Angela Rodell

What makes you a good candidate for the Juneau Assembly?

I think I would make a good candidate because I do have a background. I lived in this community for 13 years. I have a background in finance. I’ve worked with municipalities the entirety of my career, for the last 30-plus years, and I think we need to get back to basics and really focus on our spending priorities and what our community needs to keep our young families and our senior citizens here and make Juneau affordable.

The city is asking voters to approve adding nearly $23 million to the city’s debt for public health and safety improvements. What are your thoughts on the two ballot initiatives?

I’m concerned that we’re using debt for these two ballot initiatives simply because we have a number of reserves that we’ve held over time for various initiatives. We’ve raised taxes significantly over the last four to five years, and I’m concerned that we’re not addressing ongoing maintenance needs when they happen, but rather it seems to get to a crisis point. I do not support passing these initiatives, but rather, we should use funds on hand for these two particular initiatives.

Do you think the Ship-Free Saturday ballot initiative will benefit Juneau residents? Why or why not? If so, how?

So the Ship-Free Saturday initiative, I think, is unfortunate. We need to balance our visitor industry with the needs of our citizens. But this is the capital city, and we should be a place that’s welcoming people and ideas and creating solutions. I think the Ship-Free initiative will not be a benefit to Juneau. It’ll just continue to close down Juneau to future opportunities and give reasons for people to leave. And it’ll really cause our school system to suffer because we’ll have fewer and fewer kids because their parents won’t have opportunities.

Juneau has now experienced record-breaking glacial outburst flooding events two years in a row. What role should the city play in mitigating damage to residential property in the future?

The city needs to be at the lead, at the forefront of driving a comprehensive solution for Mendenhall Valley, taking into account all the different constituencies and ownership structures that exist out there – whether it’s the federal government, state government, the city; the city owns land along the river – and really driving the discussion, allowing people to find ways to offer their expertise.

We have a number of mining engineers, geologists, hydrologists, finance people, and really tapping into the community to allow comprehensive solutions. When we allow piecemeal solutions, I think we’re going to continue to get what we’ve gotten. So I completely support and understand why homeowners were allowed to riprap part of their riverfront property, but it’s like putting rubber bands around a water balloon and you’re just moving the river somewhere else. And so having that comprehensive solution — Juneau needs to drive that discussion; the city needs to lead on that discussion.

The city is moving forward with a redevelopment plan for the Telephone Hill neighborhood in the coming years. How should the Assembly balance the need for more affordable housing downtown with the costs the city may have to shoulder to get those requirements in place?

I think what’s interesting in this question is that you’re focused on affordable housing downtown, and I think we need to be more open to affordable housing throughout the community, and think about our transportation network and how we move people throughout the community, and not focus on one particular region as to where affordable housing should or should not be located.

I think that Telephone Hill presents an interesting opportunity for housing of all types, for people who may be empty nesters and want to downsize and maybe move out of homes that then would be affordable for families to move into.

And so I would encourage that we be really open-minded, allow developers to come with ideas as to what they think would be best, and really promote affordable housing throughout the community.

What do you think are the most important issues facing Juneau right now?

Juneau has a lot of issues facing it right now, and we need to get back to our basics, and that means making Juneau affordable and livable. Families, senior citizens, young people need to feel safe in our community. They need to know that their kids are going to have a good education and they need to know that they’re going to have opportunity.

And so, we need to focus our resources on repairing the flood, whatever form that takes. We need to get our hospital back in shape. We need to start moving transportation projects forward so that we can increase our network, our road networks, if we want to put bicycle lanes, whatever the transportation network looks like — second crossing, docks — in order to open up additional lands for development and that affordability piece, and that’s what we need to get back to.