New City Hall bond proposal likely only one headed for Juneau’s October ballot

City Hall doesn’t have enough room to fit all city workers, so the city rents office space next door on South Seward Street. (Katie Anastas/KTOO)

City leaders won’t ask Juneau voters to help pay for upgrades to the Dimond Park Field House – a public indoor track without wheelchair access – through a bond this year. Instead, the Juneau Assembly plans to only ask for city hall funding.

The Assembly is set to vote on whether to put a $27 million bond for the city hall project on the October ballot next month. 

At a finance committee meeting Wednesday night, outgoing Finance Director Jeff Rogers said one benefit of using bonds to finance projects is that it aligns who’s paying for a project with who uses the finished product.

“Debt is a structure that allows you to say, ‘We’re going to build something today with money we don’t have, and it’s going to be paid over the next 25 years by those people who use it,’” he said.

Rogers said if the Assembly wants to keep the debt service mill rate at 1.2 – which it generally uses as its limit – the city could take on $48 million in debt.

Assembly member Greg Smith floated the idea of a $2 million bond for the Dimond Park Field House, either on its own or as part of a larger bond package with other parks projects. Stairs connect the field house’s turf field and indoor track, but there’s no ramp or elevator.

“We realize there’s an ADA issue, the turf needs replacements, there’s some energy efficiency issues there,” Smith said.

But member Wade Bryson said putting a second, smaller bond on the ballot would draw support away from the city hall bond. Last year, the $35 million bond proposal for city hall narrowly failed, while the $6.6 million bond proposal for parks projects passed.

“If we bring another bond forward, we will get the exact same results that we received last time,’” he said.

Mayor Beth Weldon and Deputy Mayor Maria Gladziszewski agreed. They said it was too late in the Assembly’s budget process to thoughtfully come up with another bond proposal.

“I think having another bond on this ballot would just muddy the waters for a very important vote that we need to have for City Hall,” Weldon said.

Smith agreed and said he supported only putting a city hall bond on the ballot. 

For the field house, the Assembly rejected a $1 million request in May to fund an elevator but did allocate $150,000 from the city’s deferred maintenance fund for ADA improvements there.

Members of the public can comment on the city hall bond proposal at the Assembly’s July 10 meeting.

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