By ARIADNE WILL
Sentinel Staff Writer
The Assembly unanimously passed a motion Tuesday evening to task the Planning Commission with the creation of a tourism master plan.
The next step will be for the Assembly and the Planning Commission to meet in a joint session, Planning Director Amy Ainslie said.
“We don’t have any plans as of right now to how that process is going to play out,” Ainslie told the Sentinel Wednesday. “We just wanted to see, first and foremost, if it’s something the Assembly is interested in pursuing.”
Ainslie isn’t sure yet what the master plan will contain – there are a number of different avenues the city could take.
“There’s a spectrum of different options that we as a community and as a city have to deal with any issue,” she said. “We’re going to be looking to the public for guidance on where we want to land in that spectrum.”
This includes multiple funding options for initiatives that come out of the master plan.
“For tourism, we have the CPET funds – the passenger fees we get from cruise fees,” Ainslie said. “There is definitely interest in this plan addressing how we can use those funds to meet the objectives of the plan.”
She said items from the future master plan also could be funded through the city budget or grants.
The motion was sponsored by Assembly members Rebecca Himschoot and Kevin Knox.
Himschoot said she approached Ainslie after Sitkans reached out to her with concerns about the possibility of a 400,000-person cruise ship season in 2022.
“People are reaching out saying, ‘We’re not sure we want this; we’re not sure this is going to work,’” Himschoot said in a Sentinel interview. “I said, ‘Of course we can make this work – we’re Sitka.’”
She said she and Ainslie thought the Planning Commission would be a good fit for the challenge, since the body is, as Himschoot put it, the “keeper of the comprehensive plan.”
“They have experience getting community input,” Himschoot said. “That’s the really crucial part of this, to engage the community.”
Himschoot told the Assembly she’d like to see the plan complete by December. She said in a later interview the timeline might be more flexible, and that she earmarked December so the city would have time to implement any changes or infrastructure before visitors begin arriving in the spring.
“It is a really aggressive timeline,” Himschoot said.
But after the years-long process of creating a comprehensive plan, Ainslie said the creation of a tourism master plan should be a much shorter process.
“A more focused master plan can usually be done in a matter of months, not years,” she said.
And if it takes longer than expected to create the plan, Himschoot said she thinks Sitka will still be able to handle 9,000-passenger days.
“If things don’t get done and it takes until next May, we’ll deal with it,” she said. “We want a good plan.”
