Lisa Phu

Rorie Watt will be Juneau’s new city manager. He’ll replace Kim Kiefer, who retires April 30.

Watt said besides the budget, he anticipates spending a lot of time on housing issues. He said the new job will be intimidating, but he’s excited to dig into the complicated work.

“I just think that the manager’s job is the juggler of so many different things. I think it’s just going to be fun. I don’t think it’s going to be easy. But if you think about something like this and you have your heart and your mind into doing the best you can for the community, I just can’t think of anything that’s going to be more fun and rewarding,” he said.

Watt, 51, has worked for the City and Borough of Juneau for 22 years. He directs the city’s Engineering and Public Works departments. The two departments merged in January 2015 as a cost-savings measure. He became engineering director in 2008 and has served in a number of other city roles.

The Juneau Assembly chose Watt out of a pool of 56 candidates spanning two application periods. He didn’t apply the first time.

The other finalist was Fred Parady, deputy commissioner for the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development.

Mayor Mary Becker was on the city manager hiring subcommittee. She said Watt was the natural choice.

“The assembly just saw the security and the consistency in keeping someone who was coming from inside who had so much knowledge about what we need to do,” Becker said.

Watt will be responsible for about 600 employees and an annual city budget of about $80 million.

His first day on the job is April 18 and his annual salary will be $164,998.

Watt says he’ll work with city staff to figure out who will be the next director of Engineering and Public Works.

Travelers in Juneau are seeing extremely low flight prices to destinations in the Midwest and East Coast, many available through the summer.

Travel analyst Scott McMurren gave some examples of roundtrip fares offered by Delta Air Lines.

“Juneau to Minneapolis for $361. New York for $365, which is insane. The fares dropped by $100 to $200 overnight. And adjusted for inflation, really, Juneau has never ever seen these exceptional rates,” McMurren said.

McMurren said Alaska Airlines has matched Delta’s fare between Juneau and Seattle at $208. To most other destinations, Alaska prices are at least $100 to $200 higher.

McMurren said Delta is hoping to convert Alaska fliers.

“What they’re trying to do is leverage their global network. Alaska doesn’t fly between Juneau and Richmond, Virginia. They don’t fly from Juneau to Indianapolis. They don’t fly from Juneau to Sioux Falls. Now, Alaska has added 26 new destinations from Seattle, so they fly to a lot more destinations than they used to, but they do not fly to all destinations that Delta does,” McMurren said.

These low rates are Juneau specific, said McMurren. Out of Anchorage and Fairbanks, fares have fallen but not to the same level.

Delta recently cut two weekly flights out of Juneau, but will resume daily coverage in May.

While some Delta fares are lower than Alaska, McMurren reminds travelers of other differences to consider when booking flights, like baggage fees, mileage programs and dependability. Delta still does not offer any in-state flights.

A couple gave up their dog to Juneau’s animal shelter on a Saturday morning in December. That same evening, they had a change of heart and wanted the dog back, but it was too late. The dog had already been euthanized.

Gastineau Humane Society called the dog aggressive and not a viable candidate for adoption. The Juneau couple wishes they’d been notified before the dog was put down.

Gordon Garlock said Coco, a long-haired Chihuahua mix, slept in the bed with him and his wife every night.

“She was just our housedog. She stayed in the house all the time and she’d be sitting at the windowsill waiting for us to come home every day and be so excited. She was just a wonderful dog,” he said.

The 3-year-old small dog was great with their grandkids, Garlock said. They’d had Coco for two and a half years, but with Garlock and his wife retiring, moving to Nevada and planning to travel a lot, he said they made the decision to give the dog up. Garlock said he thought the shelter would find a nice home for Coco.

“Later that evening we got to thinking, ‘Boy, we’d just miss her too much.’ We talked it over and decided, ‘Well, heck, if it’s some place she can’t go with us, we just won’t go there,'” Garlock said.

When Garlock’s wife went back to the shelter Monday morning to bring Coco home, she was told the dog had been euthanized. Garlock wishes the shelter would notify former owners before an animal is put down.

“It seems like at least a courtesy call before you did something like that. You could at least called and asked if we wanted to make sure we didn’t want to get her back before you put her down,” Garlock said.

According to the shelter’s paperwork, Coco was dropped off around 9:45 a.m. on Dec. 12. Later that same day, the dog had been euthanized.

Gastineau Humane Society Executive Director Matt Musslewhite said what happened to Coco isn’t outside of normal operating procedures. Under certain circumstances, the nonprofit shelter will euthanize animals.

“Of course, if they pose a threat of safety to our staff, they’re obviously not going to be good candidates for potential adopters. We just can’t allow an animal that could possibly bite a child to be adopted out,” Musslewhite said.

Shelter records indicate Coco was growling upon entering the shelter. Staff members were unable to remove her leash or examine her because she was “snapping,” “lunging” and “charging.” A vet technician noted Coco “tried to bite her repeatedly.”

Garlock indicated in shelter paperwork Coco had exhibited aggressive behavior toward strangers. But he said Coco had never bitten anyone.

Animal control staff moved Coco to a dangerous dog kennel, according to shelter records. A vet tech originally wanted to give Coco “a few days to settle down.” But later that same day, the vet tech requested Coco be euthanized. The vet tech thought the risk of Coco biting someone was “too great” and didn’t think “she would ever be a candidate for adoption.”

Musslewhite was not involved in this particular case, but he said there’s no advantage to holding an aggressive dog in the shelter for multiple days in hopes of improvement.

“They get more and more aggressive as time goes on, so the longer that you hold them, the more they are a threat to animals around them, their own welfare. These animals can injure themselves in the kennels or they can injure staff members,” Musslewhite said.

A Juneau resident relayed part of Coco’s story on Facebook. She wrote, “I can’t believe they would kill a perfectly healthy dog.” Many people were outraged and there were hundreds of comments. Musslewhite said some shelter employees received death threats.

Gastineau Humane Society takes in animals from all over northern Southeast Alaska. There’s no time limit for how long an animal can stay in the shelter – some have stayed for as long as two years. Last year, 311 animals were adopted out.

Musslewhite said the vast majority of euthanasia cases involve animals who are at the end of their lives. The shelter euthanized 50 animals in 2015. This year so far, three animals have been put down. Most dogs that are relinquished to the shelter go through a medical exam and a behavior assessment before being put in the adoption program.

Musslewhite said senior staff members determine if dogs with behavior issues can be rehabilitated.

“The success of the animal and the welfare of the animal are our primary concern with this,” he said.

Musslewhite said it’s not uncommon for people to change their minds after relinquishing an animal. But once someone signs an owner release form, the animal becomes property of the humane society. That person loses the right to information about the animal. Musslewhite said if you were a new owner of an adopted pet, it would be unfair if the shelter gave your information to a previous owner.

“It’s important for us to draw a line there and say, ‘When you give up the rights to an animal, you give up the rights,’ and trust that we’re going to provide the care for the animal even if that means doing the humane thing and euthanizing it if it’s not a candidate for adoption,” Musslewhite said.

The owner release form that Coco’s owner signed did not explicitly lay out the possibility of euthanasia.

Musslewhite said the form was updated since then so that it does, though he said the change was not done in response to Coco’s case.

The Juneau School District is facing a sixth year of budget cuts, and it’s handling the budget process a little differently than in recent years.

Superintendent Mark Miller laid out the challenge at a public forum on the school budget last week.

“If we rolled our current budget over into next year with nothing different, just rolled this year’s budget into next year and did exactly what we’re doing now, we’d be about $1.2 million short,” Miller said.

In the past, the question was, what should we cut?

“And so we’re trying to do it from another way which is if we start with a basic budget or just if we were to do what we had to, to keep the doors open, then what more could we add to get to our final number?” Miller said.

This basic budget totals just over $60 million. On top of teachers and principals, it include items like utilities, insurance and custodial services. Under this bare bones budget, an average kindergarten, first or second grade classroom would have 25 students. Current class sizes average 22.5. Funding-wise, that’s a difference of about half a million dollars.

The district anticipates being able to spend an additional $4 million.

Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School principal Molly Yerkes said her site council struggled with what to prioritize. Naturally, the group wanted to focus on middle school. Instead, its number one priority is keeping K-2 class sizes small.

“We really find at the middle school level that students who have a solid reading foundation, which they receive at those primary grade levels, it costs so much less to teach students to read at that age than it does in middle school or high school,” Yerkes said.

Juneau-Douglas High School principal Paula Casperson, representing all three Juneau high school principals, painted a bleak picture of what more budget reductions will mean.

“It isn’t a stretch to say that we believe that we could very quickly be at the point where we can only offer classes to students who need them in pursuit of their diploma, that the free and public education that has allowed so many generations of students to access classes above and beyond the 23 credits may not be an option for our schools in the future,” she said.

The high schools are desperate to hold on to any full-time employees, Casperson said, including two high school counselors that aren’t in the bare bones budget.

“While we have long supported programs and add-on supplemental things, such as drug testing for our student athletes or intramural programs for our school days, we don’t feel like we can at this point, because they don’t have the connection into the classrooms,” Casperson said.

The district is offering the public another opportunity to provide input on the budget at 6 p.m. Monday at Thunder Mountain High School. Comments can also be emailed to budgetinput@juneauschools.org.

The district plans to finalize the budget at the end of March.

A new documentary-style series by the Smithsonian Channel goes behind the scenes with investigators trying to figure out why planes crashed near Juneau, Knik Arm and other Alaska locations.

A producer of “Alaska Aircrash Investigations” says it’s not another reality show. The TV crew had unprecedented access to information that’s not yet public.

From July to September of last year, a television crew from New York City embedded with the National Transportation Safety Board’s office in Anchorage.

Alaska Chief Clint Johnson said the crew got unprecedented access to seven different accidents around the state. When the general public was outside the yellow tape, the camera crew was inside.

“I think it’s very important to be very transparent (about) the way that we do our investigations. We are a public entity and I think the public has the right to be able to see exactly how we do our job,” Johnson said.

He said the goal of the agency is to investigate accidents and prevent them from happening again. The show is another way for the agency to get those messages out.

Alaska had about 80 airplane accidents in 2015, resulting in 22 deaths, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

The Smithsonian Channel is calling the series a documentary but according to Johnson, to get access the production company agreed to give NTSB some control over the final content. Johnson said he and members of top NTSB management in Washington, D.C., watched rough cuts of the series.

“We had the ability to be able to screen and view and add comments and remove some things to make sure it’s not only technically correct but above all, what we’re trying to do is be sympathetic to the families,” Johnson said.

Tim Evans, one of the show’s executive producers for the Smithsonian Channel, said the TV crew was rolling when NTSB talked with grieving family members. He said producers had to get permission to use the footage. They also conducted their own interviews.

All the crashes in the series involved fatalities, often of the pilot.

“The interesting takeaway on working with the family members is all of them were obviously deeply affected and grieving, but each one of them said, ‘You know, this person wanted to fly and they knew what they were getting into and it’s a terrible tragedy but they loved flying and they loved Alaska,'” Evans said.

Episode descriptions allude to information that hasn’t been released to the public. The description of the episode on last July’s Wings of Alaska crash that occurred between Juneau and Hoonah says, “recovered in-flight data reveals an unusual flight path, which might uncover the true cause of the tragedy.”

NTSB’s Johnson said that is accurate information, “It’s a factual data dump. We’re not saying what probable cause is and we’re specifically trying to stay away from that, but obviously the facts of the case will be portrayed.”

Johnson said the crashes in the series are still active investigations. Final reports are still months out. But any information and supporting documents revealed in the show will be released to the public prior to the show airing.

“We need to make sure that all that information is available to the public not only through the series but also through the NTSB website. That’s one thing from an administrative standpoint that we need to make sure we release beforehand and we’re in the process of doing that right now,” Johnson said.

The six-part series premiers March 13 with an hour-long episode titled, “Juneau Flight Down.” Other episodes will feature crashes near Trapper Creek, Bethel, Kasilof, Iliamna, Knik Arm and Big Lake.

Five people have applied for the vacant District 1 Juneau Assembly seat. They are Albert Clough, Cheryl Jebe, Arnold Liebelt, Douglas Mertz and Barbara Sheinberg.

Clough was an assembly member from 1992 to 1995 and would like to serve again on a temporary basis.

“As a resident here for pushing 50 years, I think I’m fairly conversant with what’s going on around town and I think I can help keep the city moving along in the proper direction at the proper pace working with the team that’s down there and then come fall, go back to doing other things,” Clough said.

He retired last year as the Department of Transportation’s Southeast Regional Director. Clough served on the city’s Eaglecrest board, airport board and is chair of the Eaglecrest Foundation. He’s also a seasonal pilot for Wings Airways.

Jebe ran for mayor in 2012 against Merrill Sanford. She says she didn’t run in the last municipal election because she supported Greg Fisk.

“I’ve done budget surveys for the borough as a part of the League of Women Voters and I just feel that I want to step forward and serve in whatever capacity I can to help my community,” she said.

Jebe is retired. She worked 17 years with the state in different capacities, including as an associate attorney with the Division of Retirement and Benefits. Jebe also worked several years for the Alaska Public Employees Association. She’s previously served on the Docks and Harbors Board.

Liebelt sees the vacancy as an opportunity to get involved in city government. He says Juneau is facing pressing issues.

“The state fiscal challenges right now are definitely going to trickle down to communities and Juneau is going to be impacted by that as well. I want to make sure that we’re able to live within our means,” Liebelt said.

Liebelt worked for the state for 22 years, most recently as a policy analyst for the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget. He’s currently unemployed. Liebelt is on the city’s Douglas Advisory Board and has served as president of the Juneau-Douglas Ice Association.

Mertz says it’s time he put his experience with local government to good use. Mertz has been an attorney in Juneau since 1980.

“I’ve litigated and have dealt with legal issues for government and for private individuals and private businesses and in the course of that, I’ve come to know all the local issues pretty thoroughly so I can hit the ground running on service on the assembly,” Mertz said.

He worked for the state as an assistant attorney general for more than 15 years before starting Mertz Law in 1991. He says he’s semi-retired and can devote time to being on the assembly. Mertz is a former president of the Juneau World Affairs Council and of the Juneau Montessori Center board.

The assembly plans to interview the applicants Jan. 11 and make a final decision Jan. 12. The nominating period for the March 15 special election for mayor runs from Jan. 15 to Jan. 25.