The head of Alaska’s court system is set to deliver the annual State of the Judiciary Address from the Capitol in Juneau at 11 a.m. Wednesday.
The Alaska Legislature has a tradition of inviting the Alaska Supreme Court’s chief justice to deliver an address each year during the session. This will be Chief Justice Peter Maassen’s first. He was appointed to the court in 2012 and became chief justice last year.
You can watch live Gavel Alaska coverage here and on KTOO 360TV, or listen on 104.3 FM.
Bishop was found alive and apparently uninjured in the building’s attic on Monday. Alaska State Troopers said it wasn’t clear how he got there.
Juneau police have issued a silver alert for a man who was reported missing Saturday from Riverview Senior Living on Clinton Drive.
In a Sunday news release, police said Nathan Wilder Bishop, 58, has Parkinson’s disease and dementia and, if tired, could sit or lie down instead of asking for help.
The release described Bishop as a white male around six feet tall and 200 pounds. He wears glasses and could be wearing a brown t-shirt and grey pants, but no coat.
Bishop was last seen at 5 p.m. on Saturday. That night, first responders and volunteers searched the area where he went missing without finding him.
Anyone who wants to help with the search should check in at the command center in the senior living center’s parking lot.
Police are also asking people who live within two miles of the senior center to check their property and their surveillance cameras for any sign of Bishop.
If you have information about Bishop, please call the Juneau Police Department at (907) 586-0600.
In Juneau’s latest vote count, two incumbent Assembly candidates extended their already large leads, while the race for two areawide seats tightened slightly. Friday’s update did not change the status of any of the races.
Wednesday morning’s initial count showed voters opposing the $27 million bond proposal for a new city hall, but only by 112 votes. That margin has now grown to 394 votes — 3,395 for and 3,789 against.
The incumbent candidates for Juneau Assembly Districts 1 and 2 were both well ahead of their challengers in the initial count, and the update showed the gaps widening.
In the District 1 race, Alicia Hughes-Skandijs’ lead over Joe Geldhof grew from 839 to 1,226 votes. In the District 2 race, Christine Woll’s lead over David Morris has grown from 1,391 to 2,019 votes.
The areawide race, where 10 candidates are vying for two Assembly seats, got slightly closer. Paul Kelly (2,731 votes) and Ella Adkison (2,360 votes) still lead, but Adkison’s margin over Nathaniel “Nano” Brooks (2,179) shrank by 28 votes.
In the race for two open school board seats, David Noon (4,558 votes) and Britteny Cioni-Haywood (4,267) both extended their large leads over Paige Sipniewski (2,372 votes).
Friday’s update included 2,189 votes counted since the first results were released early Wednesday morning. So far, officials have counted 7,387 ballots.
In last year’s municipal election, 9,137 people voted.
Election officials will post updated results a few times until they’re certified on Oct. 17.
The pilot of a small plane was seriously injured Sunday after crashing near Excursion Inlet, about 35 miles northwest of Juneau.
Coast Guard personnel responded after getting an alert from the plane’s emergency locator transmitter at 5:31 p.m. Sunday, according to a news release from the U.S. Coast Guard.
The crew of an Air Station Sitka MH-60 Jayhawk found the wrecked, single-engine plane about an hour and a half later and extracted the sole occupant, who was in critical condition.
The injured person was brought back to the Juneau airport and transferred to emergency medical services there.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
A small landslide on Starr Hill in Juneau on Saturday night led to evacuations and a warning from city officials for others who might be at risk.
In a Facebook post, Capital City Fire and Rescue said the landslide started above 429 Nelson Street. No one was hurt in the slide, but one house was affected. Reached by phone on Sunday morning, fire department staff could not say how badly damaged the house was.
The fire department’s post said several homes near the slide were evacuated on Saturday night “as a precaution until the rain lets up.”
On Sunday, Red Cross of Alaska spokesperson Taylar Sausen said the organization had served five people from two families who had evacuated from their homes after the slide.
Tom Mattice, the city’s emergency program manager, said Sunday that there still could be some danger as the weekend’s rainstorm tapers off.
“The risk will decrease as slopes stabilize,” he said. “But there is still some risk from saturated slopes.”
A news release from the city said residents who live in landslide-prone areas should “consider making alternative housing plans and/or preparing a go-bag in case of a need to evacuate” as the weekend’s drenching rains continue.
On Friday, the city also warned residents to stay away from Juneau’s “already unstable river banks” during this weekend’s storm.
The National Weather Service’s forecast is calling for more rain through the week, with a weaker system moving in behind this one.
Stephanie Roth, 41, realized just how much her financial situation had deteriorated when she was signing up to bring a dish to the Valentine’s Day party at her kids’ daycare.
“I used to always be a mom who would sign up for the main stuff like the sandwiches,” she says. “You know, the big, expensive things.”
Before the pandemic, Roth was in a good financial situation. She could bring the sandwiches, the soda and the cupcakes. But last month, she realized that was no longer the case.
“I was literally looking at the list thinking, ‘What has inflation not messed with?’ And I signed up for bananas, because they’re still 59 cents a pound.”
Roth has three children, ages 2, 4 and 6 and lives in Lebanon, Tennessee, just outside of Nashville.
She has a full time job as an administrative medical assistant, helping adults with disabilities get services. She had never really had debt and had always been good with money. But during the pandemic, Roth went through a divorce and her finances and lifestyle changed dramatically.
Roth took full custody of her children and became the main support for her children. That was a stretch on a salary of about $40,000 a year. Especially considering the cost of daycare. “It’s like $1,500 a month,” she says. “That’s half my paycheck right there.”
Between childcare and the rising price of gas, food and clothes, Roth feels like her paycheck is spent before she takes it home… or more than spent.
“The cell phone bill came up due and I didn’t have the money in my checking account,” she recalls. “So I had to pay with my credit card.”
Roth started leaning on her credit card to pick up the extra expenses her paycheck couldn’t cover. Her balances started to grow. At the same time, her credit card company was raising interest rates: from about 15% in 2019, to more than 22%.
Millennials like Roth have seen their debt rise by nearly 30% since before the pandemic, to about $3.8 trillion. What’s so strange about this is that back in 2021, that debt had fallen to near-record lows.
“We saw Americans across the income stream save a lot of money. I mean a lot of money,” says Jill Schlesinger, CBS news business analyst and author of The Great Money Reset.
Schlesinger says stimulus checks, lockdown and pay raises had people in really strong financial shape, with the highest personal savings rate on record. “But then 2022 starts and inflation doesn’t go down,” says Schlesinger. “And then we saw many people plow through those pandemic era savings, left with nothing.”
Schlesinger says the rising price of basics, like food, gas and clothing, have landed millions of Americans in real financial distress. “For a lot of people, this is not, ‘I’m going out and buying something fancy,'” she says. “Things are more expensive and just to keep up with where you were last year, you have to pay a lot more.”
Stephanie Roth watched her debt balloon, along with her minimum payments. On top of that, unexpected expenses started to spiral, like when her daughter fell and needed two stitches on her chin at the emergency room. That cost her $800.
Roth’s credit card debt seemed to explode, from a few thousand dollars to more than $10,000 and now it’s about $25,000.
“Sometimes it feels very heavy, like crushing,” says Roth. “I just think, ‘I’m gonna have to pay this back and I don’t know how that’s gonna happen. If I do just the minimum payments, I’ll be like 300 when it’s paid off.'”
Credit card debt in the US has been rising at one of the fastest rates in history. We collectively owe nearly $1 trillion dollars on our cards, an all time high. In January alone, credit card debt jumped more than 11%. And with interest rates rising, getting ahead of the debt gets harder and harder.
Now millions of Americans, like Roth, are falling behind on their finances. And help can be hard to come by. Roth tried to take advantage of government assistance and services, like free Pre-K for her daughter and SNAP food benefits, which would help her financial situation.
But in every case, Roth found she made too much money to qualify. “I just make enough to not be poor enough to qualify for services,” Roth says with a laugh. “I don’t know how, because I’m like, ‘Dude, I am so poor. You don’t even know.'”
Roth tries every month to pay a little bit more than the minimum payment, but most of the time it just doesn’t happen. At the same time, she worries her kids are missing out on things.
“That’s probably my biggest focus is making sure that they are having those fun, memorable moments,” she says. “Moments that could give them joy… because this is a special time in their lives and it’s been so hard. We’ve all been through a lot the last year or two.”
Roth dreams of having enough extra money to take her kids out for ice cream on a whim or to the Build-A-Bear store.
And of once again being the mom who signs up to bring sandwiches and cupcakes to the Valentine’s Day party at daycare, instead of the bananas.
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