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The Juneau Assembly has joined Petersburg, Wrangell, Sitka and Ketchikan in supporting Southeast Alaska’s king salmon troll fishery against a lawsuit that could threaten its future.
A resolution passed by the Assembly on Monday night opposes a lawsuit filed by the Wild Fish Conservancy, a Washington-based environmental group. The group says the federal government hasn’t adequately addressed the fishery’s impacts on the food supply of Southern Resident killer whales in Puget Sound.
Assembly member Carole Triem drafted the resolution. At a committee meeting earlier this month, she said it’s important for Juneau to support the trollers.
“It’s a lot less visible in Juneau than it is in Petersburg, Wrangell, Sitka or Ketchikan – the size, and the impact of the commercial fishing industry – but it’s still a pretty big part of our economy,” she said.
More than 550 fishing and seafood processing jobs in Juneau, including those that rely on the king salmon fishery, brought in $27 million in wages in 2014.
In December, a magistrate judge recommended halting the winter and summer king salmon troll fisheries in Southeast Alaska. A final decision from a federal judge in Washington is expected to come soon.
Assembly member Maria Gladziszewski questioned whether the resolution would have much impact, since the magistrate judge already issued a recommendation.
“It just seems ill-timed,” she said. “It would have been better, of course, even a year ago, before the judge decided. You don’t really help a legal case by a resolution from an assembly.”
But Triem said the Alaska Trollers Association expects to fight the decision. The trollers argue that other factors – like pollution in Puget Sound – are more to blame for the whales’ population decline.
“The Trollers Association does anticipate a lengthy appeals process,” Triem said. “So in terms of timing, I think even though there’s been a decision made, it’s still appropriate for us to be signaling our support because it is an ongoing process.”
Several Southeast communities have contributed money to the Alaska Trollers Association’s legal defense fund. Juneau’s resolution did not include a donation.
Sitka Rep. Rebecca Himschoot has introduced a resolution in the Alaska House of Representatives urging federal and state agencies to defend the troll fishery.
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The Juneau Assembly is considering combining several advisory boards due to a lack of volunteer members.
The city has separate advisory boards that make recommendations for managing recreational facilities including the municipal pools, the Treadwell Arena and the Jensen-Olson Arboretum. The Assembly will decide Monday whether to combine those boards and the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee into one Parks and Recreation Advisory Board.
Parks and Recreation Deputy Director Michele Elfers said the boards often have to cancel their meetings, either because they don’t have enough members in attendance or because there isn’t anything on the agenda.
“Treadwell has not met very often,” she said at an Assembly Committee of the Whole meeting earlier this month. “They probably missed over 60% of their meetings in the last three years, so their actions are pretty limited.”
The Aquatics Board and Treadwell Arena Advisory Board each have two vacancies. The Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee has one vacancy and three members whose terms end Tuesday.
“We’re not improving any citizens’ lives by having committees that aren’t real effective,” Assembly member Wade Bryson said at the committee meeting.
If the merger is approved Monday night, Assembly members would pick nine people to serve on the new Parks and Recreation Advisory Board by April 1. Current Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee members, as well as members of the dissolved boards, would all be encouraged to apply.
Juneau’s city Finance Director Jeff Rogers announced on Friday that he is resigning after four years on the job. Rogers joined the finance department in 2019 after leaving the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.
Rogers said the decision to leave was a personal one. He’s not sure where he’ll go next, but he’d like to be in the Pacific Northwest.
“I’m moving because I’d like to be in a little bigger community that’s a little more connected to the world,” he said. “I think the next phase of my personal life is somewhere else.”
City Manager Rorie Watt says he’s sad to see him go, but that Rogers plans to stay in Juneau through the city’s budget process.
“So I think we’re fine on the budget process,” Watt said. “There are just a lot of things that our finance director does outside of the budget process – provides a lot of financial analysis and advice and insight.”
Watt expects the job to be posted next week.
“In the interim, there are a lot of great employees in the department, and we’re just going to have to figure out how to do the work that he does,” he said.
Watt said worker turnover is an ongoing challenge across departments. City leaders have discussed offering signing bonuses and enhancing retirement benefits to attract and retain workers.
This story has been updated with comment from Jeff Rogers.
The Juneau School Board will plan the district’s budget around a moderate increase in state funding this year.
The base student allocation is the amount of money per student districts get from the state. For years, that number has been $5,930. It’s set to increase by $30 starting next school year, but lawmakers have proposed significantly bigger increases: Senate Bill 52 would further increase it by $1,000, and House Bill 65 would by $1,250.
Juneau School District leaders previously considered building next year’s budget around a $540 increase. But school board members worried that was too high of an expectation.
Board member Elizabeth Siddon proposed changing the expected increase to $400.
“Wherever we fall, we need to make decisions that can be malleable to whatever the change ends up being,” she said.
School board President Deedie Sorensen said even $400 was too much.
“This makes me nervous,” Sorensen said. “I’m really at $300, because that’s what feels safe to me.”
Board member Emil Mackey agreed. He said, considering Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s past vetoes of increases to education funding, the district should play it safe.
“If this fails, not only will all of us look like the laughing stock of Alaska, individually and collectively, but it will also lead to very rapid and catastrophic cuts in order to make it right in the end,” he said.
The board ultimately decided to plan for an increase of $400, with Sorensen and Mackey voting against it.
The first reading of the district’s proposed budget is set for March 7, and the final reading is set for March 14. In the meantime, the school board has several meetings scheduled to work on the budget.
