(Pipa Escalante/KUCB)

This week, KUCB is profiling candidates running in the October 2 municipal election. Today’s profile focuses on Tom Enlow, who is running for his first full term on city council. All the candidates will appear live on KUCB and Channel 8 on Wednesday at 7 pm to answer your questions.

When Tom Enlow was appointed to city council in April, he was brought up from the audience and right into a very contentious meeting. Council was trying to figure out if it should charge more for city-owned housing because the new 8-plex was costing more than expected. Tenants were angry that their rents could go up so soon after moving in.

With council at an impasse, Enlow made his first move as an official: Why not raise the rates, but grandfather in the current tenants through the end of their leases? The motion passed 4-1.

Enlow thinks that ability to compromise is one of his major strengths as a councilor.

“I think that if both parties – whoever it is – feels a little bit of pain, it’s probably been the best direction and best decision,” says Enlow.

Enlow isn’t new at diplomacy. He moved to Unalaska in 1989 to work for Unisea, and he’s led the clinic’s board and the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau board in the past. He also chairs the North Pacific Fishery Management Council’s advisory panel, which he’s been a member of for a dozen years. The panel deals with complex resource allocation issues, where lots of fish and lots of money is at stake. Fellow member Matt Moir says that Enlow has largely been successful at brokering solutions.

“It does get heated and it does get contentious. A lot of times not everybody leaves happy, but hopefully they’re satisfied,” says Moir. “And I think Tom’s done a good job of that at the AP.”

While Enlow may sometimes play the role of Switzerland at council meetings, that doesn’t mean he’s neutral on everything. As a councilor, he says he would spend his next term improving Unalaska’s quality of life. To him, that means finding a way to spread the rising costs of utilities across the community. He also wants to look into renewable energy sources that could keep power costs down in the future and reopen the wind energy debate. And making sure cost of living for Unalaska’s city employees is comparable to other communities is among his top priorities.

“I’ve heard from a lot of folks – anecdotally of course – that the city has become kind of an entry-level system for a lot of important positions. People gain some experience, they have something to put on their resumes, and then they’re off to another community,” says Enlow. “I’m concerned about that.”

Enlow is also concerned about the housing shortage facing the community. He’s opposed to involving the city in housing, but he wants to create incentives for private landowners to build homes and apartment complexes. He also thinks there’s a chance that the increased presence of oil companies in Unalaska could result in more housing being built, but he wants to approach that growth cautiously.

“The other thing that’s important to me is to be involved in helping provide some direction and guiding us through what could be very precarious future with offshore oil,” says Enlow. “It’s still unclear to me if our community is going to be the one that’s really impact, or if it’s going to be some other community. Still, we’re going to see some impacts. So, the decisions that the city makes in terms of growth need to be responsible and sustainable.”

While those are the issues most important to him, Enlow says he’s not running on any sort of platform. In fact, he’s not really campaigning much at all. His race is uncontested, and so far no one has launched an aggressive write-in campaign. Even so, he says he still wants people to take the race seriously and vote on election day -- whether they’re casting their ballot for him or not.