Katie Anastas

At a forum hosted Thursday by the Juneau Chamber of Commerce, candidates for the school board and Assembly shared their views on education funding, staff retention and whether to build a new city hall.

Three candidates are vying for two open school board seats: Britteny Cioni-Haywood, David Noon and Paige Sipniewski. They discussed state funding, student enrollment and teacher retention.

For the last several years, district leaders throughout the state have called for an increase to the base student allocation, part of a formula that determines how much money per student districts get from the state. It hasn’t increased substantially since 2017, and inflation has driven costs up. This year, the Alaska Legislature approved a one-time funding increase, but Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed half of it. And most recently, the state education department went after the school district for the supplemental funding it received from the city.

School board candidate Paige Sipniewski said a funding increase should be tied to academic improvement.

“If we have decreased enrollment, we can’t just keep throwing money at the problem,” she said. “We can’t advocate for a $1,000 increase to the BSA with no improvement to our kids’ test scores and education.”

But candidate David Noon said improving academic performance requires hiring and keeping teachers so class sizes can stay small, which can’t improve without more funding. 

“Without increased school funding, we’re going to continue having problems recruiting and retaining teachers,” Noon said.

When asked how the district should decide which books should be available in libraries, Noon and Britteny Cioni-Haywood said they were happy with the board’s current policies.

“I think that there should be a vast range of options for children,” Cioni-Haywood said. “One of the things about reading is you really need to connect with it, so having those options for all children is important.” 

Sipniewski said she thinks parents should be able to have a say in what books are available in school libraries.

“I am completely against anything regarding gender, sex, religion, profanity, drug use, race — as far as literature for kids in school,” she said. “We have public libraries. They can go check out books there or their parents can if they want their children reading that.”

Candidates for Assembly Districts 1 and 2 were also at the forum.

Two candidates are running for each district Assembly seat. Joe Geldhof is running against incumbent Alicia Hughes-Skandijs for District 1, and David Morris is running against incumbent Christine Woll for District 2. Juneau voters can vote in all races on the ballot – the districts depend on where the candidates live.

The city is asking voters to fund a new city hall through a $27 million bond. Voters rejected a $35 million bond proposal for the project last year. This time, the city put $10 million toward the project to bring the size of the bond down. They’re also spending $50,000 to advocate for the project.

District 1 candidate Joe Geldhof said building a new city hall would be a misuse of public funds.

“There’s a lot of talk here among the Assembly and in the community about housing, housing, housing – so what are we going to do? We’re going to build a new city hall,” he said.

But incumbent Alicia Hughes-Skandijs said repairing a building that doesn’t fit all city workers and continuing to rent other office space doesn’t make financial sense.

“And speaking of housing, some of the space we’re renting could be returned to residential apartments,” she said. “We’re going to spend public money either way.”

Assembly candidates also discussed turnover among Bartlett Regional Hospital leadership. Last month, Bartlett CEO David Keith announced his retirement and CFO Sam Wise announced his resignation.

Incumbent Christine Woll said the Assembly needs to support the city-owned hospital’s board.

“We’re lucky to have a strong and stable board for Bartlett right now, but we always have challenges recruiting members to serve on public boards in the city,” she said. “We need to keep making sure that we have engaged citizens willing to serve on that board.”

Woll’s opponent, David Morris, agreed that the Assembly should work closely with the hospital’s board. But more broadly, he said, he doesn’t think the city should be running a hospital. 

“I think the city should not have a hospital,” he said. “I think it should be privatized.”

Other communities in Southeast Alaska have debated whether to continue running city-owned hospitals or allow the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium to build and operate one instead. 

Thursday’s forum was the latest in a series of public events featuring municipal candidates. The Juneau League of Women Voters, KTOO, the Juneau Empire and KINY will co-host forums on Sept. 12 and 13. The Chamber will host candidates for the areawide Assembly seat at a forum on Sept. 14.

Leo, a cat who went missing during last month’s record glacial outburst flood, is home safe.

Leo’s owner, Elizabeth Wilkins, rented the white house on Riverside Drive that fell into the river. She said reuniting with Leo has provided a break from the stress of the last several weeks. 

“Yesterday, we couldn’t stop laughing,” she said. “It just felt really good, like this release. Like this is the best thing anyone’s heard in at least a month. It’s nice to have some good news.”

David Albert, who adopted Leo with Wilkins during the pandemic, said Leo seems relieved, too.

“He slept hard last night,” Albert said. “He was just a little snuggle bug. Every time I’d sit, he’d come over and sit on my lap and sleep on my chest. He’s just so happy to be among family again.”

Wilkins and Albert were both out of town during the flooding, but they watched the viral video of the house collapsing into the river. They think the sound of the river and the collapsing house made Leo run away before it fell in.

“I watched the video of the house over and over again, just to figure out what it was like to be in it, and is it possible that he’s ok,” Albert said. “It was hard to imagine that anyone would be ok.”

Nevertheless, Wilkins spent the next few weeks scrolling through photos posted by Juneau residents trying to help people find their missing cats. Then, on Thursday, someone posted a photo of a black and white cat in her yard in a Juneau Facebook group.

It had a distinctive black spot on the back of his right leg.

“We’d been analyzing all these black and white cat photographs, and this time it was him for sure,” Wilkins said.

Wilkins teaches at Montessori Borealis and Juneau Community Charter School. After school on Thursday, she went looking for Leo at the woman’s house, less than a mile from her former home. She called his name, and Leo came running out.

Leo is no fraidy-cat. He and his brother were rescued from an abandoned building, where they slept in a pile of insulation. When Wilkins and Albert adopted him, they were living at a cabin out the road, where Leo spent a lot of time in the woods. Wilkins thinks it served him well this last month. 

“I think he has been using his best survival skills,” she said. “He’s a good hunter. Cats are also incredible athletes. I think he’s been hiding out where it’s safe, coming out when he thinks it’s safe and then hunting.”

Still, Leo seems to have lost some weight, Albert said.

“He’s on an all-you-can-eat diet now,” he said.

Wilkins is house-sitting for friends downtown while she looks for a more permanent place to live. She’s considering all her options, including a camper van, a tiny home or even a sailboat.

“Right now, I don’t have a steady home,” she said.

Wilkins said she feels hopeful something will work out. Leo purred on the couch next to her and Albert.

“This is a little glimmer of hope – a little tiny bit of good news in an otherwise really sad and catastrophic story,” Albert said.

Juneau Assembly candidates discussed the need for affordable housing, more child care and competitive wages for public safety employees at a forum hosted by local police and firefighters Thursday.

Staff shortages, wages and child care were common themes in the questions, which were submitted by public safety employees and first responders. The Juneau Police Department has 14 unfilled jobs – a 23% vacancy rate.

“Increasing wages is probably the fastest way to deal with some of those vacancies,” said District 1 incumbent Christine Woll.

Last year, Juneau police received the same 5.5% wage increase as all other city employees and a 5% increase to their employer health contribution.

Areawide candidate JoAnn Wallace said more recruitment within the local community could also help.

“If you could recruit them right out of high school and send them through scholarship programs to get trained, as an alternative to college, I think it would be a great way to keep kids that are already in our community in our town and into these great jobs,” Wallace said.

Some candidates said the police and fire departments need more city funding.

“We need to find a way to make sure the fire department is funded appropriately, without an increase in property taxes or sales taxes,” said areawide candidate Jeff Jones. “We need more transparency within the city. We need to know where the money is going.”

Public safety employees also asked the candidates what they would do about the child care shortage. Areawide candidate Nano Brooks said the city can help the industry through subsidies and grants to help providers expand their facilities. 

“Also, supporting local programs like RALLY, which made a huge difference in my life,” Brooks said, referring to the Juneau School District’s child care program.

Burnout, depression and other mental health challenges were also concerns for firefighters and police. Areawide candidate Ella Adkison said diverting some of the workload to other kinds of workers, such as mental health providers, could help.

“If we can have a new program where non-police people take calls that are non-violent, such as mental health and addiction crises, that way we can save our police officers for the truly violent calls that they need to be on, such as domestic violence and assault calls,” she said.

Thirteen out of 14 assembly candidates attended the forum. Ten candidates are running for two areawide seats, two are running for a District 1 seat and two are running for District 2. District 2 candidate David Morris did not attend.

Thursday’s forum was the first of several opportunities for the public to hear from municipal candidates. The Juneau Chamber of Commerce will host a forum for school board and District 1 and 2 candidates on Thursday, Sept. 7. The Juneau League of Women Voters, KTOO, the Juneau Empire and KINY will co-host forums on Sept. 12 and 13. The Chamber will host an areawide candidate forum on Sept. 14.

Juneau residents can register to vote or update their addresses through Sunday, Sept. 3. Election day is Oct. 3.

Last winter, Resurrection Lutheran Church was prepared to serve about 45 to 50 people at its warming shelter each night. They often served more. One night, 70 people slept at the church.

Pastor Karen Perkins said they need more financial support from the city to run the warming shelter this winter.

“Last year, because of this huge swell in population, we couldn’t keep up under the figures of the contract,” Perkins said. “There were some times where it became really difficult to manage.”

Perkins estimates that the church needs about $290,000 to adequately staff the warming shelter. She’s still waiting to hear whether the city will provide that much money. As city leaders continue to negotiate with the church, they’re considering an alternative: a Capital Transit bus.

Deputy Manager Robert Barr shared the idea at a Juneau Assembly meeting last week.

“There are a handful of communities that, if worse comes to worse, will use a public transit bus, keep it idling overnight, keep the heater on and allow people who have been unable to get into another shelter around town to stay warm,” Barr said.

A ‘realistic’ number

Last year’s $200,000 contract was enough for the church to pay for a part-time manager and a bookkeeper in the daytime and two full-time staff members at night. But when 10 or 20 more people sought services there than expected, they needed another staffer. 

“There’s this myth that we allow people to use drugs there and we allow people to drink there, which we don’t,” Perkins said. “But we also don’t search people when they come in, because it’s part of honoring their dignity. But if there are too many people, the staff don’t catch it. It came to the point where we struggled to manage the safety of the people who were there.”

Recently, the church’s congregation narrowly voted against applying to run the warming shelter this winter. Perkins said some members were concerned about the loitering, vandalism and other property damage that happened last year.

“That is much less likely to occur when the numbers are managed better,” she said.

Perkins said the church has found ways to do that. With the help of donations, they began serving warm meals, which helped people rest. With the planning commission’s approval, they extended operating hours slightly so people could stay indoors until buses started running. But that required staff to work overtime.

“Part of our model is very much dignity and cooperation,” Perkins said. “People are much more likely to be cooperative under certain conditions.”

Perkins would like to see those conditions reflected in the city’s contract.

She said last season, during the uptick in patrons in the early months of the year, the city gave the church an additional $40,000 to pay for a third staff member, bringing the total payment for last season to $240,000. 

Perkins would like this year’s contract to provide enough funding to pay for a third staff member a few days a week and make the manager position full time. She estimates those changes would bring the total to around $290,000.

“We want to have a number that’s realistic this year,” she said.

‘The last-ditch option’

Barr said he’s still talking to church leaders about how they might amend the warming shelter contract to make it more appealing to the congregation.

He said he couldn’t comment on the ongoing contract negotiations, but that he does expect the cost to go up this year. Funding for the warming shelter would come from the city’s operating fund and a state Department of Health grant.

“We have to balance the services that we’re looking for with being fiscally responsible with taxpayer dollars,” Barr said. “That’s sometimes hard when you potentially only have one provider.”

Each year, the city requests proposals from groups that are interested in running the warming shelter. No one applied this time.

The shelter has changed locations and providers several times since it began in a now-demolished building on Whittier Avenue downtown in 2017. St. Vincent de Paul started running it at their community center on Teal Street in the Mendenhall Valley in 2019, then moved it back downtown to the Juneau Arts and Culture Center when the pandemic began. In 2021, Resurrection Lutheran Church took over for St. Vincent de Paul when they pulled out of their contract.

“Finding space for any use right now is challenging,” Barr said. “Finding space for this particular kind of use is particularly challenging.”

The decommissioned city bus would have seats for only 35 people — and no beds. Barr said he thinks using a bus as a warming shelter would lead to people to seek out other options. 

“The bus option is the last-ditch option. It’s not the one we want to choose,” Barr said. “But I think if that’s what was available, that we would see more people choosing to make use of some of the other sheltering space that’s available that would be better than this one.”

Completely full

But Mariya Lovishchuk, the executive director of Juneau’s emergency shelter and soup kitchen, says other sheltering space is limited. At the Glory Hall’s shelter, all 43 rooms and 12 overflow bunks are already full.

“I don’t remember the last time we were not completely full,” she said.

Glory Hall staff try to move people from the emergency shelter into permanent supportive housing as soon as they can. But the 64 units in the Glory Hall’s Forget-Me-Not Manor are also full. They’re working on adding 28 more units to Forget-Me-Not Manor and building seven new units downtown, but they won’t be finished by winter.

Lovishchuk said there’s typically an increase in the number of people seeking shelter services once the Mill Campground closes in the fall. This year, it’s scheduled to close on Oct. 16.

“We’re working really hard right now with our community partners to make sure that everyone in our shelter who has any other location to go that is better – be it permanent supportive housing, be it transitional housing – gets there before the winter comes, so we have as much space as possible open,” she said.

In the meantime, Perkins hopes a revised contract will allow the church to staff the warming shelter safely. If the church reaches an agreement with the city, she plans to bring it back to the congregation for another vote.

“Even though it’s a city contract and a secular service, the reality is we do it because of our faith,” she said.

The congregation’s next meeting is scheduled for Sept. 10.

After nine months of renovations, Centennial Hall’s ballrooms now have brand new lighting, sound and heat systems.

“We are hitting the ground running,” said Kathleen Harper, the city-owned convention center’s house manager. “We are booked every single weekend through mid-December.”

Harper said Centennial Hall can fit about 500 people for banquet events. The next biggest space is Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall in the Andrew Hope Building, which can fit 400. The high schools can also fit large numbers of people, but they can’t serve alcohol.

For many event organizers, Harper said, this is the only space in town that meets their needs.

“We’re already starting to book things for 2024, 2025,” she said.

Centennial Hall closed in December for renovations. Juneau voters approved a $7 million bond to fund the project in 2019.

The renovated ballroom has new acoustic panels on the walls, meant to reduce sound reverberation. New moveable dividers, which can separate the large space into two or three smaller ones, slide easily along their tracks.

There are 90 new light fixtures and 53 new speakers.

“Each individual speaker, each individual theater lighting receptacle, can be controlled individually instead of as a big group,” said Eric Brewer, project manager for Alcan Electrical & Engineering.

And it can all be done from a laptop. Before, five to 10 people would have had to walk along the catwalk above the space and manually adjust the lights during events.

“It can even be pre-programmed so that you just push a start button and it’s all choreographed and automated, so the computer is doing it all,” Brewer said.

Each of the three ballrooms can now be heated or cooled separately. Six heat pumps do the work from a balcony on the side of the building.  

“If someone is just renting one ballroom, we can just heat that ballroom or cool that one versus all three the same,” said Lisa EaganLagerquist, the city’s engineering project manager.

The new heating system isn’t the only sustainable aspect of the project. EaganLagerquist said the contractor, Carver Construction, kept about 80% of construction waste out of the landfill by reusing or recycling it. She hopes the city will continue to track those kinds of sustainability efforts in future projects.

“In Juneau, of course, we have a landfill that’s getting full,” she said. “We hope to continue that on CBJ projects – first, to just start tracking how much you’re diverting. If you don’t track it, you won’t improve.”

EaganLagerquist said she’s excited to have Juneau residents and event-goers hear the new sound system and see the new lights. 

Board game convention Platypus Con will be the first public event held in the renovated space from Sept. 8 to 10. The eighth annual Glitz drag show will follow on Sept. 15 and 16.

When Deena McDougal’s mother was dying at a hospital, it seemed like the doctors and nurses didn’t want to talk about it.

“Being a nurse, I knew that my mom was going through the dying process,” McDougal said. “To have a whole other healthcare team not provide that information was difficult for me.”

McDougal has been a nurse in Juneau for 15 years. She’s worked in the emergency room and in surgery clinics. Now, she’s one of about 25 staff in Bartlett Regional Hospital’s new home health and hospice department.

In her new role, she talks to families candidly about what to expect when their loved one dies, and how they can best manage pain and other symptoms in the meantime.

“It’s going to happen to all of us, and it’s ok,” she said. “I really enjoy that we just talk about it — it’s real, it’s not hidden, and it’s accepted by everyone who’s involved.”

Bartlett started treating home health and hospice patients last month. It’s the first time those services have been available since Catholic Community Service stopped providing them last fall.

“It was felt in the community, it was felt in the hospital, it was felt by the clinics,” said Amanda Williams, Bartlett’s home health clinical manager. “It’s definitely a service that’s needed.”

The home health program provides intermittent in-home care for people recovering from an illness or surgery. That care can include help from nurses, physical therapists, home health aids and social workers.

Hospice is for patients with a life expectancy of six months or less. Nurses can help manage pain and other symptoms, and chaplains can provide spiritual support.

Heather Richter, the clinical manager for the hospice program, said the goal is to support both the patient and their family or other caregivers.

“As a nurse, your first instinct is to fix something that’s wrong,” Richter said. In hospice, she said, staff ask themselves, “Is the patient comfortable? Is the family comfortable with what’s happening to the patient? How can we make this the most peaceful transition?”

Staff are treating four home health patients and four hospice patients as of Friday, according to hospital spokesperson Erin Hardin. Since they started seeing patients last month, one hospice patient has passed away.

“It was a beautiful passing – what the patient wished for verbally in the beginning,” Richter said. “And the family could not have been more grateful and appreciative.”

Bartlett is hiring an occupational therapist and physical therapist for the home health program and a chaplain for the hospice program.

“Right now, we’re supported by the Bartlett therapy staff, but we can already see the big need that we’re going to have,” Williams said.

The hospital raised more than $18,000 for the new program at a fundraiser on Thursday. That money will help pay for training, equipment and other costs as the program brings on more patients.