Newscasts

In this newscast: The Juneau Assembly will vote Monday night on whether to approve $2.3 million dollars worth of city funding to support five proposed affordable housing projects; Support for grant-funded positions and teacher contracts became the main issue during the Juneau School Board’s budget public forum last week; Alaska’s state government remains in search of a solution to its long-running budget problems; Kipnuk was one of the Yukon-Kuskokwim villages hit hardest by the remnants of Typhoon Halong in October. This week, residents are starting to vote on whether they want to rebuild their community, or relocate to higher ground.

In this newscast: Nineteen people have applied to be the Juneau school district’s next superintendent, according to search firm McPherson & Jacobson; Alaska’s largest professional theater indefinitely postponed a run of its show in Anchorage this spring due to financial concerns; The Juneau Assembly will vote Monday night on whether to approve $2.3 million worth of city funding to support five proposed affordable housing projects; Alaskan Dream Cruises, a Sitka-based cruise line, is closing its doors; After proposing to build a new cabin near Juneau’s Herbert Glacier, the U.S. Forest Service released a draft decision last month abandoning it.

In this newscast: On Monday, a Juneau jazz musician canceled a show that was meant to be a part of a festival in town this week.  The show was advertised as a fundraiser for the ACLU of Alaska but the organization who planned the festival said they didn’t agree to that; The Alaska Department of Fish & Game recently euthanized a sick mountain goat that had a highly contagious viral skin infection that can transfer to humans and pets; The department learned about the goat from a Juneau resident who found it on Perseverance Trail and took it home last weekend; The Juneau Assembly is considering whether to ask voters to renew a 3% temporary sales tax and approve two multimillion-dollar bond packages on this fall’s municipal ballot; Juneau’s Crimson Bears high school football team is slated to be featured in the most-watched sporting event in the United States this weekend – the Super Bowl. 

In this newscast: The Juneau School Board will take public testimony tomorrow as it works on building out a budget; American Cruise Lines plans to expand in Alaska in the years to come. But that plan requires prized mooring space in harbors that are tight to begin with. In Haines, the company said it would pitch in to rebuild a public dock to solve that problem. Then, it backed out amid community pushback; Former Sitka state representative Jonathan Kreiss-Tompkins entered the race for governor this week; A round of vetoes by Gov. Mike Dunleavy last summer have Alaska’s construction industry on edge. Industry groups are pushing state lawmakers to quickly pass an appropriations bill that they say would unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in federal matching funds

In this newscast:  A new play “These Birds: A play inspired by death, flowers, and Farkle” opened in Juneau last week; The Ketchikan Indian Community purchased a former resort north of town with the goal of converting it into an addiction healing center, but a handful of residents in the neighborhood expressed opposition for the project at a recent borough planning commission meeting; Marlene Johnson, a Lingit civil rights leader, died last week at the age of 90

In this newscast: The North Douglas boat launch will soon reopen to the public after being closed for more than two weeks due to damage to its parking lot; As the city’s Emergency Programs Manager, Ryan O’Shaughnessy leads emergency planning, response and recovery for the City and Borough of Juneau. KTOO’s Mike Lane recently caught up with O’Shaughnessy to talk about lessons learned from the major storm events in December and January and how the department operates; The U.S. Forest Service is moving forward with a plan to harvest over five thousand acres of trees in the Tongass National Forest, just east of Ketchikan. A majority of that is going to be old-growth trees, which some people worry will be devastating to the forest.