• Age

    57

  • Family

    My wife, Raquel Solomon-Gross

  • Occupation

    Vice President & General Manager, Gross Alaska Inc.

  • Previous government experience or community involvement

    Board member of the Bartlett Regional Hospital; Member of the CBJ Board of Equalization; Juneau Homelessness Task Force; Board member and Vice President of Gross Alaska Inc.; Vice President of the Downtown Business Association; Board member of the Bartlett Regional Hospital Foundation; President of Glacier Valley Rotary Club; Youth Exchange officer for Glacier Valley Rotary Club; R.O.P.E.S. Mentor for Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School; Coached various youth sports programs; Secretary of PTA

  • Highest level of education

    High school diploma; professional education in crisis management, training, human resources and customer service

  • Do you support ballot proposition 1?

    No

  • Do you support ballot proposition 2?

    No

  • What new quarantine skill or hobby have you acquired over the last few months?

    I am a more avid bike rider on our trails and have been able to catch up on reading.

  • Why are you running?

    Why are you running?

    The events that have happened in the past few months demanded more from our Assembly members than at any time in the past. There is no playbook for governing during this pandemic. And even with that said, the next six months to a year the Assembly is going to have some tough choices to make. They’re gonna see things that they’ve never seen before. My experience in crisis management, operating a business and raising a family as a single parent and serving on many of our community boards and enterprise boards will give me a deep understanding of our community and how the operations of CBJ is. Myself, I’m a solution-driven person that knows how to build a consensus and I have a proven record of bringing people together to solve problems. I want to bring my perspective and skills to serve district one in the CBJ assembly.

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  • Pandemic response

    Do you think the city’s response to the pandemic has been adequate?

    We’re really not going to know what the outcome of these responses are going to be for six months to a year, two years down the line. I think the mayor’s economic stabilization task force coming into play and helping our local businesses. I think the schools have done great in responding. (Superintendent) Dr. Weiss has been wonderful. Our school board has responded very well to the pandemic. And I really believe that our hospitals were set up — you know, being a member of the Bartlett hospital board — we were ready, we were able to mobilize quickly. I think that (Capital City Fire/Rescue), our fire department and our police have been great. I believe that setting up our command center has been good. Testing needs to get better. You know, we need to keep doing testing, more and more and more. So, there’s a lot that we did really well there’s a lot that we can do more of.

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  • 2021 Cruise Season

    How should the city prepare for the 2021 cruise ship season?

    We have to be ready. Our economic base in general is based on tourism, mining, fishing and government. So, we have to make sure that our economy is ready, that our businesses are ready and they’ll be able to welcome tourists and travelers back into Juneau to help grow and make our economy. That’s going to involve cleaning up downtown, making sure our streets are ready, our businesses are up and going and our town is ready for our visitors to return.

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  • Housing and Homelessness

    What role should the Assembly play in addressing housing and homelessness issues in the city?

    We have to be an important integral part. We have to work together with the energy of our nonprofit and our businesses and everybody work together to come up with solutions on how to take care of our homelessness problem. There’s a huge mental health problem in this city, in the country, and we have to get together with the state, maybe change some local laws and make sure that we are able to take care of our people. Right now, what’s going on downtown and the homelessness — we are failing. I will make this a top priority if I get into office.

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  • Racism

    Does Juneau have a problem with racism? If so, how should the Assembly address it?

    Myself, I believe that what we need to do is we need to bring in an independent auditor that has no skin in the game in Juneau and to come in and audit our ordinances that we’ve had for the past several years and look at them and see if there’s any systematic racism within these ordinances. If there is, we need to correct them before we can go forward. I’m always a person that always wants to look going forward. But in history, if you don’t look where your mistakes happen, you’re never going to be able to fix them going forward.

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