Jeremy Hsieh

Ballots in Juneau’s local election this fall won’t have questions about a proposed sales tax break on groceries. There’s been months of discussion on the topic at Juneau Assembly meetings. Now, the Assembly wants to finish the debate with a public opinion poll instead of asking voters directly on the ballot.

At the beginning of June, the Assembly was leaning toward asking advisory questions on the ballot. The questions would have paired the tax break with different options for new taxes to recoup most of the cost to the city.

The Assembly wants to know if voters would still want the tax break if it also meant one of these things would happen: raising the year-round sales tax rate to 5.5%, raising the sales tax rate seasonally to 6%, or raising property tax rates so most property owners would pay about 9.5% more.

But by the end of June, most Assembly members had become concerned about how those non-binding questions would look alongside separate, tax-related questions that will be on the ballot and are binding.

“These ballot questions I think would be super — just, confusing,” Deputy Mayor Maria Gladziszewski said in a committee meeting on June 27. “And then if the sales tax things pass, then we’d have to do it again, and people would have to vote on it twice, and then they’d be like, ‘Didn’t I vote on this last time?’”

The city charter doesn’t allow the Assembly to change the sales tax rate, so voters would have to approve it with another ballot question in another election.

There was also concern that including the advisory questions could confuse voters about three other ballot questions in the works that deal with funding major city projects. That includes funding to build a new City Hall.

“Man, I really had my heart set on removing sales tax with this Assembly,” said Assembly member Wade Bryson. “But I’m afraid if we try to squeeze it into this ballot, this October’s ballot, that it could have more harm than good.”

Gladziszewski suggested an alternative.

“So I’m wondering if we could achieve our same objectives by just hiring a firm to do a statistically valid survey,” Gladziszewski said.

Most of the other Assembly members were amenable.

A measure to commit up to $40,000 for the survey is set for public hearing and final vote at the Assembly’s next regular meeting on Aug. 1.

The timing for the survey hasn’t been decided. City Manager Rorie Watt told the Assembly he wants to avoid election season.

In this newscast:

• A Juneau man who was reported missing turned himself into police
• The U.S. Forest Service is proposing restoring 23,000 acres of Admiralty Island that had been logged
• Researchers say the Aleutian Islands are a logical refueling point for trans-Pacific shipping with zero-emission fuels
• A geothermal energy company is a step closer to prospecting on Augustine Island in lower Cook Inlet
• The Anchorage Assembly approves money to house homeless people at a downtown hotel
• The World Eskimo Indian Olympics begin

In this newscast:

• A federal agency releases a draft environmental impact statement for a major oil development on the North Slope
• Wildfire activity slows in the Interior as the weather shifts cooler and wetter
• The window to run for local office in Juneau opens Friday
• A UAF graduate student studies marine garbage from a remote Southeast island
• Alaskans march to advocate for reproductive rights
• The Episcopal Church establishes a commission to research its role in Native boarding schools

In this newscast:

• Researchers with the University of Alaska Southeast release a new climate change report about Juneau
• An Alaska Marine Highway System oversight board recommends adding crew quarters to the Tazlina
• The marine highway system reopens bars about the Matanuska and Kennicott
• Lightning strikes and gusty winds leave red flag danger warnings in effect for large areas of the Interior
• Former President Donald Trump packs the house during a political rally in Anchorage

Juneau’s Fourth of July festivities and fireworks are set for the holiday weekend. But because of supply chain issues, the volunteers who put together the annual fireworks show in Gastineau Channel weren’t even sure they’d get the fireworks in time.

The show’s licensed pyrotechnician, Sigrid Dahlberg, wants to assure Juneau that the show will go on the night of July 3. Dahlberg has worked with other volunteers for the last 20 years or so putting together the professional show.

“Quite a few communities are not having shows because they can’t get enough fireworks. So we’re kind of lucky,” she said.

Through her day job as an environmental engineer, she knew all kinds of projects were being delayed by as much as a year because of pandemic-related supply chain issues. Her fireworks supplier was also affected.

“There was a very high level of concern, even starting back in January,” Dahlberg said.

They even considered delaying the show until Labor Day.

Dahlberg explained that everything originates from China and makes its way across the Pacific Ocean to many different destinations. Eventually, a supplier gets Juneau’s fireworks into a special shipping container designed for explosives.

This year’s shipment arrived in Juneau last Friday. That gave Dahlberg’s team only nine days to prepare. Normally, they’d have three more weeks.

“We compressed our schedule considerably,” Dahlberg said. “So most of the main crew is taking time off work and just working full-on, getting this show ready to go. So we really want people to show up and watch it.”

The city donates the money to buy the actual fireworks. Dahlberg said that otherwise, the show comes together entirely through volunteer work and businesses donating services.

And then there’s the unusual weather. State authorities have banned burns and fireworks across huge swaths of the state because of dry weather and wildfire concerns. Juneau’s been a lot drier than usual, too.

But Dahlberg said Juneau’s show is very safe and OK with local fire authorities.

“Because we shoot from a concrete barge in the middle of the channel,” she said. “We have a huge fallout zone around the barge, and everything is falling on water.”

Dahlberg said the show will be about 20 minutes long. It’s set to begin at 11:59 p.m. on July 3. Dahlberg will be on the barge.

“We can hear people on the shore screaming and yelling, and we love it,” she said.

For people celebrating with their own fireworks, restrictions the Juneau Assembly adopted last year remain in effect. The rules are cumbersome to explain, but generally, fireworks use is limited to private property, and the louder the fireworks, the fewer times and places they can be used.

The Douglas Fourth of July Committee has many activities planned throughout the holiday weekend, including a parade at 2 p.m. on the Fourth. The parade in downtown Juneau is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m.

The group that wants to do away with Juneau’s mandate to share real estate sale prices says it has turned in enough signatures to get the question in front of local voters in the fall.

The group needed 2,130 signatures from qualified voters. By the initial deadline, the group turned in 2,501, but city election officials disqualified several hundred because of incomplete forms or other reasons. The group came up 107 signatures short but were given 10 extra days to collect more.

Ann Sparks, a local real estate agent working on the repeal effort, said the group turned in more than 500 additional signatures on Monday.

“We feel really confident that we will definitely have enough signatures,” she said. “Now it’s just a wait and see what the city decides — if they’re going to let it go to ballot, or if they want to go ahead and repeal it.”

City election officials have until next Thursday to review the additional signatures and to certify or reject the petition.

If it’s certified, the Juneau Assembly then has 30 days to either preempt the ballot question and repeal the ordinances itself or forward the repeal question to the October local election ballot.