Here’s a look back at Juneau’s biggest stories of 2018.
Tsunami scare
In January, a major earthquake in the Gulf of Alaska triggered a middle-of-the-night tsunami scare, warning sirens and evacuation orders across the gulf coast. Residents who woke up on Jan. 23 and turned on their radios would have heard this breaking newscast at 1:39 a.m.
When the wave hit, communities around the state measured it in inches, not feet.
Dunleavy, Walker and Mallott
It’s early-going in Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s new administration, but the capital city bureaucracy got a major wake-up call during the transition. In an unusually broad request, Dunleavy’s team asked hundreds of at-will state employees to resign and reapply for their jobs.
The new administration also marked the end of Gov. Bill Walker and Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott’s. The Walker-Mallott team split abruptly in the final weeks of their re-election campaign. Walker said the former Juneau mayor resigned after making “an inappropriate overture” to a woman.
Three days later, Walker had another announcement at the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention: “Effective today, I am suspending my campaign —” the crowd’s gasps interrupted him mid-sentence, “— for the reelection as governor.”
Local political turnover
Fall elections also brought a lot of turnover among Juneau’s local politicians: all three Juneau legislators, four out of nine Juneau Assembly members, and three out of seven school board members.
Ship-shore relations
Juneau’s relationship with the cruise ship industry got complicated in 2018. The industry keeps setting records for visitor numbers.
The Norwegian Bliss was Norwegian Cruise Line’s newest, 4,000-passenger megaship and the first — but not the last — of its scale to start making port calls in Juneau. All this while the industry was suing the city over one windfall from those visitors — a passenger tax.
In December, a federal judge ruled the city can continue collecting the tax, but it must rein in how it’s spent. For example: using cruise ship passenger taxes to pay for the new Overstreet Park around the life-size whale statue? That perhaps wouldn’t fly under the judge’s ruling.
Weird weather and climate change
Weird weather connected to climate change led to a lot of strange news in Juneau.
- The U.S. Forest Service fought a 56-acre wildfire in a tidal flat along Berners Bay. In a rainforest.
The Antler Fire burns in grass in a tidal flat area on May 31, 2018, near Berner’s Bay north of Juneau. (Photo courtesy U.S. Forest Service) - Juneau had its warmest July ever recorded.
- Urban bear calls were way up. “Could be anything from ‘I saw a bear walking down the street’ to ‘There’s a bear ripping into my garbage or my chickens or my garage,’” said Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Carl Koch.
- Koch thinks the increased activity is from a combination of a mild winter leading to more cub births and a food shortage from disastrously weak salmon runs.
- The Blob, the huge, unusually warm swath of the Pacific Ocean that disrupted marine life for several years, may be back.
- Mendenhall River flooding and erosion appears to be accelerating, threatening homes and changing the river’s course in hard-to-predict ways.
- A lack of rain from an unusually dry fall will temporarily raise hydroelectricity prices.
- Eaglecrest Ski Area opened late due to lack of snow, even after beefing up its snowmaking capacity over the summer.
No child care relief in sight
A dearth of child care options continues to be a major problem for newer parents and families in Juneau.
“Right now, our infrastructure for our kids is broken,” said former city manager and child care advocate Kevin Ritchie. “There’s a huge, pent-up demand for good, quality child care, but the people who demand it and want it can’t really afford to pay for it, even fairly high-income families.”
He and others put together the Best Starts proposal to commit local tax dollars to subsidize and expand child care. They wanted to get it on the October municipal ballot, but the outgoing Juneau Assembly shot that down. New Mayor Beth Weldon put together a committee that’s taking a fresh look.
Other stories of note
- The community rebuilt Project Playground.
- Dave D’Amato worked out legal issues and has physically cleaned up several blighted downtown properties his employer owns, including a Harris Street home, the Bergmann Hotel and the site of the former Gastineau Apartments.
- The downtown emergency shelter and soup kitchen rebranded itself as the Glory Hall.
- The Lumberman tug boat is still derelict and still afloat in Gastineau Channel. Barely. State lawmakers passed legislation that might help.
- Alaska Seaplanes began offering direct Juneau-to-Whitehorse flights. They’ll resume in April.
