Juneau residents will have a chance to weigh in on what they’d like the city to prioritize during its upcoming budget process as it faces a multimillion-dollar budget hole.
The city will host the first of three public workshops on the topic on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. at the Filipino Community Hall downtown. The workshop is filled up – the city capped participation at 25 people – but people can join a waitlist.
During last fall’s municipal election, Juneau voters approved municipal tax cuts that will lower the city’s revenue by an estimated $10 to 12 million. At the upcoming workshops, city officials will break down what services are at stake. Residents will have a chance to share their thoughts and work through different scenarios to balance the budget. Those could include cuts to city services or increases in local sales taxes.
The upcoming workshops come after a city survey that asked residents to pick what city programs and services are most important to fund and to pick what services to reduce funding for. The list includes programs like libraries and museums, trails and parks, and homelessness services.
The survey also asked what residents want the Assembly to prioritize, like whether to keep taxes low, continue to support local businesses year-round, or fund affordable housing projects. The survey closed earlier this week and the results have yet to be shared with the public.
City officials say the survey and the public workshops will help inform the Assembly in the coming months as it decides how to move forward with the budget.
Two other workshops are slated in the coming weeks at the Mendenhall Valley Library on Feb. 24 and Douglas Library on March 3. Both are also full, but people can join a waitlist for potential future workshops. The Assembly will also host a listening session for the public to weigh in on the process on April 15.
