Casey Kelly

Yesterday’s windy weather put Alaska Electric Light & Power’s system to the test.

Company spokeswoman Deb Ferreira says despite mitigation efforts, power outages are an unavoidable fact of life in Juneau.

“We did a lot of tree clearing over the summer and we have redundancy in our lines that allows us to reroute and do some switching so that we can get power restored without having to repair the damage right away. So there are things that we are doing, but Mother Nature is Mother Nature,” Ferreira says.

Approximately 8:15 last night (Tuesday), a large tree fell on two power lines and a distribution line along Channel Vista Drive, putting the entire city and borough in the dark.

Ferreira says crews cleared the tree and power was restored in stages, with all parts of the borough back on by 9:35 p.m. The tree did not damage any equipment.

The area wide outage followed isolated blackouts throughout town during the day. Parts of downtown and all of Douglas were without power for less than an hour yesterday afternoon, after a tree fell on a power line out Thane Road.

Ferreira says the utility temporarily rerouted power from other parts of the system, while a crew repaired the damaged line. That outage occurred at about 12:15, and power was restored by 1 p.m. About 3,600 customers were affected.

A short time later at about 1:40 a second outage affected parts of downtown again, as well as Salmon Creek and Lemon Creek. Ferreira says it was caused by a tree branch that hit a power line. Crews were able to restore power from that outage just after 2 p.m. It affected about 1,400 customers.

Yesterday’s peak wind gust at the Juneau Airport was clocked at 53 miles per hour. There were also sustained winds of 20 to 30 miles per hour throughout the day.

The U.S. Forest Service is considering a new timber sale on Kupreanof Island, west of Petersburg. In October, the agency released a draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Tonka Timber Sale, which could provide up to 53-million board feet of timber to area sawmills. The logging could also fund some second growth thinning and fish habitat work. Joe Viechnicki reports.

The City and Borough of Juneau will file an annexation petition with the state’s Local Boundary Commission tomorrow (Wednesday), seeking to incorporate roughly 1,952 square miles of unorganized land south of the current CBJ boundary.

The assembly voted 7 to 1 last night (Monday) in favor of an ordinance authorizing the petition. The dissenting vote was cast by new member Jesse Kiehl, who questioned the timing of the move.

Juneau is filing its annexation petition in response to the City of Petersburg, which wants to form a borough that includes the area in question. CBJ officials say the land most appropriately belongs with Juneau, pointing to model borough boundaries developed by the state more than 20 years ago that identified it for annexation to the Capital City.

During discussion on the matter, Kiehl asked City Attorney John Hartle why the sudden rush to annex it now.

“I suppose it was the manager’s and the mayor’s political judgment that if Juneau didn’t do something, then the Local Boundary Commission would near by default place those lands into the proposed Petersburg borough,” said Hartle.

Kiehl also questioned City Manager Rod Swope about what affect annexing the largely undeveloped and unpopulated area would have on Juneau’s budget. Swope said right now it would be negligible.

“At this point in time costs are minimal to virtually nonexistent,” Swope said. “And until which time there is actually any kind of significant development in that area, there would not be costs to us.”

Kiehl said he voted no on the ordinance because he didn’t think Petersburg’s move to incorporate the land was sufficient reason to trigger annexation by Juneau.

“If we had a very strong interest in these lands, we would have done better to be the first to file for them before the boundary commission, rather than to do so in response to one of our neighbors,” said Kiehl.

Last week Juneau filed a responsive brief to Petersburg’s petition to form a borough with the Local Boundary Commission. The brief doesn’t argue against the proposed borough, but says the disputed area has more administrative ties to Juneau than Petersburg.

Both communities will be able to make more arguments before that matter is settled, both in writing and at hearings before the boundary commission.

Assemblyman Randy Wanamaker was recused from last night’s discussion and vote on the annexation petition due to a conflict of interest.

Wanamaker is on the board of directors for Juneau Native Corporation Goldbelt. The company owns 30-thousand acres at Hobart Bay, in the area being contested by Juneau and Petersburg.

Goldbelt Vice President Derek Duncan reiterated the company’s desire to have the land remain unincorporated for now. But he said it could make its borough preference known soon.

“We will take into consideration how a borough government will affect the development of our economic opportunities at Hobart Bay. We will also continue to weigh what borough option is best politically for Goldbelt in the future,” said Duncan.

Sealaska, the regional Native Corporation for Southeast Alaska, owns about 20-thousand acres of subsurface mining rights in the same area as Goldbelt’s Hobart Bay land. But Sealaska officials say they’ll follow Goldbelt’s lead on expressing a borough preference.

The entire contested area consists of everything from the southern CBJ boundary, as far south as Cape Fanshaw and east to the Canadian border.

The Juneau Assembly will undertake an expedited search for a new city manager to replace the retiring Rod Swope.

At its Committee of the Whole meeting last night (Monday), the assembly decided to only advertise the position in Alaska, and set the deadline for applications for December 1st – one month from today. The assembly will then take two weeks to narrow the list of applicants down to a top five. Interviews will take place in January, with the goal of offering the job to the chosen candidate on January 30th.

Mayor Bruce Botelho said the timeline should be manageable.

“I don’t think we’re going to be overwhelmed if we keep to our decision to recruit only within the state,” Botelho said.

The assembly also decided on a salary range of 135-thousand to 150-thousand dollars. That’s at the low end of what municipal managers typically make in Alaska.

Swope first retired almost three years ago. But when the initial search fizzled, the assembly asked him to come back on a two-year contract, which was due to end yesterday. Last month, Swope agreed to stay on through March 31st, when he says he’ll retire for good.

Deputy Manager Kim Kiefer has expressed interest in the position. She was interim manager during Swope’s sabbatical.

City Manager and City Attorney are the only positions hired by the assembly.

For the first time ever next summer, Hoonah will have more cruise ship visitors than Sitka.

Fred Reeder, with the Cruise Line Agencies of Alaska, told the Sitka Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday (10-26-11), that the Icy Straits Point cruise destination was reaping the benefits of sustained marketing, at the expense of Sitka.

“Like it or not, other communities are out stealing your cruise ship passengers right now. Icy Straits Point (Hoonah), they’ve been sending delegations to Miami and Seattle for the last six years. Who are they taking it from? They’re taking it from you.”

Sitka and Hoonah had comparable cruise visits this season, but next year Sitka will drop to 116,000 and Hoonah will go up to 140,000. Reeder encouraged the city of Sitka to improve its marketing, but conceded that geography favored the port closest to Juneau.

“The issues and the challenges facing Sitka are that we’re on the outside of Baranof, and it’s far easier to pull into Hoonah on the Inside Passage than it is to come around to Sitka because of the cost of fuel. Whatever we do, we have to be out there and make Sitka as attractive as we can.”

Reeder argued that cruise ship visitation represented real revenue for the community. He said that the city finance department traditionally budgeted about $5 in sales tax revenue per cruise visitor. Peaking in 2008 at 289,000 passengers, cruise ship visitation represented almost $1-and-a-half million dollars in sales tax revenue. In 2010, that figure will be closer to $500,000.

Reeder framed his remarks in an overall presentation on the efforts by the Alaska Travel Industry Association to reinvigorate statewide travel marketing. Reeder played four television spots aimed at Alaska’s so-called “primary market”: College-educated visitors with no children at home, 45 to 65 years of age, who earn over $75,000 a year. Based on research, the spots all touch on Alaska’s main selling points: mountains, glaciers, and wildlife.

Reeder, who until recently sat on the board of the ATIA, said the organization hoped to maintain a $20-million dollar annual budget for marketing, with the goal of building awareness of Alaska on a par with other major destinations like Disneyland, Los Vegas, California, and Hawaii.

Reeder said focus groups had responded positively to the ad campaign. Many people said the ads helped them see the state as something other than remote, cold, and snowy.

That said Reeder, was a major goal.

“What we have to do as a state is convince them that it really isn’t that big of a deal. That it’s easy to get here. That it’s an easy one to check off your bucket list.”

The return on investment is huge, Reeder said. The one national visitor industry statistic in which Alaska leads is visitor spending – almost $3,000 per person, not including travel costs. According to ATIA data, only Hawaii comes anywhere close in visitor spending, at $2,700 per person. The average for the rest of the 48 states is only $645.

The Juneau School District has racked up more than 2-million dollars in energy savings since implementing a conservation program in 2007.

Energy Education Specialist Adrianne Schwartz tracks energy consumption for the district, and works with staff to reduce costs by following energy efficiency guidelines.

“And how I do that is I send out information letting everybody know what those guidelines are, and then I check buildings on a regular basis to make sure that those guidelines are being followed,” says Schwartz. “And the maintenance department actually plays a huge role in the program, because they’re dealing with all of our ventilation systems and heating equipment and all of those kinds of things behind the scenes.”

The guidelines were written with the help of Energy Education – a company that helps school districts, college campuses, and other institutions implement conservation measures.

In the four years since the district implemented them, Schwartz says Juneau schools have saved more than $2,063,000. That’s great news to school board President Sally Saddler.

“As you know we’ve been cutting our budget. We ended up cutting $4-million from our operating budget last year and we’re mostly likely looking at cuts again this year,” says Saddler. “So, you hear people say so often it’s time to work smarter, and I think this is a great example of the people in the school district who are working smarter.”

Schwartz, who took over the Energy Education Specialist job from Joyce Kitka this summer, says her goal for the future is to do more outreach to students.

“I started sending out a monthly newsletter, and I am including links to energy conservation curriculum. And I’ve had a few teachers ask me for information about that. I also had a high school group ask if I could come meet with them. So, I’m hoping that more and more of it gets into the classroom,” Schwartz says.

Energy Education, the company that helped implement the conservation plan, is no longer on contract. But it continues to offer free support to the district.