An area on the plaza at Harrigan Centennial Hall is reserved for youth buskers, but city code specifies that permits to busk there are available to “musicians.” A new ordinance would open that opportunity up for “entertainers.”
When summer tourists arrive at Harrigan Centennial Hall, they’re often greeted by a handful of youthful entertainers. But an effort to expand the qualifications for who can busk at the tourist hub downtown brought up a tough question at the Sitka Assembly meeting on Tuesday. What is entertainment and who gets to make that call?
Right now, Sitka’s municipal code allows musicians to perform for donations, or “busk,” in some designated city spaces, provided they purchase an annual permit for $10 dollars. An ordinance the assembly is considering would replace the word “musician” with “entertainer,” opening the privilege up to performers with dancing, acting, or public speaking chops. Assembly member Thor Christianson said the change was spurred by a young performer who learned her act wasn’t technically allowed on the plaza at Harrigan Centennial Hall because it didn’t fall into the “musician” category.
“It came up that one of the kids who was doing stuff out here was doing a kind of interpretive lecture about different pellets that she and her family had collected,” Christianson said. “It was pointed out that she wasn’t selling anything, and she wasn’t playing as an instrument or wasn’t a musician, so it didn’t fit under the existing code. And this just changes it so that if they’re doing that, or something…that doesn’t fit directly under musician, they’re still covered.”
Harrigan Centennial Hall manager Tony Rosas is one of two city staffers in charge of issuing these permits (the other being the harbormaster). Rosas felt the code changes were too broad. The current code allows musicians to “busk” in a limited area outside of the building. Rosas said that privilege was really reserved for youth, and he thought the new changes would open the busking privilege up to everyone.
“I am not anti youth permit. I think it’s really important for the youth to come down here and to learn how to work with money, take that responsibility to build and do things and basically start off in front of the public, and working with the public, and being comfortable with the public,” Rosas said. He also worried that the term “entertainment” was broad, and he didn’t want to be the one making the call as far as what is or is not “entertainment, potentially opening the city up to litigation.
Mayor Steven Eisenbeisz said that was always a concern, however, even if the only permit applicants were musicians. Assembly member Tim Pike agreed, however, that the language needed some adjusting.
“I think this this particular language suffers from both being too vague and too specific at the same time. So “entertainer” is probably a little too vague, and a full list is going to leave something out, I mean, we didn’t put whittling on there, for example,” Pike said. “I think going forward I does need some work in order to make this be as specific as we need it to be to do this.”
Assembly member JJ Carlson suggested tweaking the language so that the code read “youth entertainer” as a good next step. 6:16
“There’s a difference between what is intended and what is written, and when people 5, 10, 25 years from now look at this, this discussion isn’t going to be a footnote in this ordinance. It’s just going to be the words on the page,” Carlson said. “So attention to the words on the page is what we do, as the assembly.”
With over half a million cruise passengers expected this summer, Centennial Hall will experience an unprecedented amount of foot traffic. Rosas asked the assembly to hold off on passing the ordinance until they had a better handle on how the plaza would look on Sitka’s busiest cruise days. But Christianson worried that young entertainers would lose out on peak summer earning months if they didn’t move the ordinance to the next step.
Ultimately the assembly approved the ordinance on first reading unanimously. It will come before the assembly again at the next regular meeting in June.
