Lisa Phu

Gastineau Elementary School closed its new playground equipment Thursday after discovering small wires in the rubber ground covering.

Kristin Bartlett is the school district’s public information officer.

“The material that is laid down underneath the playground equipment is small pieces of rubber so that if children fall off of the equipment, then they have a soft ground covering to land on, and in the little pieces of rubber, students discovered small hard wires. They’re sharp, sharp little wires.”

The playground equipment was checked by a CBJ safety officer Thursday morning, and Bartlett says Gastineau Elementary principal decided to close it. The school district’s maintenance department has constructed a temporary fence around the area until the problem is fixed.

CBJ engineering director Rorie Watt says the wires are probably from used car tires that are recycled to make the playground’s rubber ground covering.

“We’ve used the chip rubber all over town in other playgrounds and we haven’t run into this problem before.”

Watt says his department has talked to the manufacturer Site Lines Park and Playground Products out of Everett, Washington. Standard protocol is to go through the area with metal detectors and what are called “super magnets.”

“You take a metal detector and you calibrate the metal detector to the little pieces of wire that you found so you have it dialed to the right level of sensitivity. And then you walk through the area and when your metal detector goes off, you take the magnets and thoroughly drag them through the rubber, and they’re so strong that any metal will stick to them and you just sweep through the whole thing like that.”

Watt says the manufacturer has sent out the super magnets and anticipates Gastineau’s new playground equipment opening up sometime next week.

In the meantime, other parts of the playground, including a covered play area, ball field, swing set, climbing wall, and outdoor basketball courts are still open for student use.

Bartlett Regional Hospital’s CEO has been directed to take steps to address complaints made against the hospital’s senior management.

The hospital board of directors said in a statement released Wednesday, there must be better communication from CEO Chris Harff of its vision throughout the organization.

Allegations of a hostile work environment came forward last spring. The city hired Deborah Schorr of Schorr Advocacy & Investigative Service in early June to conduct an investigation. Both the CBJ assembly and Bartlett’s board of directors have held a number of closed door meetings in the past month to hear reports and discuss the investigation.

Bartlett’s community relations director Jim Strader says Harff’s plan has not been finalized yet.

“She still working with the board on working that out. They involve things like better communications, channels, making sure that that everyone is aware of decisions that are being made at the board level. There’s room to improve how we transmit a lot of that information to the staff at large.”

The board’s statement also discusses a plan to reduce 15 positions over the next year. Strader says that will not involve layoffs.

“Rather than creating the impression that certain positions are being targeted, the reduction in staff will now be focused on retirements and attrition, normal people leaving for different jobs.”

Strader says the hospital has been looking for ways to combine duties and jobs.

“For example, right now, our emergency room director is now handling cardio pulmonary rehabilitation, physical rehabilitation, as well as emergency department, so that’s three departments under one person. ”

Strader says a 15-position reduction has not been part of hospital budgets in recent years. He did not know how many positions have been eliminated since July 1.

“This is largely a budgetary concern based on our increased cost, our flat patient volumes, competition that we’re facing. This is what hospitals all over the country are going through. We’re trying to provide the best care we can as affordably and sustainably as possible.”

The statement released yesterday also said the hospital will remain a CBJ-owned and operated hospital. This was in response to rumors of a possible hospital sale.

The city and borough of Juneau is in the market for a new legislative lobbyist.

Long-time lobbyist Clark Gruening retired at the end of July after more than 25 years with the CBJ.

Mayor Merrill Sanford says Gruening helped Juneau on many important projects. “He was integral working on those different ways of combating the capital move issue, and that was three or four times, so those were all big, big important things for the city and borough of Juneau.”

The CBJ assembly Monday night was given a list of nine potential candidates. The “shortlist” was selected from a 61-page 2013 Lobbyist Directory put out by the Alaska Public Offices Commission.

The top four candidates are Linda Anderson from Fairbanks, Wendy Chamberlain from Juneau, Mark Hickey from Juneau, and Douglas resident Raymond Matiashowski.

City manager Kim Kiefer says the candidates have multiple municipal clients. “In discussion with the mayor, we thought they have experience already working with municipal clients, and so we looked at those that had more than one municipal client, and that’s how we came up with those four. And I have asked them if they’re interested and all four of them are interested.”

A subcommittee of assembly members Jesse Kiehl, Carlton Smith, and Randy Wanamaker will meet Friday morning and work with city manager Kiefer to decide how to move forward. For a professional service contract, the city will issue a request for proposals.

Sanford says the hope is to get a new CBJ legislative lobbyist on board within the next two months.

In his most recent contract with the city, lobbyist Clark Gruening was making $60,000 annually.

 

Glacier Bay Lodge will stay open, at least for another 2 years.

Several weeks of negotiations between National Park Service and the current concessionaires ended yesterday. This resulted in a 2-year extension of the contract held by Aramark and Huna Totem Corporation.

“That will keep the Glacier Bay Lodge open, keep the day tour boat running, as well as other services that they provide in the park, such as the restaurant and the gift shop,” explains John Quinley, spokesman for the National Park Service in Anchorage.

He says the extension begins in January 2014. Before it runs out, NPS plans to put out a new prospectus.

Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve received no bids on its previous proposal for a new 10-year concession contract in January.

Based on conversations with Aramark and other companies about why they didn’t bid, Quinley says reasons include costs of operation and maintenance.

“We’re going to be relooking at those numbers and seeing if there are maintenance tasks that perhaps were overstated, if there were things that would better belong on the park service’s side of the ledger, ways to get that work done less expensively perhaps. So we have a lot of work to do to rebuild a prospectus that will get some bidders,” he says.

Glacier Bay Lodge contains 56 rooms, which accounts for about half the lodging available in all of nearby Gustavus, a town of 450 residents.

JoAnn Lesh is president of the Gustavus Visitors Association and owns Gustavus Inn with her husband Dave. She and the association have been working on keeping the lodge open since the end of March.

“Everyone said it couldn’t be done,” she says. “I’m very excited that we will get a chance to have two years of stability for our economy here in Gustavus.”

Lesh says the association is holding a luncheon tomorrow at Glacier Bay Lodge to celebrate.

In an effort to spur more housing development, the CBJ assembly adopted an ordinance that would allow the city to defer property taxes if land is subdivided into three or more lots.

City manager Kim Kiefer says the ordinance was a priority of the housing committee.

“Say you have a 10 acre parcel and you create five different 2-acre lots, you can ask the city to not pay that additional property tax that would be charged for those five lots and defer them for up to five years.”

Prior to the five years coming up, tax deferral for each lot would also end once ownership is transferred or when a certificate of occupancy is issued.

The hope, says Keifer, is to open up more properties for housing development

“What it allows developers to do that have big parcels is to subdivide it and they don’t have to have the funding right up front to pay for those additional properties and the improvements to, say, get water and sewer to those properties. It allows them to push it to the end of the project instead of the front end.”

During public hearing of the ordinance, Alaska Renovators owner Alan Wilson said the motivating rationale behind the concept is to get lots on the market.

“Developers that sit on large tracks of land have historically in Juneau – by the time you get a subdivision developed and lots ready to go on the market, the market conditions have changed. You can’t sell your lots. The next thing you know, those lots get foreclosed upon and you end up losing your subdivision. West Juneau is a prime example. So the deferral is an attempt to keep that scenario from happening and repeating itself,” Wilson explained.

The ordinance is based on state legislation which went into effect July 2012. Keifer says, so far, only Fairbanks has the ordinance in place.

In a 7-2 vote, the CBJ assembly approved a three percent pay increase for city manager Kim Kiefer. That means Kiefer will be getting an annual salary of $149,350 with benefits retroactively effective April 1, 2013.

The merit increase was put forward by the city manager evaluation subcommittee made up of Mayor Merrill Sanford and assembly members Karen Crane and Carlton Smith.

Part of the committee’s recommendation is based on an evaluation process conducted by the CBJ human resources department.

“A 360-degree leadership evaluation allows the person being evaluated to see themselves from a variety of different angles,” explained human resources director Mila Cosgrove.

She said CBJ department directors, other city employees who directly report to the city manager, several community members outside city government who deal with the city manager, and assembly members were invited to anonymously fill out a survey.

It touched on five broad categories – professional competence, personal effectiveness, results orientation, interpersonal effectiveness, and organizational effectiveness. Examples of survey questions include how well Kiefer sets clear direction that aligns her team with the city’s strategy, and how well Kiefer fosters energy, enthusiasm, and commitment. Ratings were based on a 1-5 scale, 1 being poor, 5 outstanding.

Cosgrove said Kiefer also filled out the evaluation.

“The survey itself, you can take a look at and you can slice and dice it and you can say, ‘Well, here’s an overall rating of everybody who answered this question. Here’s how you rated yourself, here’s how your direct reports related to you in relationship to that question, etc.,’ so you get to see how different people view you.”

Cosgrove said the 360-degree survey is just part of the process to evaluate the city manager. The assembly also discussed the evaluation with Kiefer during executive session last month.

“It’s not only a look back but ideally an evaluation is a look forward, a chance to set goals and objectives and talk about what worked well last year, what might be tweaked, and how can everybody work most effectively moving forward.”

The evaluation process was one of three reasons cited by assembly member Randy Wanamaker for objecting to the merit pay increase.

“The evaluation process was flawed. There were issues identified in the evaluation that are not satisfactorily addressed by the suggestions for an improvement plan, and the improvement plan itself is so unclear, that it is neither fair to the citizens of the community, the assembly, or to the city manager,” he said.

Assembly member Jerry Nankervis also objected, but would not discuss his reasons in public.

Kiefer has been CBJ city manager since April 2012. Before that, she served seven years as deputy city manager and was acting manager for six months in 2009.

As city manager, Kiefer serves at the pleasure of the assembly and does not have a contract.