Clarise Larson

Former Alaska Congresswoman Mary Peltola will be in Juneau Friday evening at the Crystal Saloon bar downtown to celebrate her campaign launch for U.S. Senate. 

Last week, she announced she’s running for U.S. Senate against Republican incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan. 

Peltola, a Democrat, served both a partial and full term in the U.S. House until the 2024 election, when she narrowly lost her seat to Republican Nick Begich. She became the first Alaska Native person elected to Congress when she won the 2022 special election.

Peltola has historically seen strong support from Juneau. During the 2024 election, Peltola outpaced Begich in every Juneau precinct – even in the precincts from the Juneau International Airport to Mendenhall Valley that went for Trump, according to the Alaska Division of Elections.

Her bid for the congressional seat, if successful, would give Democrats a shot at winning a majority in the Senate.

Her meet and greet will be at the Crystal Saloon on Front Street, Friday evening from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

The Juneau Assembly is bracing for a tough budget season in the coming months. 

That’s because during last fall’s municipal election, Juneau voters approved municipal tax cuts that created a multimillion-dollar recurring hole in the city’s budget.

The city’s next fiscal year begins on July 1 of this year. Starting then — and every fiscal year moving forward — the city will face an estimated $10 to $12 million in revenue loss in its general fund. That’s due to the tax exemption on food and utilities and a cap on the city’s property tax rate that voters passed. It’s now up to the Juneau Assembly to figure out how to mend that gap. 

Earlier this week, the city released a survey asking residents to help inform the Assembly as it decides in the coming months how to move forward with the budget. Christine Woll is on the Juneau Assembly and is its finance committee chair. During KTOO’s Juneau Afternoon show on Tuesday, she said the survey is meant to be tough. 

“We want people to be a little bit in our shoes in terms of having to make hard decisions about priorities,” she said. 

The survey asks residents to pick what city programs and services are most important to fund and to pick what services to reduce funding for. The list includes programs like libraries and museums, trails and parks, and homeless services. 

The survey also asks what values they want the Assembly to prioritize, like whether to keep taxes low, continue to support local business year-round, or fund affordable housing projects. 

The survey broadly lists programs, services and values. That’s by design, said Phil Huebschen, an engagement specialist with the city’s communications department. He said the survey is meant to simplify the complexities and nuances of the city’s $478 million budget so it is digestible for everyday residents. 

“We’re trying to reposition all of this really complex data and information as really simple values information that people can understand,” he said. 

The survey also includes some budgets that the Assembly doesn’t necessarily have direct control over, like the airport and hospital, which have their own boards and operate like businesses. But, Huebschen said, the information is meant to guide the Assembly as they make decisions during the budget cycle. 

“We’re hoping that they’ll have a compass, so to speak, of what kind of areas in terms of city services, the broad public of Juneau kind of values the most, and where they’re willing to make trade-offs,” he said. 

Assembly member Woll explained that budgetary cuts aren’t the only way to mend the deficit. There are other options too, like increasing revenue using bonds, increasing sales taxes or user fees. The survey asks respondents what option they’d be comfortable seeing implemented. 

“There are lots of different ways to address revenue reductions. You can figure out other ways to increase revenue,” Woll said. 

Along with the survey, the city plans to host three community workshops and two Assembly listening sessions on the budget. The first workshop is at the Filipino Community Hall on Feb. 18, the second at the Valley Library on Feb. 24, and the third at the Douglas Library on March 3. Each workshop starts at 5:30 p.m. The city hasn’t posted details on the listening sessions yet.

The survey is open until mid-February and respondents are eligible for several prizes, like an annual city bus pass or a two-night stay at Hilda Dam Cabin. 

The city manager will release the draft city budget in March. The Assembly must finalize its budget before July 1.

Alaska’s capital city will soon have a new fire chief. 

The City and Borough of Juneau named Thomas Hatley as Capital City Fire/Rescue’s new fire chief on Friday afternoon. His first day will be Feb. 9. 

He was one of the two finalists for the position to replace longtime fire chief Rich Etheridge, who retired at the end of December after more than 15 years leading the department. 

Hatley served as the deputy chief for the Spokane Valley Fire Department in Washington until April of this year, when he left due to a family medical reason. He has more than three decades of experience in fire service, holding positions like fire chief, assistant chief and fire marshal at multiple agencies in the Northwest. 

During a public candidate presentation in Juneau in December, Hatley said he was drawn to the position because of the complexities of Juneau’s fire and emergency medical services needs. He pointed to its lack of outside support, large service area and seasonal population surges. 

Hatley said he wanted to see the department focus on resolving its staffing issues, especially by retaining the department’s employees. The Juneau Career Firefighters Union is currently at an impasse in its negotiations over a new contract with the city. Union representatives say uncompetitive wages and staffing shortages are driving people away from the department.

The annual salary listed on the city’s website for the position is between $125,944 and $161,761.

Cindy Carte, the city’s human resources manager, is currently serving as acting chief.

The Juneau School District Board of Education agreed to approve up to $180,000 dollars in funding to help pay for a new playground at the Dzantik’i Heeni campus in Lemon Creek.

During a special meeting Thursday, board members agreed to pull the money from an afterschool child care fund to match a foundation’s grant toward the project. The child care fund has previously been used for the district’s former RALLY program.  

Michelle Nakamura is a parent of two children at Montessori Borealis, which operates out of the campus. During public testimony, she said having a playground is crucial for children’s learning and advocated for the board’s approval of the funding.  

“Recesses where kids get their wiggles out and then come back to the classroom, ready to focus. Right now, our kids don’t have that,” she said. “They get a muddy field full of dog feces, and they’ve been making do for the last two school years.”

The Dzantik’i Heeni campus also houses students from Yaaḵoosgé Daakahídi High School and Juneau Community Charter School. The Montessori school serves students from preschool through middle school, and the charter school serves kindergarten through middle school.

All three programs moved into the building in 2024. It used to be a middle school until the district consolidated Juneau’s middle and high schools that year to address budget shortfalls.

Right now, there isn’t a playground on the campus, and that’s meant students have access to a dirt field at recess. Since the consolidation, parents of students at the campus have been advocating for a playground to be built there. But, settling on who and how to pay for it has become a thorny issue.

The playground’s price tag is about $1.3 million including design, materials and construction, according to the district. In September, the Juneau Assembly approved $735,000 in funding for site preparation. This fall, the school district also launched a “Buy a Brick” campaign to raise funding for the project. As of Thursday, the district has raised about $71,000.

The Benito and Frances C. Gaguine Foundation, based in Juneau, agreed to match up to $250,000 to help pay for part of the project. Altogether that gives the district just under $500,000 for play structure equipment, specifically. 

Board Vice President Ebett Siddon made the motion to approve up to $180,000 dollars in additional funding. 

“I think we all wholeheartedly support a playground at this campus, and I hope people can appreciate that,” she said. “Both the school board and the assembly wrestle a lot with many, many competing needs, and this is just trying to balance all of those needs.”

The board also agreed to seek approval from the city to free up additional funding for the project. The city plans to begin work on the playground this summer.

Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified Ebett Siddon at the board president.

Residents living in avalanche-prone downtown neighborhoods got the all-clear to return home Wednesday after the city lifted its last remaining evacuation advisory this morning. 

Mary Amor was finally preparing to leave Juneau’s emergency shelter at Centennial Hall. She’s been staying there with her brother since last Friday, when the city issued an evacuation advisory for residents in all known slide paths downtown and along Thane Road.

“I know that a snow avalanche is nothing to play with,” she said. 

Amor lives on Gastineau Avenue, which borders the city’s avalanche hazard zone and has seen multiple landslides in recent years. She evacuated with her brother because they were scared for their safety. Amor is in her 60s and is disabled. 

She said living away from her home has been stressful, but she was grateful to have a safe place to hunker down.  

“It’s much a blessing, because there ain’t nowhere else to go out except outside,” Amor said. “This is a real blessing, them helping out the people that need it, in a time of need.”

Amor was one of 13 people to stay at the shelter Tuesday night, according to Britt Tonnessen, the community disaster program manager for the American Red Cross of Alaska in Southeast. She says more than 50 people used the shelter over the six days that the risk of large avalanches loomed over downtown neighborhoods and Thane. 

“The partners that came together, I think, did a really incredible job and utilized the limited resources we have in Juneau, brought in what was needed and cared for people to the extent that we could,” she said. 

The Red Cross plans to close the shelter on Thursday morning. 

Some evacuees stayed with family or friends instead, like Carlos Cadiente and his wife. Cadiente said he returned to his home in the Behrends slide path Sunday night after looking at the remaining snow on Mount Juneau and deciding he felt safe enough.

And he said he’s glad to be back.

“Oh it’s a relief,” Cadiente said. “I’m happy that the big one didn’t come down. I mean, nobody got hurt.”

But now, he said his basement is flooding, and he thinks it’s because some of the shingles on his roof are too short to shed water away from the house.

The Behrends neighborhood evacuation advisory ended Wednesday morning, after the advisory for all other neighborhoods, including Amor’s, ended Sunday evening. 

John Bressette is an avalanche advisor at the City and Borough of Juneau. He said that the city didn’t decide to lift the evacuation advisory lightly. 

“I think people can feel good about going back to their homes,” he said. 

Concern grew again on Tuesday due to winds forecasted to reach as high as 60 miles per hour overnight. 

But Bressette said the city’s new radar system did not detect any new avalanches on Mount Juneau overnight. On Wednesday morning, drone flights showed him that previously undetected avalanches at high elevations had happened earlier on the Behrends slide path, then the rain and warm air melted a lot of the snow that would have made a large avalanche possible. 

“Overall snow levels being reduced quite a bit by all the rain, especially in the lower elevations, where avalanches have a tendency to entrain more snow. There’s just not a whole lot of snow left for that to happen,” he said. 

But Bressette said people in avalanche zones should keep ‘go’ bags packed in case conditions change. 

A Juneau-born athlete is headed to Italy next month to represent Team USA’s biathlon team in the 2026 Olympic Winter Games. 

Last month, 24-year-old Maxime Germain made the team for the event that combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting. 

This week, Germain spoke to KTOO from Germany, where he’s racing in the Biathlon World Cup. He said he’s very excited to represent Alaska, as well as the U.S., in the Olympic Winter Games. 

“There are a lot of opportunities, especially (because) our sport has never had a medal,” he said. “As a team, we’re very excited, and I’m very excited to get that opportunity this year.”

Germain was born in Juneau in 2001, but he says his family moved away after about a year. Then, after living in Hawaii and France, he returned to Juneau for another year to attend kindergarten at Sayéik: Gastineau Community School. 

“I didn’t ski when I was a little kid in Juneau because there was no snow and also I was too young,” he said. “But it made me appreciate the wild as well. I like training in the mountains and open areas like Alaska.”

He spent most of his youth in France, but returned to Alaska when he was a teenager, where he graduated from West Anchorage High School in 2019. During his time in Anchorage, he trained with the Anchorage Biathlon Club and raced for the APU Nordic Ski Center. 

“Maxime has worked really hard throughout the off season, improving his mental game and bringing an overall level up to the World Cup this year,” said Lowell Bailey, U.S. Biathlon High Performance Director, in a press release. “This showed right away at the first World Cup in Ostersund, where he proved he can be among the world’s fastest and best biathletes. Maxime will be a great addition to the U.S. Olympic team!”

Germain said he’s grateful for his time in Alaska. He said living and training in the state was pivotal for his career. He pointed to other successful skiers that have come out of the state, like Gus Schumacher, Luke Jager and Zanden McMullen.

“The Alaskan community in Nordic is awesome. Like, we’re one of the highest producers of high-end athletes in the country, especially in Nordic,” he said. 

The 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Italy begin on Feb. 6.