"We've just adjusted the hours a little bit," Sullivan said during a press briefing last week.
The new version is to be introduced at Tuesday's Assembly meeting, with a public hearing and debate at a later meeting.
The law, if passed, would make it illegal to sit or recline on a sidewalk downtown from 6 a.m. until late evening, with exceptions for things like medical emergencies or parades and demonstrations that have permits.
It would also prohibit panhandling downtown.
The revised ordinance extends the no-sitting provision later into the night on Fridays and Saturdays than the initial version -- until 2:30 a.m.-- to keep sidewalks clear for people downtown late on weekends, Sullivan said. On other nights, it would be OK to sit or recline on the sidewalks at midnight.
The idea for the law arose out of a homeless man's sit-down protest on sidewalks near City Hall. The protestor, John Martin, has been sitting or standing on a blanket either right in front of City Hall or across the street, off and on for months. He has said he's protesting the city's treatment of homeless people.
The administration wanted to remove him, but found there is no city law that forbids lying or sitting on a sidewalk, city officials have said.
It's unclear how or if new sidewalk rules would affect the more recent protest, Occupy Anchorage, in which people are demonstrating in Town Square Park across from City Hall. They've had a tent set up, a chair or two and a portable heater, along with signs.
Some have been maintaining the protest at Sixth Avenue and F Street throughout the night, said participant Tina Robinson, who said she was there all night Wednesday.
Sullivan said the sidewalk ordinance wouldn't affect protesters inside the park.
The park closes at 11 p.m. though. On Friday and Saturday nights, under the ordinance, it wouldn't be legal to do anything but stand on the sidewalks until 2:30 a.m., unless the protesters had a city permit.
Five Assembly members objected to the proposed sidewalk law when it came up at the July 26 Assembly meeting, and the new version doesn't satisfy some of their objections.
IS LAW NEEDED?
Assemblyman Paul Honeman questioned whether the law was needed at all. "In my opinion there really is no compelling public safety need for the sitting-on-the-sidewalk issue," Honeman said this week. Honeman is a retired policeman and is running for mayor against Sullivan.
Another criticism in July was that the sidewalk restrictions would only apply to downtown, and not other parts of the city, such as the Midtown business district. "It's defective," Midtown Assemblyman Dick Traini said in July.
"I'm still philosophically opposed if it only applies to downtown," Traini said this week. "How do you make one part of town more valuable than another?"
City Attorney Dennis Wheeler said Friday that he recommended the new version stick to downtown to avoid potential lawsuits and controversy "until we see how it works."
He said a sidewalk code provision in Los Angeles was struck down for being overly broad.
While Seattle has successfully applied sidewalk-sitting and lying restrictions to certain commercial zones, Wheeler said in Anchorage, it doesn't seem like there's the same level of pedestrian traffic outside of downtown.
Although Sullivan submitted the ordinance for the July 26 Assembly meeting, he asked at the time that the Assembly postpone a vote until September so the city Public Safety Advisory Commission could review it.
With one of the 11 Assembly members absent that night, the move to postpone the measure until September failed 5-5. Then the Assembly voted 9-1 to kill that version altogether.
But that doesn't mean the nine are against it. The vote left an opening for the administration to bring back a different ordinance with much the same purpose, and that's what Sullivan's done.
COMMISSION ENDORSES IT
The public safety commission, meantime, talked about the sidewalk restrictions at its August and September meetings and has passed a resolution supporting the original version, said chairwoman Sharon Chamard. The new version wasn't available at the time, she said. The resolution says, "... it is in the public interest to keep downtown sidewalks clear for the safe passage of pedestrians and those pedestrians with strollers or who are in wheelchairs..."
The main concern of the commission was to make sure it would be constitutional, which meant it should be limited to downtown, Chamard said.
"I was concerned personally, is this really a problem?" Chamard said. "I think the consensus of the commission was that it could become a problem. It's a big problem in other cities."
Assemblyman Ernie Hall, who supports the ordinance, said that for him, the proposal for a new law has never been about the one homeless protester parked in front of City Hall who inspired it.
"I've always seen this as getting ahead of that kind of situation," in which people sitting or lying on sidewalks would be a bigger problem, he said.
The Assembly member who was absent for the July and its 5-5 split, Jennifer Johnston, said she doesn't like "legislation that has been developed for one situation" -- the City Hall protester.
On the other hand, she said, "I'm interested in looking at it if it's something that's a matter of safety."
Reach Rosemary Shinohara at rshinohara@adn.com or 257-4340.
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