Jeremy Hsieh

Juneau School District Superintendent Glenn Gelbrich is one of nine candidates a Montana school system is considering for its top administrative job.

The Daily Inter Lake newspaper of Kalispell, Mont., reports that the Kalispell Public Schools Board of Trustees will select finalists from those nine candidates Tuesday. The position opens in July.

Gelbrich began as superintendent in Juneau in 2009.

News of his job search comes after consecutive years of flat education funding from the state, an overestimate in local student enrollment numbers with a million dollar budget repercussion, and the threat of a teachers’ strike over unresolved labor issues.

Republican Gov. Sean Parnell plans to unveil his proposed state budget tomorrow online and address it in Anchorage.

Parnell is scheduled to speak to the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce at noon and hold a press conference at 1:30 p.m. to discuss the budget document for the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2014.

This follows last week’s Department of Revenue announcement projecting $2 billion less in state income compared to the current budget year. Right now, the state is running off of a budget built from $6.9 billion of unrestricted general fund money.

The department attributed the hit to a combination of the state’s new oil tax system, falling oil prices and continued declines in oil production.

For live coverage, you can follow @GavelAlaska on Twitter or watch video provided by the governor’s office here.

Update 5:18 p.m.: This story has been updated with clarifications, additional comment from police and court activity.

Updated post:

When police shutdown the outbound lanes of Egan Drive late Friday morning, they now say they were searching for evidence from a highway gunfight stemming from a drug deal.

Friday’s shooting at the Coho Park Apartments after midnight was followed by an early morning exchange of gunfire from two moving vehicles on Egan Drive involving at least four people.

According to a press release the Juneau Police Department put out Monday, there were no injuries in the second shooting — and it went unreported.

Police shut down the outbound lanes of Juneau’s main road artery by 10:22 a.m. Friday to collect evidence.

Juneau police Lt. Kris Sell said it’s been a very complicated case.

“I’ve been an officer here in Juneau for 16 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Sell said. “Where you have a shooting, and then the parties go their separate ways, and then there’s another shooting and – yeah, this is unique.”

The department is still processing evidence and trying to pin down timelines.

Police have seized an undisclosed amount of heroin. Recent busts indicate the drug’s street value has skyrocketed from about $136 per gram in 2011 to $1,000 per gram now.

“It’s extremely profitable to deal heroin,” Sell said. “So that can tempt people into the business, but clearly, it’s a very high risk business.”

So far in the alleged drug deal turned shooting turned highway gunfight turned faux kidnapping, police have arrested three people, all Juneau residents:

• 44-year-old James Depasquale (Court records also refer to him as James De Pasquale III). Police say Depasquale was shot twice at the Coho Park Apartments and was taken to the hospital from the scene.Court records show charges for seven felonies and one misdemeanor pending against Depasquale that are consistent with drug dealing, gunplay and tampering with evidence. They also show that about 11 hours before he was shot, the courts had issued a warrant for his arrest – he’d been on probation for an assault in July.

“So you’ve got one guy in the hospital, but the conflict is continuing,” Sell said. “And the person whose buddy got shot goes and recruits another friend.”

Sell said those two people were involved in the highway shooting with,

• 24-year-old Jerall Torres. Court records show he’s facing two felony charges. One is for drugs. The other is for gunplay specifically from a moving vehicle. The vehicle hunt that police solicited the public’s help with Friday was for a truck that Torres reportedly left the initial shooting in. However, officials picked him up around 8:12 a.m. Friday in a sedan with…
• 26-year old Amanda Phillips. Phillips is facing a felony charge for tampering with evidence. Police accuse her of hiding the handgun that Depasquale used.

The three appeared in court today to review bail and attorney representation. More hearings are expected as soon as next week.

Police have mentioned one more person somehow involved, but haven’t identified her by name: A 22-year-old woman who reported her kidnapping and escape from Torres. Police now say she was “voluntarily involved” with Depasquale and Torres and that the kidnapping was likely a fabrication.

(Matt Miller contributed to this report.)

(Click here for a full screen version of this interactive timeline of Friday’s events.)

Gunshots that rang out early Friday led to a series of unusual crime reports and police action in the 16 ensuing hours. Friday’s shooting at the Coho Park Apartments turned possible kidnapping, turned likely fabrication left a lot unclear.

This interactive map and timeline documents some pieces of what happened. Locations are approximate. Details are as reported by the Juneau Police Department and witnesses.

(Click here for a full screen version of the map.)

A Juneau advisory panel backed conceptual plans to develop an off-road vehicle park out-the-road Tuesday night.

Meanwhile, some North Douglas residents are threatening lawsuits against Juneau for merely considering the possibility of developing an off-road vehicle park near their homes.

Public testimony at Tuesday’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee meeting was largely a rehash of the asymmetric rhetoric it heard in its November meeting. Sixteen North Douglas residents sounded off in public testimony in opposition to the one particular site under consideration near their homes. They’re concerned about noise, property values and their quality of life. A dozen riding enthusiasts more or less testified that they support the creation of any legal place in Juneau to ride their dirt bikes, ATVs and snowmachines.

The other four sites under the committee’s consideration were not challenged by nearby residents in public testimony.

The North Douglas residents are particularly upset because they fought back a more expansive off-road vehicle park plan in 2008 that would have brought motorized vehicles on trails as close as 350 feet to their homes. Tuesday’s concept did not include trails and limited off-roading to the floor of the city-owned rock quarry off Fish Creek Road. It’s about 1,400 feet to the closest homes.

In about two hours of testimony, there was anger, straight talk, legalese, distrust and appeals from riders.

• Benjamin Carney: “The current approach the city is taking lacks intelligence and appears to be motivated by desire. Rather than focusing on a large area that would be met by – with little resistance, legalities and reason have been suspended to ram through a park for which there is great resistance and legal reasons to not do so.”
• Jim Sheehan:“I am a person who loves snow machining, four-wheeling and dirt bikes. I grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, I’m a lifelong Alaskan. It just—you know, love it, have no problem with it. I just don’t want it in my backyard.
• Kent Sullivan:”My issue with this proposal at Fish Creek is what’s called ‘res judicata.’ And res judicata in the law means ‘a matter adjudged.’ And what that doctrine means is that once a matter has been decided, it can’t be brought up again.”
• Vance Sanders (who is a member of the KTOO Board of Directors):“We’ve been at this now, the neighborhood association in north Douglas, this is the second time– it’s like Groundhog Day for us. We don’t trust the city as far as we can throw them. You know, we thought this was done before when we met this issue head on, and we were done with this, that we were done with this for awhile. And here we are again.”
• Joleen Langel:”I can tell you no matter where we go, no matter where you put us, we’re gonna be happy. But at the end of the day, we’re not going to displace anybody else because we have been the displaced. We know what it’s like when you get kicked out of your sandbox. It hurts your feelings. And you don’t want anybody else to feel that way.”

What two of those speakers did not mention in their testimony was that they recently threatened the city in writing with a lawsuit for merely considering the Fish Creek site.

In a Nov. 12 letter to the city attorney, Kent Sullivan and Jim Sheehan (both North Douglas residents and lawyers) wrote that “relatively soon” the city should “reasonably expect litigation regarding any further suggestion that it is appropriate to use the Fish Creek Quarry.”

Tuesday, the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee voted 8-0 to recommend the Juneau Assembly pursue two out-the-road sites for a possible park and to ditch any consideration of sites near homes.

One site is city-owned at Mile 35. City staff estimates put its development costs at $3 to $12 million. However, riders have said they can donate a lot of labor and materials to defray that cost.

The other site is a quarry owned by Goldbelt Inc. near Echo Cove. It’s unclear if the Native corporation is amenable to making a deal for public access to its land. If it were, the city estimates the cost of developing the site into an off-road vehicle park at less than $250,000.

“So we’re putting all of our eggs in the Goldbelt basket right now,” said advisory committee chairman Jeff Wilson.

His committee’s recommendation doesn’t put the lawsuit threat to bed, because the decision-making power on whether an off-road vehicle park gets funding and permitting lies with the Juneau Assembly and the Planning Commission.

While many were still shopping Friday, a workshop for kids to make Tlingit-themed action figures was overbooked at the Alaska State Museum.

The free program was part of a series of workshops that the Friends of the Alaska State Museum pays for through a youth activity grant from the City and Borough of Juneau.

There were 50 slots for kindergarten- and elementary school-aged children at the event Friday afternoon.

Surrounded by Tlingit and Haida artifacts in the clan house exhibit of the state museum, Native storyteller Ishmael Hope kicked things off. He told a Tlingit story about how Raven brought freshwater to the land.

Hope said it was an apt setting.

“To have something that relates a little bit to it being inside this beautiful clan house, it’s the at.óow, it’s the sacred objects of the Gaanaxteidí clan, the frog house, Xíxch’i hít. And so I wanted to have some sense of being in that clan house,” he said.

As a storyteller and a listener, Hope said knowing and communicating the words and beats of a story is only part of challenge.

“You need to be in the physical presence of the elder to really, really get it,” he said.

After the story, the kids were off to a series of crafting stations around the museum where they made miniature Tlingit items and regalia.

Trevor Daniels was running a hair dryer over a paper basket about the size of a big toe. He was drying the stain he brushed on earlier that gave it a more natural color.

“There’s glue and coffee mixed in. I got some on my fingers and it’s pretty sticky,” Daniels said.

All of the items were roughly scaled to fit to a man-shaped action figure they made out of fuzzy chenille stems (or pipe cleaners).

Each child left with a 1-gallon Ziploc bag with their own personal action figure and accessories.

Cahal Burnham, 9, ran through the contents of his bag.

“I have a sailor style hat, umm, and a drum with a Native American pattern on it. Raven tail robe, a beaded robe. And I have a dance paddle and that’s about it,” he said.

He said his favorite part was making the action figure itself.

Museum visitor services manager Lisa Golisek coordinated the workshop. She says they’ve been going on for at least 15 years, and the action figures are always very popular. This time around, she had to turn away about 25 kids.

The next workshop is December 27. Pre-registration is required.