Newly elected Assembly member Jerry Nankervis says funding for deferred maintenance of city facilities should be in the CBJ budget.
The retired Juneau Police captain received 3,661 votes in yesterday’s (Tuesday) election. He says he heard from a lot of voters during the campaign who don’t like the idea of bonding to maintain city property.
“If the bonding issue stays the way it is right not, that it’s defeated, I believe the city really has to look at incorporating money for maintenance into the budgets for the certain departments so we don’t have to go to a bonding issue. If you’ve got a building you should be maintaining that building,” he says, “before you go out and build more buildings…You’re just digging the hole deeper.”
Deferred maintenance was one of several projects in the bond proposition, which is failing by just 57 votes, but there are about 1,400 absentee and question ballots yet to be counted.
Nankervis will take over Ruth Danner’s Assembly seat. Danner decided not to run for re-election.
Until last Thursday, he was unopposed in the race. Then longtime community activist Dixie Hood filed to run as a write-in candidate. She received 738 votes yesterday, though her name was not on the ballot.
Hood has run for Assembly before and lost, but has served on various city boards and is now a member of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee. She says reading a news story last week about the history of write-in candidates spurred her to run.
“That inspired me to go for it,” she says.
