Voters rejected a proposed tax on plastic shopping bags, as well as a Juneau Assembly proposal to opt out of state financial disclosure reporting rules for public officials. Two school bond measures passed, as did an extension of the CBJ’s temporary three-percent sales tax.
Jesse Kiehl and Randy Wanamaker won seats on the CBJ Assembly. A third race is too close to call, with Carlton Smith holding a 53 vote lead over Loren Jones for an area wide seat, and Geny Del Rosario in distant third place.
An unidentified flying object over Juneau Sunday night had one Douglas couple rubbing their eyes in disbelief.
At about 10 p.m., Matt Culbreth and his wife were watching TV, when they glanced out their living room windows overlooking Gastineau Channel in time to see, “A large greenish blue fireball come down from the sky, and disappear behind Mt. Roberts.”
Culbreth says the object was too big to be a flare, and way bigger than any other shooting star he’s ever seen. It was in the air for a few seconds before disappearing, and both he and his wife were surprised that it didn’t make any noise.
“Definitely coming down to Earth, though. It wasn’t something really high in the atmosphere,” he says.
Steve Kocsis, a volunteer with Juneau’s Marie Drake Planetarium, says the Culbreths most likely saw a meteor. That’s a fiery streak of light that occurs when mineral objects from space hit Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrate. Shooting stars are meteors, but Kocsis says some look bigger than others.
“They’re called a bolide the brighter ones, and they’ll actually leave kind of like a smoky trail that will change shape from high altitude winds, just like jet vapor trails. And the really close ones, people will actually hear them. There will be a sonic boom,” says Kocsis.
He says it’s not unusual to see one, even in Juneau.
“The main unusual part is to have a clear night to actually see the meteor, but it’s not unusual to see random events,” Kocsis says.
Most meteors burn up completely when they hit the atmosphere, but if part of one falls to Earth it’s called a meteorite. Kocsis says it’s possible to triangulate the location of a meteorite, if it’s seen falling from more than one vantage point.
In January 2000, several Juneau residents saw a falling meteorite that was later found in fragments near frozen Tagish Lake in the Yukon Territory.
“A local there at Atlin was able to go out on the ice and recover it while it was still warm, and he had the foresight to send it to one of the museums,” says Kocsis. “Turned out to be a very rare one, one with organic chemicals in it.”
Matt Culbreth says his wife posted about Sunday’s celestial event on Facebook, but so far they appear to be the only ones who witnessed it. He’s hopeful that with a little publicity, maybe others will step forward.
“I hope so. I hope there was at least a few other people out there that had seen it. I don’t know how you could miss it if you were facing that direction at that time of night. It was just an amazing event,” Culbreth says.
For those who aren’t lucky enough to see a random shooting star, there are two big meteor showers every year – the Perseids in August and the Leonids in November. If the weather cooperates, you might even be able to see them in Juneau.
The U.S. Justice Department has awarded the Tlingit and Haida Central Council nearly 900-thousand dollars to expand tribal court services.
Currently, the court hears paternity and child support cases involving tribal members. Attorney Jessie Archibald with Tlingit and Haida’s Child Support Unit says the grant will eventually allow the court to hear domestic violence cases.
“The goal is to give them a culturally appropriate forum to seek a restraining order, and to have our tribal court enter that order and to have the State of Alaska work with us in partnership to enter that order into the state system and assist in providing enforcement, to keep families safe,” says Archibald.
The Central Council was one of 20 Alaska Native organizations to receive a grant under the Justice Department’s Coordinated Tribal Assistance program this year.
Archibald says the council’s Judiciary Committee will use the money to develop codes governing family violence cases, and work on a cooperative justice agreement with the State of Alaska. Funds will also be used to update court computers and develop a video conferencing system.
Eddie Brakes, Manager of Tlingit and Haida’s Tribal Child Support Unit, says the goal is to offer a more “holistic” approach to tribal member victims of domestic abuse.
“The ultimate goal is to provide an alternate venue to the state court system in tribal communities – less adversarial, more family-based, and crafted with the unique values of the tribal citizenry in mind,” says Brakes.
The Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska is the sovereign tribal government for more than 27-thousand Tlingit and Haida Indians worldwide. Its judicial branch includes three elected judges and a magistrate.
Earlier this year, the Alaska Supreme Court recognized tribal court authority in child welfare cases in its decision in the case State of Alaska vs. Native Village of Tanana.
The old Basin Road trestle bridge will be rebuilt this winter.
Basin Road will be closed to vehicle traffic beginning Saturday (Oct. 1).
Pedestrians will still be able to access the popular area until October 26th. After that, access will be limited to certain hours, according to Larry Gamez, of Silver Bow Construction.
“Pedestrian access will be available across the bridge only between 12 and 1 p.m., that’s lunch, and 5 p.m. to 7 a.m.” Gamez says. “The Perseverance Trail systems will be accessible from the end of Evergreen Avenue via Flume Trail.”
The work is to be completed by mid-April.
Basin Road is the primary access to Last Chance Basin, Juneau’s water supply.
State Transportation Project Engineer John Kajdan says the old wooden bridge needs substantial reconstruction. A number of the old timbers are rotting and will be replaced.
The repair includes replacing the deck, updating the guard rail and much of the support structure under the bridge.
He says the Silver Bow Construction crews will work “bent-by-bent.”
“A bent consists of the timber columns and then the cap beam that sits on top of the column and supports the stringers which run lengthwise along the bridge and support the deck panels,” Kajdan says. “So they’ll pull up the deck and replace any stringers that have deteriorated and also be able to access the vertical columns, the diagonal cross bracing, and the horizontal cap beam that sits on top of the columns.”
The project will cost about $1.256 million, to be paid for by federal funds.
While the original Basin Road Trestle was built in 1936 during the AJ mining days, it’s been rebuilt a number of times since.
For a map of how to access the Perseverance Trail system, click here.
School board president Sally Saddler is running unopposed for reelection. (Photo by Casey Kelly/KTOO)
At next Tuesday’s municipal election, Sally Saddler’s name will be the only one on the ballot for School Board. First elected three years ago, Saddler is the current board president and chair of the budget committee. She’d like to think that running unopposed shows the community is happy with the education system, but says there’s more work to do to create a world-class school district in Juneau.
Saddler isn’t the type to lack energy. A couple years ago, after a lifetime of playing basketball and soccer, she quit both sports and picked up another one.
“Gave it all up for hockey,” she says.
Yep. Juneau’s school board president is a fast skatin’, stick totin’, hip checkin’ hockey player.
“I was a hockey widow for many years, and now I’ve decided if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” she says.
Saddler worked for the state for more than 30 years with three departments – Labor, Education, and Commerce – and raised two kids who graduated from Juneau-Douglas High School. Now retired, she has ample opportunity to pursue hockey and her many other interests. But a portion of her life is dedicated to the school board.
“Tongue in cheek my husband said I was going to quit working for money and go to work for free, and it seems that he’s actually been proven correct in that respect,” Saddler says.
And in a way, being on the board is an extension of Saddler’s career, much of which focused on helping students transition to the workforce and training adults for new opportunities. She gives high marks to the Juneau School District’s “career pathways” program, which encourages students to follow their passions – both in the classroom, and outside it.
“Jocks and docs is kind of a colloquial expression, but it’s for those students who may be interested in health care opportunities,” she explains. “So, we have many connections with the hospital, with the university here in Juneau that enable our students to learn in the context of perhaps some occupational interests they may have.”
Juneau’s on-time graduation rate was 71.5 percent last school year. Saddler says that leaves plenty of room for improvement, and the board recently raised the number of credits that will be required for graduation, starting with this year’s freshman class.
“We kept a balance so that those students who may be engaged through the more career tech, hands on kinds of programs didn’t feel disenfranchised,” Saddler says.
In addition to being board president, Saddler chaired the budget committee this past year, when revenue decreases forced the district to cut 4.1-million from the nearly 90-million dollar budget. She says the cuts were balanced in a variety of ways.
“We raised the classroom size from grades three on up, holding the kindergarten through second grade harmless, thinking that it’s important for those teachers to have smaller class sizes to work with those students,” says Saddler. “There were some cuts in the arts, there were cuts to science, nobody was singled out.”
Looking ahead to her next three-year term, Saddler believes the district is moving in the right direction. She points to the strategic plan, developed during her first term, and its goal of making Juneau a world-class school district by focusing on four areas.
“First of those is improving student achievement; second is investing in our faculty and our staff, making sure we have strong professional development; third is, making those connections with the community, getting out and helping our students build those bridges and connections; and then last, and certainly not least, is learning to operate our administration in an efficient and economic manner,” she says.
Saddler is running unopposed for one of two open seats on the school board. Nobody filed to run for the other seat, but Sean O’Brien is running a write-in campaign.
Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski says reducing the high cost of energy is the best way to promote economic growth in the state.
But she says the new focus on spending cuts in Washington, D.C. will mean less federal money to help build Alaska’s energy infrastructure.
“Federal support for R & D will continue,” Murkowski says. “But funding to actually help build out the facilities – like the government did when APA built the Snettisham and built the Eklutna hydroelectric projects – not going to come as easily as it has in the past.”
She suggested the State of Alaska, which currently enjoys a budget surplus thanks to oil tax revenues, could make up for some of the decline in federal spending. She also urged private industry to invest in Alaska energy projects.
“The private sector is working on a lot of new technologies that will need to be demonstrated on a smaller scale before expanding into larger markets. So we can be viewed as an opportunity for them,” says Murkowski. “I’ve always said, let us be the pilot projects up here in Alaska. If we can make it pencil out here where our energy costs are higher than anywhere in the country, think about what that demonstrates for the success of the project.”
The seventh annual Rural Energy Conference is going on through Thursday at Juneau’s Centennial Hall.
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