Jeremy Hsieh

Juneau’s municipal election is on Oct. 4 this year. It will be the city’s third since switching to a mostly by-mail format.

There have been some changes since last year. For one, there are new voter precincts.

City Clerk Beth McEwen is the local election official. She told the Juneau Assembly on Monday that complications from the state’s redistricting process meant city staff didn’t have enough time to integrate the new precinct maps with the city’s systems. That means results won’t be broken down by precinct.

“You will see area-wide results and not at that granular level,” she said.

McEwen says the new precincts will be squared away in time for the next local election.

Another change is that a new ballot counting center is opening right here in Juneau. For the first two by-mail elections, McEwen flew to Anchorage to use a secure facility there to process Juneau’s ballots.

New voters must register by Sept. 4 to be able to participate in the election. If you are already registered but your address has changed, you should update your mailing address by Sunday to get a ballot by mail.

Ballots will be mailed on Sept. 13. A sample ballot is available on the city clerk’s election web page.

After voting, there are three ways to get those ballots back to election officials.

Voters can return them by mail with postage. The city encourages getting the post office to hand-cancel that postage with a legible date on the postmark. Hundreds of ballots in last year’s election were rejected because of postmarking issues.

Ballots can also be placed in secure drop boxes that will be available 24 hours a day, beginning Sept. 19. There will be one drop box available at the Douglas Library/Fire Hall Community Building and one at Statter Harbor.

Finally, ballots can be delivered in person to vote centers at City Hall and the Mendenhall Valley Public Library during business hours.

Barring write-in candidates, all five incumbents seeking reelection to the Juneau Assembly and Juneau Board of Education were unopposed as of Aug. 30. For write-in candidates to be valid, they must file paperwork by Sept. 27.

But the ballot will have four local ballot questions. Voters will be asked to:

• Repeal a mandate to disclose real estate sales prices;
• Authorize the city to borrow up to $35 million to build a new city hall;
• Authorize the city to borrow up to $6.6 million for parks projects; and
• Renew 1% of the city’s sales tax rate for five more years, with the revenue earmarked for city infrastructure and special projects.

In this newscast:

• The cruise industry signs a first-of-its-kind agreement with Juneau
• Juneau police began collecting DNA from some people with criminal records
• A University of Alaska faculty union files an unfair labor practices complaint against the university administration
• the village of Nunapitchuk water treatment building is  at risk of collapse
• A candidate for Ketchikan City Council ends his campaign after KRBD exposes his criminal record

All of the major cruise lines that visit Juneau have signed an agreement with the city — the first of its kind in Alaska — committing to nine actions. The parties announced the agreement on Monday.

“This was kind of the grab bag of issues that came out of the task force that we wanted to get down on paper early, or first,” said Juneau Tourism Manager Alexandra Pierce.

She was referring to the city’s Visitor Industry Task Force, which recommended many of the commitments in this agreement back in March of 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic began shutting everything down.

The industry’s commitments include giving advance notice to the city of ship schedules and capacity numbers and keeping big, outdoor screens turned off while in port. They also agree to maximize support for local businesses and support the use of up to $10 million in cruise ship passenger taxes to expand Centennial Hall.

Renée Limoge Reeve is the vice president of government and community relations for Cruise Lines International Association in Alaska. She said there’s no enforcement mechanism — it’s just an agreement made in good faith. But she said the cruise lines do get something back, even if the text doesn’t really capture it.

“I wouldn’t say that we give up a lot,” Reeve said. “What I would say is that we are able to have a welcoming environment when we come to Juneau. … And it’s important, again, that we are good partners in the communities that we visit … so that we are welcomed. Because that improves the experience for the visitors that we’re bringing. You want to be welcomed in the community.”

Both Reeve and Pierce say this collaborative agreement is a big deal. It’s a huge shift from the adversarial relationship that came to a head in 2016 when CLIA Alaska sued the city over its collection and use of cruise passenger taxes.

“We have a relationship with CLIA that we built through a very, very painful lawsuit process where we’re pretty open and honest and able to communicate our community’s needs and concerns,” Pierce said. “And I think that this represents an effort to capitalize on that relationship and use it for good.”

The judge’s 2018 ruling in that case led the city and the industry to work together to decide how to spend those passenger taxes.

“And then people just got around the table and just started talking more,” Reeve said. “I would far rather have conversations and come to collaborative solutions this way than through anything like a lawsuit or a regulation or a law. I’d rather just have a conversation and make sure that we are following the will of the community.”

The city also has some leverage. It owns two of the four cruise ship docks in town, but it hasn’t historically taken an active role in how they’re scheduled.

“In the past, the city’s been a little bit more reactive to that information,” Pierce said. “And now we just want a bit more of a say in the process — we want to be a little bit more engaged with how our assets are being scheduled.”

Pierce said this agreement complements other longstanding relationships and programs in Juneau. For example, she said Cruise Line Agencies of Alaska will still handle logistics and scheduling for the cruise lines. And Tourism Best Management Practices, the industry’s voluntary program for fielding and responding to community complaints, will continue.

“You know, all of these different organizations and programs work together in concert to manage tourism in our community,” Pierce said. “And this is just another effort and another tool … and direct with the cruise lines as opposed to through a third party of some sort.”

Pierce said this may be the first of several agreements of this sort to come.

In this newscast:

• A little-known candidate named Buzz Kelley will advance to the general election for an Alaska seat in the U.S. Senate
• An Anchorage man shot by police on Friday now faces 19 charges including kidnapping and attempted murder
• Active duty airmen will soon be driving school buses for students at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson to help with a driver shortage
• 29 students from Ukraine begin classes in the Delta-Greely School District
• A new business in Sitka offers snorkeling to tourists as an eco-friendly attraction
• Tlingit formline artist’s T-shirt design makes an appearance on She-Hulk: Attorney at Law
• The National Weather Service says more atmospheric rivers are headed to the region

In this newscast:

• A former Bartlett Regional Hospital executive is in jail facing felony charges for stealing from the hospital
• School districts across the state are facing teacher shortages
• Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Charlie Pierce resigns to focus on his gubernatorial campaign
• Environmental groups sue the Biden administration over its approval of an oil exploration program on the North Slope
• U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski holds a hearing in Unalaska to try to spur the federal government to clean up contaminated lands conveyed to Alaska Natives
• And the Coast Guard wraps up an investigation into an accidental stowaway aboard an Inter-Island Ferry Authority vessel

In this newscast:

• The state’s latest labor data shows that about one out of every nine jobs in Alaska is unfilled
• Ironman Alaska participants and an economic analyst tally up the event’s economic impact on Juneau
• The two Republican candidates in Alaska’s first ranked choice vote election are attacking each other
• Tara Sweeney files to run as a write-in candidate in the special U.S. House election
• And a correction for a story about a Pebble Mine investor from Wednesday