• Why are you running?

    There wasn’t one particular reason, there was a kind of a confluence of reasons. … Been a resident, my wife and I moved here 39 years ago, and have been a resident ever since. Want to see our community prosper.

    The other part was, (I) had the opportunity to serve on the mayor’s public safety task force, and certainly public safety is a concern of our community. … Making sure that individuals coming out of incarceration have the resources that they need.

    And then … we’ve certainly heard a lot about recessionary times in Alaska; unemployment rate is the highest in the nation. … And I’d like to see the community grow once again, increase jobs; particularly (I) would like to focus on the 2015 economic development study that McDowell (Group) and Sheinberg (Associates) did for the CBJ, and moving some of those initiatives forward.

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  • Child care

    What's the city's role in child care accessibility?

    The only thing that I’ve come up with in the very short time I’ve been thinking about it is taking a long-term asset that is sitting fallow, perhaps CBJ land, converting it to a current asset. … For example, let’s suppose we have … some kind of daycare homestead ordinance where we convert that long-term asset, allow somebody to develop a business, potentially earning that land base. So I don’t know if that’s going to work. Certainly the devil’s in the details. …

    I am very concerned about cost of living in Juneau. … and anytime we increase taxes to pay for something … that has to be a part of the discussion. … Recognizing that we want to encourage that younger generation, those starting families, back into the community — looking for that solution to encourage that and reduce the cost is a good goal.

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  • Public safety

    How can the city better address public safety concerns, and how would you pay for it?

    Certainly the fire department and increasing their staffing levels, the current Assembly did that out of savings. Future assemblies are going to have to figure out how to do that within their current revenue resources. One of those things that I am concerned about is increasing taxes. So to do that within our current revenue stream and keeping public safety high on our list is certainly important. …

    Public safety though, particularly JPD, making sure that they have every advantage that they require, and I’m not sure I know all those advantages at this time, but one of the things we talked about on the Mayor’s public safety task force is advancements in recruitment. Is there any opportunity to work with UAS … or go down into the high school and grow our own candidates? Any kind of opportunity like that I would certainly support.

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  • Affordable housing

    Do you have any specific policy ideas for addressing affordable housing in Juneau?

    That’s a real conundrum. Affordable housing — again, because I believe there’s  a link between the cost, the overall cost of Juneau and the housing, and making sure that we don’t increase the taxes, that’s one point, but the other one would be land availability.

    One of the opportunities I think we’ve talked about for years is opening up the backside of Douglas. CBJ has land. I believe Goldbelt has land back there. It’s been one of those things that’s been on the backburner. I wouldn’t mind seen that come to the front burner and see if we can finish that project out there.

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