Juneau for years.

Nearly 40 people weighed in on the issue last month when the city hosted two public meetings on the issue, according to meeting documents.

City Clerk Laurie Sica said the city has received about 150 emails from residents. Most of those emails are from the same people who provide additional comments later on.

Police Chief Bryce Johnson said his department has received almost 60 calls this year regarding fireworks. Of those calls, there was only one arrest.

He says fireworks are a quality of life issue, not a safety issue.

“The fireworks are a lower priority for us. We’re going to go to (a) domestic violence (call), other things that occur first,” he said. “Our policy is if there’s a two-hour gap between when the call comes in and when we’re available to respond, we’re not going to respond to the call.”

The ordinance wasn’t officially introduced to the Juneau Assembly and was under consideration.

A 19-year-old woman who was shot in the head earlier this month remains in critical condition as of Wednesday, according to a spokesperson for the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage.

Juneau police say the gunshot that wounded Geneva Anowlic-Okikton in a Mendenhall Valley townhouse was fired through the floor of the second story into the first, where it struck the top of her head.

Police spokeswoman Erann Kalwara says the investigation is still ongoing.