Jacob Resneck, CoastAlaska

The 86-lot Pederson Hill subdivision has been greenlighted by a key committee of the Juneau Assembly. The city-planned project is designed to create more entry-level housing and received unanimous support Monday evening.

The City and Borough of Juneau’s Lands Manager Greg Chaney said the next step is contracting design work for the $8.8 million project less than a mile west of the Mendenhall River.

“The Assembly definitely made a strong statement that they want to make a difference with the housing shortage in Juneau — that was very clear,” he said in an interview. “And as staff we’re going to proceed and try to get this out in the most efficient and economical manner that we can.”

The Assembly decided to approve the 86-lot subdivision all at once rather than in phases. That has the advantage of not having to return to the Planning Commission which approved a preliminary plan in February. But it will require the city to dip into its treasury reserves for about $2 million before the first lots are sold to private developers that will build the actual houses.

Before all that happens, contractors will have to bid on developing the subdivision’s infrastructure, which will give the Assembly a second chance to review any financial risks.

“If the bids come in too high, the Assembly can decide it’s not going to proceed with the project,” Chaney said. “We can cancel the project, vacate the plat and we can put the plans on the shelf if they want to be used in the future.”

The project has been met with skepticism by those who question the city’s role in influencing the housing market. The next political question will be how many lots would be sold at a time. Chaney said that decision is for another day.

“The Assembly has to approve all land sales,” Chaney said, “so we’ll be going back to them and I assume it’s going to be a fairly interesting proposal with a blend of: some lots for contractors, some lots for potential partners, some lots for individual homebuilders and then some for contractors who want to get blocks of four or five in a row and that they would be able to develop those more efficiently.”

The timeline of the project is fluid. But design work is expected to be wrapped up in the fall with a target for breaking ground next year.

The Juneau Assembly is poised to decide how it will spend $5.2 million in fees collected from cruise ship passengers visiting Juneau.

City Manager Rorie Watt wrote a memo outlining his recommendations for what to fund in anticipation of nearly 1 million passengers this season.

“We have a bunch of good services that we provide that I think everybody that comes to Juneau appreciates,” Watt said. “We’ve got extra foot patrols, we’ve got crossing guards, we’ve got visitor information we staff up (Capital City Fire/Rescue) so we can respond when people have medical emergencies.”

The Assembly’s finance committee is expected to review the passenger fee spending plan at its Wednesday meeting. Not every request can be funded. The city manager has recommended rejecting nearly $3.7 million in requests, including $400,000 from Bartlett Regional Hospital to offset expenses from cruise ship passengers.

Watt said the city has to be conservative in how it spends the $5-per-head passenger fee.

“It’s always a balance of picking the highest priority needs,” he said. “In the case of the hospital, I felt their request didn’t meet the merits of what the fee is for.”

Hospital CEO Chuck Bill declined to comment.

The city’s caution stems from ongoing litigation with the cruise ship industry. A federal lawsuit was filed last year over the city’s use of passenger fees to fund a $10 million waterfront park. The city has spent more than $280,000 on legal defense and recently set aside an additional $100,000.

“We’re very carefully studying the law and being very careful with the decisions that we make — maybe more so this year than other years,” Watt said. “But I think on the whole, if you look at the list, it’s really a stay-the-course list. We’re basically funding things very similarly to the way that we’ve done it for the past 10 years.”

Cruise Lines Industry Association Alaska spokesman John Binkley wrote in an email that the industry was aware of this year’s proposals but declined further comment.

By now Juneau property owners should have received property value notices that were mailed out last Friday.

Alaska state law requires the City and Borough of Juneau to tax property at market value.

About 60 percent of properties saw their tax bill increase. On average, these went up 3.5 percent, though some saw a hike as high as 10 percent.

“Fair market value is generally determined by what it would sell for on the open market,” City Finance Director Bob Bartholomew said. “What we saw this year is that it varied across the city and depending the price range you’re in and the location  you’re in, certain areas saw a significant increase.”

Tax bills will be mailed out at the end of June.

Property owners have until May 1 to appeal their property’s assessed value that will determine their tax bill, due Sept. 30.

Bartholomew said the lion’s share are able to resolve any questions by contacting the city assessor’s office.

“If they’re unable to come to an agreement then a handful go to the Board of Equalization and there’s a committee made up of citizens appointed by the Assembly that take a look at it,” he said.

Property taxes fund the city’s operations and how much that costs remains a moving target.

The Assembly’s Finance Committee will be meeting weekly through mid-May to find ways to cut the proposed $331 million budget, which includes money for the school district and Bartlett Regional Hospital.

The manager’s office is recommending a dip into reserves this year, Bartholomew said.

“We’re looking at a $1.9 million gap at this point and we’re proposing that $500,000 of that would be made up through reductions and then the balance we would take out of our savings or or fund balance,” he said.

The city has set up a budget website to follow progress made on the municipal budget.

A federally funded exchange program has welcomed high school students from Muslim majority countries to Juneau for the past six years, despite uncertainty over the Trump administration’s ongoing attempt to impose a blanket travel ban targeting Muslims.

Now, the program is looking for host families for its seventh batch of students.

Mahmoud Abu Aisha is a 17-year-old junior at Thunder Mountain High School. He’s Palestinian from Gaza City.

Israel’s conflict with Hamas has made life there very difficult.  So when there are opportunities to study abroad — he and his siblings are among the first to apply.

“My dad and my mom always encourage us to find opportunities outside Gaza,” he said, “so we can have a really good education and experience in our life.”

Gaza has an arid climate and one of the world’s highest population densities — not like Juneau.

“I have never seen mountains and rivers and waterfalls and things,” he said. “It’s so nice here.”

He arrived in late August and began settling in. He’s getting straight As.

Then Donald Trump was elected president and just days into his presidency his fiery campaign rhetoric morphed into executive orders that instated a travel ban against seven Muslim majority countries.

“We have entire regions of the world destabilized by terrorism and ISIS,” the president said March. “For this reason, I issued an executive order to temporarily suspend immigration from places where it cannot safely occur.”

The Palestinian territories weren’t on Trump’s list. But the political climate in the U.S. has arguably shifted.

The president’s implication is that entire regions are under suspicion and he’s vowed to overrule the courts which have so far blocked his executive orders.

Abu Aisha says his family was alarmed by this tough talk.

“I told them that it’s going to be fine and nothing will happen and things like this so then they’re not afraid any more,” he said.

Trump is changing U.S. policy toward the Middle East: Public diplomacy has taken a back seat to domestic security.

“I hope he never finds out about the program. I assume at this point he doesn’t know about it, ” said Judith Maier, the local coordinator for the federally funded Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES) Program that since 2011 has brought about 20 students from Muslim majority countries to Juneau.

She said the exchange students initially weren’t fully accepted.

“The first year the kids had to really prove themselves,” Maier said, but says a after exchange students began playing on local sports teams and socializing, “after that they call them friends they have a totally different way of looking at their country. So it’s wonderful.”

When 18-year-old Turkish student Ege Tezcan heard he’d been accepted to study in the U.S. he was excited. When he heard it would be in Alaska he was terrified.

“I was so afraid, at the beginning, I thought maybe it was a different Alaska than I know because some places have the same name,” Tezcan said. “So maybe an Alaska somewhere else, in the Lower 48.”

But the teenager from Istanbul’s fears evaporated. He speaks of the “different and beautiful experiences” including seeing “northern lights.”

The presidential election caught Tezcan by surprise. He said he immediately received anxious messages from Turkey.

“People were like ‘Oh my god — just be careful!’ But I’m just like, ‘Oh, it’s Alaska,” he said. “You know, it’s okay!'”

The YES Program was designed to keep the U.S. safer. It was created in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks to bridge religious and cultural barriers that feed extremism and is funded by the State Department. And it doesn’t just teach foreign students about the U.S.

Suzy Cohen and her husband, Stuart, hosted a 15-year-old Kurdish student from Istanbul last year in Juneau.

“We learned so much from him — just about the complexities of where he’s from and it was a great experience overall,” Suzy Cohen said.

Her husband said the program doesn’t just impact the exchange student’s view of the United States.

“You’re actually affecting a whole circle of people back there — like his mother and his family and his friends because they hear about it,” Stuart Cohen said. “I think actually the effect is different than — it’s not just one person it’s a number of people.”

Now the couple plans to visit Turkey, and meet the rest of his family.

Another batch of YES exchange students are slated to arrive in Juneau. They’ll be here from mid-August until June and host families are needed. Some financial support is provided. Anyone interested in learning more about getting involved can contact Judith Maier at (907) 789-9229.

The Juneau Assembly has ponied up another $100,000 to defend itself against litigation brought by the Cruise Lines International Association. That adds to the $283,368 it’s already spent to date defending itself in a lawsuit brought by the cruise ship industry.

At the heart of the federal lawsuit is how the city spends port development and marine passenger fees paid by cruise ship passengers. The industry argues that a shoreline park on Gastineau Channel featuring a bronze whale sculpture is inappropriate and an illegal use of the funds.

The money was transferred to a legal defense fund without comment from elected Assembly members or the public at a Monday evening public hearing. The $100,000 was drawn from the city’s sales tax fund levied on merchants within the city.

It comes less than a month after the Juneau Assembly voted 7-1 to formally exempt onboard sales and services on cruise ships in port. The city’s Finance Department has projected the exemption would cost about $100,000 annually — the same amount now being transferred from the local sales tax fund to defend itself in the lawsuit.

In other business, the Assembly approved a change in how small boats will be charged for potable water at public docks and harbors. The new rate will be 1.5 times the normal utility rates assessed for commercial customers. That would replace the old rate of $4.67 per 1,000 gallons.

A 14-year-old Juneau high school student was honored by the governor’s office today for rescuing a 5-year-old boy he saw fall into a fast-running creek.

Juneau-Douglas High School sophomore Seth Gerrin was one of four friends hanging out at Cope Park on Wednesday at about 6 p.m. Gerrin said some small children and an adult walked up the path. One of the children in the group was walking near the fast-running water of Gold Creek when he lost his footing.

“He started to slide down and there was a fence and a tree there and it looked like he was going stop himself,” Gerrin said in an interview. “My friend Xavian tried to grab him — he fell off. Riley jumped into the water and grabbed him and handed him up to me. We carried him up to the ambulance and made sure he was OK and we left.”

His friend Riley is 14-year-old Yaakoosge Daakahidi High School student Iosefa Riley John.

Authorities said the young man’s quick thinking and fast acting likely saved 5-year-old Mason Varner from drowning in the fast-moving creek. The teenager was honored Friday afternoon by Juneau police, rescuers and Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott who presented an award from the governor’s office.

“We never say, ‘Son or daughter, we want  you to perform an act of selfless courage that might put you in harm’s way,'” Mallott said during a ceremony at Yaakoosge Daakahidi High School. “And somehow it was there in this young man.”

The rescued child attended the short ceremony and appeared to be in good spirits as his visibly moved mother clung to him. Riley John spoke only briefly to thank everyone and to clarify that his friend, Seth Gerrin, also deserved to be recognized for helping get the boy to safety.