Adelyn Baxter

The Juneau Assembly is nearing the end of its annual budget process with a notably brighter outlook than the one it started with. 

On Wednesday, the Assembly Finance Committee voted 8-1 to keep property taxes the same as last year. An earlier proposal would have raised taxes to offset the financial impacts of the pandemic. 

Finance Director Jeff Rogers said Thursday that when the budget was first introduced in April, the city faced a potential $30 to $35 million revenue shortfall and uncertainty over how much state and federal assistance it would receive. 

“Some of those items got worse, some got better,” Rogers said. “But the one thing that really did come through for the community and for the assembly was the allocation of federal CARES Act funding in the amount of $53 million.”

It’s still not completely clear what all of that money can be spent on. So for now, the Assembly has allocated only $17 million of Juneau’s CARES Act funding until it’s confident that it can use the money to replace lost revenue.

It also voted Wednesday to defer a variety of city maintenance projects for the time being, as well as the planned improvement project at the Augustus Brown Pool. 

Rogers said the Assembly could come back to some of those projects later once it has a clearer financial picture. 

“The budget process continues,” he said. “It will continue for the next many months as the assembly wrestles with how to spend federal funding, the degree to which that federal funding can replace really significant revenue shortfalls here and the degree to which they might want to go back and reverse or change decisions they’ve already made.”

The Assembly is on track to finalize the budget at its June 8 meeting, a week before the city’s June 15 deadline.

Juneau’s Lemon Creek Correctional Center is preparing for another round of testing for COVID-19.

Eleven staff members have tested positive at the facility since April. The most recent case was discovered after the state Department of Corrections tested 73 staff and 168 inmates two weeks ago. The department will now complete another phase upon recommendation from the Department of Public Health.

Chief Medical Officer for Corrections Dr. Robert Lawrence said this will actually be the facility’s third round of testing since the outbreak began.

“Each time, you know, we expect to find fewer and fewer cases, but we keep going through those rounds until there are no cases within the group of people that we are testing,” Dr. Lawrence said.

When the first cases were discovered in April, officials tested close contacts of the infected staff members. After more cases turned up earlier this month, they decided to test everyone in the facility. An additional staff member came back positive.

Lawrence said the outbreak will be considered contained once the facility goes 28 days, or two viral incubation periods, without any new cases.

That doesn’t mean they will test everyone continuously for a month. Instead, they’ll continue monitoring infected individuals in isolation and any of their close contacts in quarantine.

“The testing is really just a quick spot check in time that tells us what’s going on on that day,” Dr. Lawrence said. “But we don’t let our guard down, you know, when it comes to the remainder of that time period.”

Department officials confirmed last week that a majority of Juneau’s 31 cases of COVID-19 have been linked to the correctional center. In addition to the 11 staff members who tested positive, five household members have also contracted the disease.

No inmates have tested positive at the Juneau facility. According to Corrections spokesperson Sarah Gallagher, 44 of the roughly 200 inmates there declined testing. When asked why inmates may have opted out of testing, Lawrence said they have the right to decline medical tests and treatment for whatever reason.

Lawrence also said inmates are not charged for tests, which are sent to a state lab. It takes between one and two days for results to come back.

The Juneau Public Libraries will reopen next week with precautions in place to protect staff and patrons from COVID-19.  

Starting next Thursday, the Valley Library will open during its normal hours. The downtown and Douglas libraries will open starting next Sunday, May 31. 

Library Director Robert Barr said staff will wear masks and sanitize surfaces regularly. They’ve also rearranged furniture and have plastic shields at the check-out counters. 

“We’re basically doing the same thing that you see that you see at the grocery stores,” Barr said. 

Juneau’s public libraries closed in March when the state began hunkering down in response to COVID-19. Under Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s reopening plan, public libraries could have reopened earlier this month.

But Barr said it took some time for staff to figure out a plan to reopen safely. Part of that involves closing each building for 72 hours per week to allow for “viral deactivation.” 

That’s why they’ve staggered when libraries are open. For now, the Valley library will open Wednesday through Saturday, and the Douglas and downtown libraries Sunday through Wednesday.

“We did it that way so that one of our larger libraries downtown or the valley would always be open seven days a week,” Barr said. 

Even while closed, staff at Juneau’s libraries stayed busy delivering books by mail. Barr said some staff were reassigned to the city’s Emergency Operations Center to help with pandemic response, and a few will continue splitting their time that way. 

Library patrons will have to maintain social distance inside the buildings and are also encouraged to wear masks, except for children under two. In-person programming like storytime is suspended for now. 

Fourth of July festivities won’t be happening in Douglas this year.

On Tuesday, the Douglas Fourth of July Committee announced it had canceled the annual parade and celebration — including beloved events like the fire hose race and the soap box derby — in response to public safety concerns from COVID-19.

As of last week, the committee was still planning to hold the event, but wrote on Facebook that it was closely monitoring state and local health mandates.

“They were making plans hopefully having the parade, but being realistic that they will probably be canceled,”said Mayor Beth Weldon.

When the Juneau Assembly discussed the matter at its meeting Monday, assembly members agreed that a parade was not advisable with social distancing guidelines. Weldon said the city reached out to the committee Tuesday to let them know.

Juneau’s downtown Fourth of July parade is organized by a separate group. It was canceled back in March, in part due to ongoing construction along Egan Drive this summer.

As for the capital city’s annual fireworks show, that too was discussed by the assembly on Monday.

Weldon said the city is still deciding whether the show can go on.

“We’re open to suggestions … if people can think of ways that we can do the fireworks, or a place to do the fireworks that people can see them in their cars or something like that,” she said.

The fireworks need to be ordered soon, but could be kept in storage until next year if this year’s show is canceled. The annual July 3 display is organized by the volunteer-run Juneau Festival Association.

Brett McCurley typically puts on popular amateur fireworks shows on Sandy Beach for the Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve.

He ran into some trouble with the city over local and state code for fireworks last year leading up to the Fourth of July, only to have private fireworks displays banned by the state. But he still did the annual New Year’s Eve show this past winter.

He said he thinks having people watch the show from their cars could work.

“I mean there’s multiple places where you can go and have enough people park and stay in their cars and watch the show,” McCurley said.

It might be best to have two separate shows — one downtown and one in the Valley — to allow plenty of space for parking.

If the city wants to talk, he said all they have to do is give him a call.

Sixteen of Juneau’s 30 confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been traced to Lemon Creek Correctional Center.

On Monday, state officials spoke to the Juneau Assembly about what’s being done to control the outbreak at the facility.

During the meeting, Alaska Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anne Zink pointed out that the cluster of cases didn’t start in Lemon Creek Correctional Center, they came from the community.

“So these are really more community cases than they are [Department of Corrections] cases,”  Zink said. “Because they are people within the community who just happen to work at (the) Department of Corrections facility, rather than really an outbreak within the corrections facility itself.”

Yet since last month, 11 staff members and five of their household members have tested positive for COVID-19, meaning most of Juneau’s cases are directly associated with the facility.

Department officials say it all likely started with one staff member who brought the virus to work.

Last week, the state decided to test all inmates and staff. Another 63 employees were tested and one additional positive case among staff was announced on Sunday.

According to Department of Corrections spokesperson Sarah Gallagher, 165 inmates were tested and 44 declined. All of those tests have since come back negative, except for one that was still pending Tuesday afternoon.

Juneau Mayor Beth Weldon said she appreciated the information and feels confident in the department’s response.

But she has heard concerns from the community about the lack of information shared publicly about the cases. Sharing that information could run afoul of federal privacy laws.

“It’s frustrating for all of us sometimes that we don’t get the information we want, (but) there are laws keeping them from giving the information,” Weldon said on Tuesday.

Daryl Webster is the facility’s assistant superintendent. He told the Assembly that they understand people in the community would like to know where individuals who tested positive have been recently and who they came into contact with, but medical privacy laws like HIPAA prevent them from sharing too much.

“So we try to provide as much information as we can that is relevant,” Webster said. “We understand people have a need to know and so within the restrictions placed upon us, we try to do that. If there’s a way to do that better, we’ll certainly look at it.”

Webster said each time someone tests positive, any of their close contacts at work must stay home too while they wait for test results.

That put a lot of staff out of commission over the last month.

“It was only people coming in on their days off and spending several of their days off each week working that allowed us to continue to operate without having to call in assistance from outside of the institution,” Webster said.

Some Assembly members wanted to know whether the department will continue testing asymptomatic people in the facility going forward.

Dr. Robert Lawrence, the chief medical officer for the Department of Corrections, said they’re looking to the Centers for Disease Control and medical partners for guidance on that.

“We do not right now test asymptomatic individuals upon departing the facility, nor do we test asymptomatic individuals during intake at this time,” Lawrence said. “That’s something that we are looking at in the near future.”

Lawrence said there would need to be a 28-day period with no additional cases for the outbreak to be considered contained.

The state announced Tuesday that an inmate at the Anchorage Correctional Complex tested positive for COVID-19, making them the second inmate in the Alaska to test positive.

Individuals experiencing homelessness in Juneau can get tested for COVID-19 this week. 

The City and Borough of Juneau and its partners will have mobile testing tents in the parking lot of the Juneau Arts and Culture Center, or JACC, Tuesday and Wednesday from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Staff from Bartlett Regional Hospital and Capital City Fire/Rescue will take the samples. Lab results are expected by Friday or Saturday evening. 

City Housing Officer Scott Ciambor said staff at the cold weather shelter inside the JACC and other service providers will help get the word out to the homeless population.

“Since it’s been operating for, I guess, almost two months now, things have been pretty consistent and stable, and the general population kind of knows where the resources are,” Ciambor said. 

The shelter was originally scheduled to close last month, but the city extended its contract with St. Vincent de Paul Society to run the shelter until July. It’s open from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. 

Service providers first raised concerns about the potential for COVID-19 to spread among the homeless in March. Since then, homeless individuals with any symptoms of COVID-19 have been referred to medical personnel for testing. Ciambor said no tests have come back positive.

Anyone with symptoms this week will go to the city quarantine facility at Centennial Hall until their results come back. The building will be divided into separate areas — quarantine for those awaiting results and medical isolation for anyone who tests positive. 

About 50 to 60 people stay in the cold weather shelter each night. Ciambor said they have seen a slight increase in overnight guests at the shelter lately, despite the recent opening of the new Mill campground. 

Other Juneau residents who want to get tested for COVID-19 should call the city hotline, 586-6000, to schedule an appointment at the city’s drive-up testing site.