Adelyn Baxter

Ironman Alaska has canceled plans to hold events in Juneau over the next two years. 

Liz Perry, president and CEO of Travel Juneau, said the Ironman Alaska triathlon organizer called her to say that the decision arose from economic concerns like inflation and the potential for a recession. 

“We have not burned any bridges with them,” Perry said. “They are ever so grateful to the community of Juneau for everything that we did for them, and they want to keep that door open for the possibility of a future event.”

This summer’s Ironman event was the first of its kind in Juneau, according to Perry. About 850 athletes from around the country arrived and competed in driving rain. 

While that was fewer than the original estimate, the event did end up bringing in an estimated $8 million to the local economy between the hotels, food and other things paid for by visitors who came to town for the event. 

Housing for all the visitors was a concern leading up to the race. Some athletes also struggled to get their bikes to Juneau in time for the race, but locals stepped up to help. 

Perry said she’s disappointed about the decision, but the possibility remains for Ironman to return in the future once the economy improves. The fact that Juneau proved it can host an event of this scale also means there’s potential for similar events. 

“It kind of opens the door for us to keep an eye out for, you know, similar events. And whether they are athletic events or other kinds of events that the town has the capacity to put on,” she said. 

Travel Juneau paid $50,000 for licensing for this year’s event. Perry said they had a contract with Ironman for the 2023 and 2024 races but had not made any payments yet.

The longtime manager of the program that sets Juneau’s tourism standards is stepping down from his role as the go-between with local residents. 

At Monday’s Assembly meeting, members praised Kirby Day for his leadership of Tourism Best Management Practices — or TBMP — for the last 25 years. 

Mayor Beth Weldon read a proclamation thanking Day and acknowledging the work TBMP has done to address concerns like noise, crowds and pollution related to Juneau’s cruise ship industry and tour operators. 

Weldon said TBMP has become a model for managing cruise tourism impacts in other communities in Alaska and around the world. 

The program is paid for with cruise ship passenger fees and has a hotline where locals can leave questions and concerns. 

Day, who also served as director of shore operations for Princess Cruises while managing TBMP, thanked the Assembly and acknowledged the many meetings and conversations that have taken place to create a better relationship between the cruise industry and the community, especially as the number of tourists arriving each season has grown. 

‘We don’t solve 100% of the problems for 100% of the people 100% of the time,” he said. “But I think we’ve made an impact.”

Travel Juneau, the private nonprofit focused on promoting local tourism, will now manage TBMP. Travel Juneau’s Elizabeth Arnett will take on Day’s role coordinating between the cruise industry, the city, local tour operators and the public.

Juneau’s three state legislators will keep their seats for another term. 

Sen. Jesse Kiehl and Rep. Andi Story ran unopposed for reelection in Senate District B and House District 3, respectively. Both candidates are Democrats. 

Rep. Sara Hannan will win another term in the Alaska House of Representatives, with 78% of the vote. She ran against undeclared candidate Darrell Harmon. 

Because Hannan won more than 50% of the vote, ranked choice votes will not be tabulated in that race. 

Hannan, a Democrat, will represent District 4, which contains parts of Juneau, Haines, Skagway, Klukwan and Gustavus. 

All three of Juneau’s legislators first took office in 2019 following the 2018 election. Their new terms will begin in January.

Find more statewide election results here. 

Juneau School District Superintendent Bridget Weiss has announced that she plans to resign at the end of the school year. 

After weathering a pandemic and years of stagnant state education funding, Weiss says it felt like the right time to move on after 39 years in education. The number of school administrators resigning across the U.S. has grown considerably since the pandemic began. 

“There’s a reason why there is a lot of leadership turnover in the country,” Weiss said. “They’re just — the last years have been intense. The work is really real, to work through a pandemic.”

Weiss grew up in Juneau and graduated from Juneau-Douglas High School. She left to go to college and began her teaching career in Washington state. 

She returned to Juneau nine years ago to take a position as director of student services after a stint as the principal of North Pole High School. The Juneau school board voted unanimously to make her the superintendent in 2019. 

She was named 2022 Alaska Superintendent of the Year last fall and received recognition for her dedication to education and support for families and youth. 

Weiss announced her decision in an email to district staff on Monday. 

“I just really wanted to allow the district plenty of time to work through their processes, and try to do that as well as I could, you know, for the better of the district,” Weiss said. 

She will submit her letter of resignation to the Board of Education at its Nov. 8 meeting. After that, the board will decide how to proceed with the process of searching for her replacement. 

Weiss said she’s not certain what the future holds, but she plans to remain in Juneau.

The Alaska Federation of Natives arts and craft show returned in-person this year for the first time since 2019. 

For Indigenous artists from across the state and Outside, it represented a welcome return to the market circuit. AFN’s show is the largest of its kind in the state. 

Inside the exhibit hall at the Dena’ina Center in downtown Anchorage, hundreds of people milled around, gazing at the array of tables displaying Alaska Native and American Indian artwork. 

Jennifer Hanlon lives in Ketchikan. She’s Lingít and originally from Yakutat. She makes jewelry, selling her earrings through her business StrawBeary Boutique. 

She said she started beading while attending college in the Lower 48 as a way to feel connected to home, creating designs with blueberries, strawberries and flowers common to Southeast Alaska.

During the pandemic, she used the extra time she had stuck at home to start up again. This was her first AFN selling her work at the market. 

“It’s good to finally have an opportunity to be in-person and to just see friends and family from across the state for this beautiful gathering and just feeling reconnected to everyone during a very trying time of our collective chapter in our lives,” Hanlon said.

A steady stream of patrons kept Hanlon busy throughout the market. 

Earl Atchak is Cup’ik Eskimo from Chevak. He’s carved ivory and bone masks and dolls for 40 years. During AFN, he proudly displayed an 18-inch Mary Peltola doll with an ivory face, a kuspuk and fur-lined boots. 

“I’ve done different kinds of dolls, and every time I make a political doll, that person seems to always win,” Atchak said. 

He said he carved Sen. Lisa Murkowski in 2010 when she was running as a write-in candidate. Then he did the same thing for former Lt. Gov. Byron Mallot when he dropped out of the governor’s race in 2014 to join Bill Walker as his running mate. 

This time around, he caved to peer pressure. 

“I told these political doll stories to my friends in the steam bath. One of them said ‘you better make a Mary Peltola doll!’” he said. 

Atchak said more than 150 people had come by to take a picture of the doll on the first day of the market. Rep. Peltola herself also stopped by. 

“Hopefully it’ll go viral,” he said. 

Atchak said his business stayed afloat during the pandemic thanks to collectors, who are always interested in buying his work. Still, he hoped to make as much as $50,000 over the course of the three-day event. 

Other artists came from as far away as Arizona. Many expected to completely sell out of their stock before the final day on Saturday.

The pandemic disrupted a lot of the community activities we used to take for granted, but slowly, many of them are returning. 

Just last month, regular bingo nights started up again at the Filipino Community Hall in downtown Juneau after a two-year hiatus. 

On a recent Thursday evening, the bingo hall was buzzing. A few dozen people — mostly seniors, but not all of them — were clustered around long tables, waiting for the games to begin. 

It costs $21 to play. That gets you 13 games, or rounds, of bingo. The total payout is $5,000, but the most you can win on a single game is $1,000.  

Nan Hotch said she comes every Thursday and Sunday. She doesn’t win much, but she enjoys catching up with other regulars. 

“It’s nice to be with all the friends you can’t go see all that much anymore, so [you] get to come here and visit,” Hotch said. 

She missed that while Filipino Community, Inc. bingo was shut down. The charitable gaming operation has been going on continuously since the 1990s, according to FilComm Vice President Dante Reyes.

“We were out of our gaming operations for about two and a half years,” Reyes said. “And that’s why we lost a lot of revenue. So we’re happy that we started operating.”

That money not only keeps the lights on and the roof from leaking, but helps the organization pay for annual scholarships for students and hold cultural events. When it’s not bingo night, they rent out the hall for weddings, funerals or other events. One of the food carts by the docks uses the kitchen to prep during the summer.

The building is more than 100 years old and needs repairs and upgrades. The electronic bingo boards that hang on the walls and tell players what numbers have been called and what pattern wins each game aren’t that old, but they have their own issues. 

Cyla Garcia is the bingo manager. She said they’re hoping to replace the boards. They actually opened for a day back in June, but had to close again due to technical problems. 

“There’s still a lot of bugs and fixes that we need to figure out but hopefully, we don’t have to, we can just get a whole new system,” Garcia said. 

On a typical night, she said they see 60 to 80 patrons and make about $9,000 to $10,000 in gross sales. 

“Dividend just hit, so we’re kind of at our high peak right now,” Garcia said. “So people still have money to spend.”

The first game starts at 7 p.m. It takes about 15 minutes – and sometimes a few false alarms – before each game comes to an end. As soon as that happens, it’s on to the next one. 

One game is called the Filipino special. That’s the big payout. 

“It used to be called Italian, but it didn’t make sense to me so I changed it to Filipino,” Garcia said, laughing. 

The numbers come fast, and the winning pattern changes with each game. It’s hard to keep up for a first timer, but most veteran players have multiple cards going at once to increase their chances. 

Reyes said it’s nice to see the same faces every week again. 

“So they want to go here, have camaraderie as you can see,” he said. “And they got some storytelling about what happened during the last previous days  and telling about their grandkids, their kids or whatever they’re doing.” 

Shannon Bible sat at the end of a table with a friend, diligently marking numbers on her cards. She says she’s glad to be back, and it’s nice to have somewhere other than bars to go to socialize at night. But she said it’s not completely the same.

“It’s kind of sad, too, because a lot of people that were regulars are no longer here,” Bible said. “A lot of people that used to come here are no longer with us.”

Two-and-a-half years is a long time, especially during a global pandemic. But for now, it’s nice to have a little slice of normalcy back — and maybe a chance to win big, too.

This story is part of KTOO’s participation in the America Amplified initiative to use community engagement to inform and strengthen our journalism. America Amplified is a public media initiative funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.