Adelyn Baxter

Juneau’s downtown homeless shelter, the Glory Hole has withdrawn its application to take over a city-owned property in the Mendenhall Valley.

In the original application, the nonprofit proposed moving its emergency shelter and care center to 9290 Hurlock Avenue. They hoped to rent out their downtown property.

Glory Hole Director Mariya Lovishchuk said in a statement that they decided to withdraw the application after examining the pros and cons and hearing feedback from neighbors of the property.

That leaves five other applicants for consideration.

The city previously leased the property to Juneau Youth Services for $1 a year for more than 50 years and has said it would enter into a similar agreement with an organization providing a needed service to the community.

The Juneau Assembly Lands and Resources Committee will hear from the applicants at their noon meeting Monday.

The committee will send its top candidates to the full Assembly later in the month.

Juneau officially has its new high school football mascot: The Thunder Bears will take the field next fall.

Students from Thunder Mountain, Yaakoosge Daakahidi and Juneau-Douglas high schools voted on the new mascot for their combined football teams on Tuesday. Thunder Bears won out over the Capital City Senators and the Orcas.

Students also selected black, silver and white as the new team colors.

The mascot and colors combine aspects of both the Juneau-Douglas Crimson Bears and the Thunder Mountain Falcons. According to District Chief of Staff Kristin Bartlett, it also applies to the new cheer squad and will be the mascot for all combined teams going forward.

The district decided to merge the teams due to high travel costs and declining roster numbers.

After initially saying the new football team would take on the name, mascot and uniform of Juneau-Douglas, Thunder Mountain students objected. They asked the school district to find a way to create a team that combined the schools instead. So it did.

A committee of students, parents and staff came up with the options for the new mascot.

The new team will still need jerseys and helmets, but should be able to use existing pants next season. Thunder Mountain head coach Randy Quinto has been named the new team’s coach.

The combined student body total of Juneau’s football program means the team also moves up a division in the state conference. The Thunder Bears will play in the Division I Railbelt Conference with Bartlett, Chugiak, Colony and Wasilla next fall.

This session, some state legislators hope to put an end to the uncertainty school districts across the state face when it comes to their budgets.

House Bill 287 and Senate Bill 131 both address K-12 school funding, but in different ways.

HB 287 would split next school year’s education budget off from the state’s main budget. It calls for about $1.3 billion from state savings.

SB 131 isn’t itself a budget bill, but a process bill. It would require the Legislature to pass a separate public education budget by April 1 each year.

Kodiak Republican Sen. Gary Stevens is sponsoring SB 131, and Homer Republican Rep. Paul Seaton is sponsoring HB 287. Seaton said they spoke with each other about their bills, but they didn’t plan them together.

“So he asked me whether that would interfere and I said, ‘No, that would be good because that’s looking at the long term,’” Seaton said. “In other words talking about future legislatures and what they will do, and this bill is looking at doing an appropriation to accomplish the goal this year while we have control of the budget.”

Wasilla Republican Rep. Cathy Tilton is critical of that approach. She said on Thursday that prioritizing education over everything else in the overall budget doesn’t seem fair.

“I think that education is a very important issue in our state, but I also think that crime has risen and public safety is also a very important issue in our state,” Tilton said. “So if you start to look at the different agencies, and we do go to the constitution, see what’s constitutionally mandated but public safety is also constitutionally mandated. So where do we decide who’s the winners, who’s the losers? Whose budget gets funded first?”

For several years when there was plenty of money in the general fund, the Legislature planned education funding several years in advance.

At the end of last school year, hundreds of pink slips went out to untenured teachers across the state. Weeks later, they were hired back when the Legislature finally resolved the budget.

Even though Juneau Superintendent Mark Miller knew he was taking a risk, he decided to put his hopes in the Legislature flat-funding education, rather than lay off teachers.

He said he does not want to have to make that choice again.

“Anything we can do to help stabilize funding for education, so that we have an idea when we budget of how much money we’re going to be able to spend, is encouraging,” he said.

The House may vote on HB 287 Wednesday when it goes to the floor for a third reading. SB 131 has been referred to the Senate Finance Committee.

KTOO and Alaska Public Media reporter Andrew Kitchenman contributed to this report.

In this newscast:

• Bethel Democrat Rep. Zach Fansler resigns from Alaska House
• and the House Community and Regional Affairs Committee heard public testimony Saturday on a bill that would allow distilleries to mix cocktails in their tasting rooms.

The House Community and Regional Affairs Committee met Saturday morning in the state Capitol to hear public testimony on House Bill 269.

The bill could settle a debate over whether distilleries can serve mixed cocktails in their tasting rooms.

Of the more than 30 people who spoke at the packed committee hearing, only three testified against the bill.

Two were members of the Alaska Cabaret, Hotel, Restaurant and Retailers Association, or CHARR, which advocates on behalf of bars.

CHARR CEO and President Pete Hanson said the organization supported distillery tasting rooms when they were first established.

“We applaud the authors of this legislation for recognizing that there are issues to be worked out with the tasting rooms at distilleries,” Hanson said. “We still support the concepts that we agreed to in 2014, when we supported that bill.”

Hanson was referring to House Bill 309, which allowed distilleries in Alaska to have tasting rooms where customers can sample products, but with limits.

They can’t have live entertainment or games and their hours of operation are restricted. They also can’t serve customers more than 3 ounces of their product a day.

One thing HB 309 did not address was whether non-alcoholic mixers could be used to make cocktails with a distillery’s product.

Rep. Chris Tuck said the new bill would clarify language from the 2014 law. The Anchorage Democrat sponsored both.

The mixed drink ambiguity led to the recent 3-1 Alaska Alcoholic Beverage Control Board decision to restrict distilleries from mixing cocktails.

Under the new regulation, they can separately provide customers with the alcohol and the mixer, but the customer must make the cocktail themselves.

That decision came despite an outpouring of public support for distillery tasting rooms in written testimony.

According to Tuck, the original law was intended to prevent distilleries from acting like bars. But he said it was never their intention to restrict cocktails.

“I mean do we want the AMCO board to be really regulating non-alcoholic drinks? Their role is alcoholic drinks,” Tuck said. “You can’t add water to Scotch. Do we really want people just taking straight shots of alcohol?”

The new regulation will take effect 30 days after being signed by Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott.

A few blocks away from the Capitol on Saturday afternoon, it’s business as usual at Amalga Distillery.

A customer perusing the menu and selected the hot cider, a drink mixed with their signature Juneauper gin.

Co-owner Brandon Howard said it has been hard to plan long term.

“We do like the current regulations,” he said. “The two-drink limit makes it so that we don’t have to deal with public inebriation, we don’t have to cut people off. People come in here for a good experience and it fosters a safe environment.”

At the hearing, Rep. Dan Saddler, Eagle River-R, asked whether allowing distilleries to use mixers will further blur the line between tasting rooms and bars.

“Was it your intent bringing this bill forward that there should not be any other further erosion in the distinction, such that your intent is that there should never be stools to sit down or extended hours or entertainment or anything else that would make a distillery that can also sell mixers into a bar?” Saddler said.

Tuck said that was correct, since they never intended for non-alcoholic mixers to come into question.

“Our intent was to allow the mixers and the AMCO Board seemed to have changed the last three years of tradition and so we’re just trying to set the record straight,” he said.

Juneau resident Kimberly Metcalfe also testified against the proposed bill and said there should be restrictions on the number of new distillery licenses in the state.

“It’s putting established bars at a severe disadvantage when distilleries are selling a cheap product at happy hour prices, and happy hours are not allowed in this state,” Metcalfe said. “A tasting room should be just that; should be a place to taste the product as-is.”

Howard said the public support has been encouraging.

“The public preference is incredibly clear,” he said after the hearing. “It becomes a vote for the will of the people and what the public wants to see. I’m cautiously optimistic.”

The Community and Regional Affairs Committee will hold another hearing on HB 269 before voting on the bill.

About 100 supporters of the University of Alaska rallied outside the state Capitol Friday to call on legislators to fully fund the state’s university system.

Gov. Bill Walker’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year flat-funds the university at $314 million, plus an additional $70 million for deferred maintenance. That’s $24 million less than the university requested.

At the rally, legislators, university faculty and students spoke about the need to fund Alaska’s public university to strengthen the state’s workforce and economy.

Rep. Adam Wool, a Fairbanks Democrat, said he supports fully funding the UA Board of Regents’ budget request of $341 million.

“And the cuts that we’ve endured, the number of people we’ve cut, the number of millions of dollars we’ve cut in the last several years is deplorable,” Wool said. “We have to stop it now. We have to reverse the trend. We have to reinvest. I’m embarrassed every time I see these numbers come out.”

Forest Haven is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Irvine studying the regulation and management of subsistence food resources in Southeast Alaska. Before that, she enrolled at UAS to get an associate degree, but with her professors’ encouragement pursued a four-year cultural anthropology degree.

“But I think what often ends up happening when you cut funding is you’re increasing class size, you’re making it harder for professors and smaller universities to offer that sort of unique kind of intimate education that is available at UAS.”

UA President Jim Johnsen was at the Capitol earlier in the week presenting a budget overview to members of the House Finance Committee.