2024 Juneau Municipal Election
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?
- What makes you a good candidate for the Juneau Assembly?
- 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?
- Do you think the Ship-Free Saturday ballot initiative will benefit Juneau residents? Why or why not? If so, how?
- 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 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?
- What do you think are the most important issues facing Juneau right now?
- School Board
- What makes you a good candidate for the Juneau school board?
- What do you think is the biggest challenge facing the Juneau School District right now?
- Last year, the district had to solve an abrupt multimillion-dollar deficit in a matter of months. Not all residents were happy with the decisions made and it prompted a recall effort this election for two of its current members. Moving forward, what role does each school board member play in ensuring that the district remains on firm financial footing?
- The school board voted to consolidate Juneau’s high schools and middle schools this past winter. And, with the uncertainty about education funding in the state and the district’s declining enrollment, do you think more school consolidation will be necessary in the future? If so, how will you tackle that situation?
- With hundreds of more students at Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé this year, issues with the lack of parking have been a hot topic. What more could the district be doing to mitigate that?
- Is student achievement where it should be in Juneau? What can the district do to improve reading and math scores as students grapple with major shifts in their school environments?
District 2 Assembly
Dorene Lorenz
Candidate for District 2 Assembly
I think it’s interesting that we have — I think it’s about $16 million sitting in the bank that’s specifically undesignated funds, and yet we’re asking our voters to go in their pockets to service this debt. Obviously, public health and safety are important things, just like schools. It’s the kind of thing that cities need to do for us because we can’t do them for ourselves. But I would really like to see us looking a little bit closer at what needs to be funded, when and how we need to fund it, instead of just relying on taxpayers.
Emily Mesch
Candidate for District 2 Assembly
I think they’re important. I think there are certain things that we need for a functioning city, and I hope the voters approve it. I think both of the initiatives will go a long way toward making lives of people in Juneau better.
Nano Brooks
Candidate for District 2 Assembly
I think they’re extremely important things for the community, directly impacting the health and safety of all the residents here. I would just like to have seen the funding come maybe from reallocated sources.
We have a lot of savings for projects that either haven’t been approved or haven’t had much forward progress. So before placing a greater burden on the people of the community, I would have liked to have seen the consideration to maybe use funds that are already available.
Mary Marks
Candidate for District 2 Assembly
The public health is, to me, a no-brainer, as well as the safety improvements because, we live here in our community, and the demands and the needs are really high for our public health, our safety improvements. We need to, as citizens, make sure that we’re safe, we’re secured, and if it’s not, then who are we supposed to turn to? Right? So I really believe that this is a good initiative that we should consider.
Maureen Hall
Candidate for District 2 Assembly
I am a vote “yes” on both our ballot initiatives – both for the water-sewer upgrades, as well as the upgrades to our EMS-type radios, and what-have-you, and phone system. I feel like it’s important to maintain the systems we have in place. My one concern – yes, I’m a vote yes – but is there money in the city budget to do this without incurring further debt? So, that is definitely something that needs to be done. But, going forward, I would want to really delve into, ‘Do we have the money to do this without incurring further debt?’
District 1 Assembly
Neil Steininger
Candidate for District 1 Assembly
Looking at the projects that they cover, the Alaska Land Mobile Radio is a pretty critical piece of infrastructure for public safety. I have some experience with that program at the state level getting funding both for tower replacements, as well as just operations for that program at state level. And I have seen how vital it is for our public safety officials. So I’m very supportive of figuring out how to fund that for the use for public safety here in Juneau. And I do understand that there’s a mix of responsibility and funding between state, local and federal sources.
The other project for wastewater, obviously, it would be great if we could have funded all those improvements through putting money away over time to pay for that maintenance. But at this point, we need to make sure we have functioning wastewater. So while issuing bond debt isn’t necessarily the ideal way, I think we need to be supporting those projects.
Connor Ulmer
Candidate for District 1 Assembly
I support both of them. I think it’s really important to make sure that the water that is going to be drunk, or people who are going to drink throughout Southeast and especially in Juneau, is healthy and good. As well as just making sure that we have everything in place to be able to respond for any emergencies that take place in Juneau. I know in our rural communities, it’s such a hard thing, but making sure that we can have proper response here in Juneau is really important.
Mayor
Beth Weldon
Candidate for Mayor
I’ll deal with them one at a time. The first one for the public safety radio infrastructure – the radio system – and this is for public safety; this isn’t for KTOO or KINY. I think this is the public safety radio system, so the repeaters, the main radios at JPD, the fire stations and all that have been in place since before I started in the fire department. I had a 20-year career and I’ve been retired since 2012, so they’re pretty ancient, and for safety reasons, and just being able to talk to other agencies – that’s really important to fix that system.
And as far as the wastewater one, we’re going to have to pay for that somehow because we need to get a clarifier building. So we either pay through it for a bond or we pay through it for user fees. And both of these bonds will not raise the mill rate; they will be underneath our bond debt service.
Angela Rodell
Candidate for Mayor
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.