Quinton Chandler, KTOO

Juneau School District is close to putting negotiations with its teachers and staff to bed for the next three years.

According to officials, the district is made up of three main groups of employees: about 350 teachers, 300 support staff and 19 administrative staff. Separate three-year contracts have been negotiated between each group’s union and the district.

Ted VanBronkhorst, the district’s director of human resources, said the agreements will give a sense of certainty in a time of fiscal uncertainty.

“That allows us some real breathing room as far as knowing what our costs are going to be, and establishing a budget, and being able to make good plans for the future,” VanBronkhorst said.

Juneau Education Association President Dirk Miller also said having a three-year agreement is largely good for teachers.

“We have been negotiating a lot of short-term, one-year contracts. In fact, this is the second contract we were negotiating this year in my term as JEA president. It’s nice to step away from the bargaining table and now we can teach,” Miller said.

He said most of the district’s teaching staff approved the negotiated contract, but the vote wasn’t unanimous. He said some objected that teacher pay schedules won’t keep up with inflation and health care cost increases, and there’s worry over how the state’s fiscal policy will change in the near future.

“Agreeing to a long-term contract locks us in. We don’t really know what the fiscal climate will look like in two years,” Miller said.

He said many teachers’ associations around the state haven’t committed to a contract because of that uncertainty.

The president of Juneau Education Support Staff said their contract with the district is a good compromise.

Each union’s contract has been approved by the Juneau School Board except for the Juneau School Administrative Association’s. VanBronkhorst expects the school board to approve that agreement during a special meeting on Wednesday.

A Saturday morning car crash culminated in the death of a 63-year-old driver and about $80,000 in damage to the house he ran into.

Police believe Craig Stephen Temanson was travelling south on Julep Street when his truck drifted off the road, through a ditch, two driveways, a large flowerbed and smashed into a house in the 3700 block of Julep Street.

A Juneau Police Department press release said an off-duty officer was alerted by neighbors and found Temanson unconscious inside the vehicle. The officer started giving Temanson CPR and was able to remove him from the truck with help from another officer and a bystander.

The press release said officers continued giving Temanson CPR until Capital City Fire/Rescue workers arrived and took over. Temanson was taken to Bartlett Regional Hospital where he was pronounced dead. No one inside the house was injured.

Authorities don’t suspect alcohol to be a factor in the crash and an autopsy has been requested.

A Juneau man who ran over a black bear called it in a day too late and now he’s headed to court. According to an Alaska State Troopers dispatch, Thomas Willis, 25, hit an adult black bear on the Glacier Highway back in April. The bear was impaled on his truck’s tow hook and was lodged under its front axle.

The report said Willis didn’t stop and dragged the bear back to his house about 2 miles away.

He finally saw the dead bear sticking out from the front of his truck as he was preparing to leave for work the next day. Willis then reported the bear to troopers and said he couldn’t dislodge it.

Alaska Wildlife Troopers said they helped Willis remove the bear but the distance the animal was dragged and the length of time it had been dead made the meat unsalvageable.

They cited Willis Thursday for not contacting them as soon as possible after a collision with a big game animal. He has been summoned to appear at district court in Juneau.

Correction: The original version of this story misstated Willis was cited last week. Willis was actually cited Thursday, June 16.

Alaskans were outraged after a group of oil companies based in Texas went bankrupt and stuck them with the bill. The name Buccaneer is equivalent to dirt in some corners of Southcentral Alaska. While drilling for oil and gas in Cook Inlet two years ago, a Buccaneer Energy subsidiary was ruined in a corporate bankruptcy. They left behind dozens of businesses that want their money.

“Everything was fine to the end. They filed bankruptcy and still owed us about eight grand,” Lloyd Moore said.

Lloyd Moore owns Moore & Moore Services, a garbage collection company based in Homer. He leapt at the chance to work for Buccaneer. The company brought a jackup rig into the Homer Port and they were contracting out work up and down the Kenai Peninsula.

“We were supplying a portable restroom service to them out on the deep-water dock, also dumpsters and hand wash stations for them,” Moore said.

He said the trustee of Buccaneer’s estate sent him a letter demanding he give back about $70,000 of what Buccaneer did pay him. The trustee’s demand is backed up by tax law most people don’t even know about.

It lets the trustee collect money paid by Buccaneer up to 90 days before its bankruptcy so the money can be shared with other people the company owes. If Moore pays up he may never see his money again.

“Right now, I’m standing by my principles that it’s wrong. I should have tried to work a settlement like the city of Homer,” Moore said.

The city of Homer earned thousands by mooring Buccaneer’s jackup rig in the Homer Port. It ended up paying back almost $9,000 to Buccaneer’s trustee, about half the original amount demanded.

Homer officials and a lot of business owners like Moore feel cheated by Buccaneer and they’re angry. Some said they expected a company that was vetted by the state and received state tax credits to be safe to do business with.

That anger is why Rep. Paul Seaton of Homer suggested the legislature find a way to protect Alaska businesses from another Buccaneer. He wants oil companies to setup surety bonds. They’re like insurance policies for business deals.

“The state would require when somebody got an oil and gas license in Alaska that they would either have to post $250,000 cash or they would have to get, basically an insurance policy for $250,000 that said they’ll pay their bills to unsecured creditors,” Seaton said.

Unsecured creditors loan money or services on good faith.

“What generally happens in a bankruptcy is the secured creditors want to get all the money. And so they have priority,” Seaton said.

Buccaneer has debt across the globe. The bankruptcy signaled the start of a race between creditors to get as much as they can and unsecured creditors are at the back of the line. Money taken from Moore could be paid to someone as far away as Australia.

Surety bonds are supposed to be a safety net for the future. Seaton said the bonds are going to be setup to pay small business owners first, but Moore said $250,000 won’t make a dent.

“It is not enough money. Again, like I said, it wouldn’t even cover Port Graham. And Port Graham is just one of probably hundreds of unsecured creditors in the local area and on the Kenai Peninsula,” Moore said.

Port Graham Corp. was created by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act to serve the Sugpiaq people on the Kenai Peninsula.

Moore said the real problem is in the bankruptcy law that allows lawyers to shakedown businesses for cash. He wants changes made on the federal level.

“Or they’re going to have to have $10 million or $100 million bond before it’s really going to help make sure everybody gets paid,” Moore said.

Rep. Seaton said $250,000 would have taken care of a number of Homer’s businesses, but he admitted the number was a compromise to get something through the legislature.

“This was I think a good provision. If you get it up too high then you get resistance from people, saying well people have to post half a million dollars or get this other insurance policy. So anyway, yeah, it’s a balancing act to try and protect smaller businesses but it’s not going to cover everything,” Seaton said.

He said people need to be aware of who they’re doing business with and protect themselves.

The surety bond rule is included in the oil and gas tax credits reform bill the legislature sent to the governor.

After his Buccaneer experience, Moore is wary of the industry. But that didn’t stop him from signing up to work with BlueCrest Energy, another oil company drilling in Cook Inlet to the north of Homer and Anchor Point. He said if he wants to grow his business he can’t turn down the money players like BlueCrest are willing to pay.

Editor’s note: Quinton Chandler started working on this story for KBBI in Homer before coming to KTOO.

Members of Juneau’s LGBTQ community celebrated the beginning of Pride week with a picnic at a local park. The festive mood was darkened by collective mourning for victims of a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando early Sunday. At least 50 people were killed.

Jeff Rogers said he learned about the tragedy earlier that morning and it blew him away.

“It hits home awfully deep for the queer community during Pride to see an event like that. Our heart goes out to the victims, and the families, and everybody involved,” Rogers said.

Rogers said the shooting in Orlando reminds him why the LGBTQ community celebrates Pride.

“We celebrate Pride in memory of and as a commemoration of Stonewall where gays and trans-women were victimized and brutalized in night clubs in New York,” Rogers said.

The Stonewall Riots of 1969 are widely recognized as the start of the modern gay civil rights movement. The riots began when gay men and women resisted arrest in New York’s Greenwich Village during a police raid of the Stonewall Inn, a well-known gay bar.

Rogers said in a way, Pride has always been about overcoming adversity and will continue to be as the country recovers from the shock of the attack.

Richard Carter and Heather LaVerne were also struck by the timing of the attack.

“You can’t be selfish except in hindsight but I felt a little bit selfish to be out celebrating when other people were experiencing that,” Carter said.

Laverne said, “I woke up and read an article about it and started doing all this research, reading and looking to see what I can find out, but at the same time, I mean, it doesn’t help you wrap your head around it. You can’t read enough to understand why somebody would do something like that.”

State Representatives Sam Kito, Cathy Muñoz and Juneau Deputy Mayor Jesse Kiehl offered words of encouragement to picnic goers and denounced the attack in Orlando. Kiehl and Muñoz highlighted policy changes they’ve proposed to support LGBTQ rights.

Muñoz is a sponsor of a bill to prohibit discrimination against sexual orientation in the state and Kiehl has proposed a similar Juneau ordinance.

“Right now there’s nothing in Juneau law that prohibits discrimination based on race, or sex, or sexual orientation or pretty much anything else; and that’s a gap in our law right here in the capital city,” Kiehl said.

Kiehl said his ordinance would plug gaps in protection on all those fronts as well as for marital status, age, disability and gender identity.

“It will apply in housing, it will apply in credit, it will apply in the workforce and it will apply to public accommodation,” Kiehl explained.

Kiehl said he’s been told by a number of people that discrimination is a problem in Juneau.

Richard Carter agreed that discrimination should be outlawed in Juneau. He says everyone no matter their color, sex or sexual orientation is mindful of whether the community they move or travel to will be tolerant.

“Even if you’re just going on vacation out of the country you pick countries that you know you’re not going to be attacked or oppressed in,” Carter said. “I’ve been called faggot on the streets of Juneau but it doesn’t happen very often and I don’t feel in danger here and I don’t feel unwelcome here. I think overall Juneau’s been an amazing place.”

Kiehl’s ordinance is scheduled for introduction to the Juneau City Assembly Monday. The public will have an opportunity to testify on the ordinance on Tuesday, June 21.

A suspected bomb was reported to the Juneau Police Department Friday afternoon. Sgt. Jeremy Weske found the device in the Switzer Village area.

“It had the appearance of a homemade explosive. Somewhere between, in appearance I guess, somewhere between a pipe bomb and an M-80,” Weske said.

Weske said the Explosive Ordinance Disposal team was ordered to secure the device.

“Put it into a bomb trailer, which is what they use to be able to safely move an explosive. (They) moved it to another location away from any people or residences and then rendered the device safe,” Weske said.

Weske wouldn’t comment on who was suspected to have made the device and he wouldn’t speculate on how powerful it was. He said police don’t suspect malicious intent based on the device’s location, but said it was still dangerous.

“Any of those things if used incorrectly can hurt you. This device certainly could have caused you some damage if it was used incorrectly or in an unsafe manner,” Weske said.

He said anyone with information on the device should contact the Juneau Police Department.