Rosemarie Alexander

The filing period for the Juneau Assembly and Board of Education opens Friday.  Candidates have until Aug. 18 to file with the city clerk to run for office.

Three assembly and two school board seats must be filled in the Oct. 7 election.

Getting more voters to turnout for that election is the goal of Juneau Votes. The non-partisan group formed earlier this year to increase voter education and participation, and includes a number of civic organizations as well as individuals.

KTOO, the Juneau Empire and KINY Radio will work with Juneau Votes on municipal election forums.

CBJ Library Director Robert Barr helped coordinate Juneau Votes. He believes many hands make light work.

“The whole idea is that we want as many organizations involved and participating as possible,” Barr’s says, “and I’m really happy that that includes the media organizations, organizations like the city clerk, and the CBJ assembly has blessed this, too.”

Only 19 percent of Juneau voters cast ballots in last year’s municipal election, a dreadful turnout especially for the capital city.  In the last decade, turnout has averaged a little over 32 percent, reaching a high of only 40 percent in 2007.

Juneau Empire Managing Editor Charles Westmoreland says pooling resources will help the news media do a better job of informing voters on the candidates and the issues.

“Part of our job is to remind them why it matters, why they should vote.  And when only 19 percent of the people in town turn out, there needs to be a lot of reminding,” Westmoreland says. “At this point, it’s not about page views or selling newspapers, there’s a public service about being in the media and that’s giving people both the information they want and the information they need.”

Juneau Votes and its media partners are proposing community lunch-time candidate forums in September leading up to the municipal election.  Then in October, the group will concentrate on Juneau legislative races. For the first time in years, candidates for the state Senate and two House seats will be opposed.

The proposed forums will be in addition to pre-election coverage already planned by the individual news organizations.

What is Juneau’s vision of housing for an aging population?

The Juneau Economic Development Council is asking that question as it conducts a market demand study of senior housing and support services.

The research is part of an effort underway to bring an assisted living facility to the capital city.

A group of senior citizens started the conversation last year. Now the effort includes JEDC, Senior Citizens Support Services, Alaska Mental Health Trust, and the City and Borough of Juneau.

The groups will share more information in a workshop from 6 to 9 p.m. Tuesday at Centennial Hall.

JEDC’s Margaret O’Neal says anyone with ideas and concerns should attend.

“Whether they’re seniors, have seniors in their family, whether they’re looking at retiring, look at figuring out what they can afford here versus elsewhere,” she says.

An assisted living facility is an intermediate level of care. The state-owned Juneau Pioneers’ Home is licensed as assisted living, and provides care for people who need help with medications, meals, housekeeping and other daily routines, or care related to Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia. It also has a long waiting list. People are encouraged to apply to become a resident long before they need assistance.

Independent senior housing is offered at Fireweed Place and Mountain View Apartments downtown as well as Smith Hall in the Mendenhall Valley.

Wildflower Court near Bartlett Regional Hospital is Juneau’s only 24-hour nursing care facility.

More than 100 volunteers on Friday joined CBJ crews to pull weeds, sweep, hose, scrub and pick up what some estimate to be thousands of cigarette butts.

“I think everyone picked up cigarette butts,” said 9-year-old Adara Allen.

She was a bit grossed out by all the cigarette butts that litter downtown Juneau.

“We scrubbed benches and I scrubbed railings. We picked up a ton of trash. Like a lot of cigarette butts. Almost all of it was that,” she said.

Adara and her 12-year-old sister Tsifira Kiehl joined their dad, Assemblyman Jesse Kiehl, in the cleanup.

“Adara found a whole milk jug, partly full,” Tsifira said. “Mostly I scrubbed benches and railings and stuff. I also picked up a lot of stuff, including cans, broken glass, cigarette butts.”

Cigarette butt litter is the byproduct of Juneau’s indoor smoking ban, despite the number of receptacles that line city sidewalks.

Alicia Smith was scrubbing a butt receptacle on South Franklin Street. Her son Joel also had a scrub brush.

“Right now I’m just scrubbing the lamp post down,” he said. “I just wanted to help clean up downtown.”

Business owner Bruce Denton came up with the idea for a cleanup as part of an effort to improve the heart of the capital city. He’s been joined by an informal coalition of business and property owners, downtown residents, the Glory Hole and social service agencies.

Denton took the proposal to CBJ Parks and Recreation, which welcomed the help. The city provided tools, cleaners, buckets, garbage bags, and rubber gloves. Some volunteers showed up with their own favorite tools and Juneau businesses donated other supplies.

They met at Pocket Park and worked along Front, Seward and Franklin streets, and Marine Way to the Willoughby district.

The small army of workers included a who’s who of city officials, a legislator, business owners and employees, a myriad of Juneau residents and some homeless folks.

Deborah Harris has been in Juneau for about a month and is living at the Glory Hole, Juneau’s emergency shelter and soup kitchen.

Harris was washing the historical interpretive sign in Marine Park.

“So this morning we’re just getting’ all the mold and the grime and everything off and scrapin’ it up,” she said.

CBJ Parks and Landscape Superintendent George Schaaf was working in Marine Park, too. He said it’s one of the hardest places in downtown to keep up.

“You know a million people come through here every year, plus everything that just happens on a daily basis, so it’s more than we’re able to take care of right now,” Schaaf said.

Volunteer Mike Patterson organized the Willoughby Avenue group, where they found the usual trash and a lot of Styrofoam.

“And I don’t know where that came from, but it was everywhere,” Patterson said.

He said it shouldn’t require a small army to pick up litter, which ought not be there in the first place.

“If everybody does their part and just picks up litter and puts it in one of the many garbage receptacles we have around Juneau then it doesn’t have to get to that state again,” Patterson said. “It just takes people caring.”

About 11 o’clock, the volunteers arrived back at Pocket Park, stripped off the rubber gloves and enjoyed music and a thank-you picnic for their efforts.

“The last time I saw Gunakadeit Park this clean was when it was built,” said CBJ Parks and Recreation Director Brent Fischer.

Fischer said keeping the capital city clean should be a community effort.

“If we have community support like this, we can get it done. From the city’s standpoint, we can’t do it alone,” he said.

Fischer is already looking ahead to the next scour and scrub.

“I hope we can do this in the spring time, so get your rubber gloves, get your tools out, get your brushes and come back.”

Denton is planning another cleanup after the cruise ships leave this fall to focus on private property, including painting some downtown buildings that could use a facelift.

Original story:

Downtown Juneau is a lot cleaner today thanks to more than 100 volunteers who joined city crews to sweep, hose and scrub streets and sidewalks.

Juneau residents as well as the homeless joined city officials and landscape crews for the three-hour cleanup. It started at Gunakadeit Park, also known as pocket park, then wound along Front, Seward and Franklin streets to the Willoughby district.

Bridget Smith spent the first hour scrubbing dirt and moss from a forgotten park post.

“As citizens we all have a collective responsibility to make our community better, to make our state better, to make our nation better and this is part of it. And I am so happy to see so many people here,” Smith said.

The Downtown Improvement Group hopes to join the city and borough for another cleanup this fall, at the end of the cruise ship season.

Editor’s note: In the original story, Bridget Smith was mis-named Deborah. We regret the error.

A downtown cleanup begins at 8 o’clock Friday morning at Pocket Park on the corner of Front and Franklin streets.

It’s the first organized effort of an informal downtown improvement group to spruce up Juneau’s core as well as tackle some of the bigger social issues that sometimes make the area an uncomfortable place to be.

 “We’re going to kind of clean the town up.”

Brent Fischer, director of CBJ Parks and Recreation, says volunteers are welcome.

“We’re going to pick up trash, we’re going to pull some weeds, we’re going to clean light posts, trash cans, and it’s a great opportunity to help out in the community,” he says.

Fischer helped downtown business owner Bruce Denton organize the cleanup. Denton’s efforts to mobilize a group of business and property owners have gotten the attention of key city and borough staff, the Juneau Police Department and Juneau legislators.

The work begins with a broom and a brush.

“We’ve done a walk around with staff from public works, streets department, parks and rec, docks and harbors, and tried to identify things they can help with,” Denton says. “Our intent was to try and do some of the stuff that they normally do so that they can do stuff that they don’t ever have time to do.”

CBJ Community Development Director Hal Hart has already identified tasks for the CDD team.

“We’ll do some bench cleaning, we’re going to do some moss cleaning underneath benches, and remove graffiti, those kinds of things,” he says.

While city officials welcome such volunteer efforts in these days of tight budgets, Hart says it’s the partnerships they foster that  are important.

“What it takes many times is a Bruce Denton or a catalytic person that makes connections between different groups and as they do that everybody pitches in,” he says. “Perhaps by identifying those things that have been left undone for a while we can prioritize them.”

Kirby Day with Princess Cruises has helped organize about 40 volunteers from the Tourism Best Management Practices group, which represents 60 Juneau businesses.

“It’s not only important for the visitors that come to town, it’s important for all of us who live here and have pride in our city,” he says,”and I think that’s what Bruce’s group is trying to impart.”

Parks and Recreation director Fischer says anyone who would like to help out should meet at Gunakadeit Park, also known as Pocket Park, at 8 a.m. on Friday. After a quick meeting, workers will disperse with their assignments.

“If you can bring some buckets and brushes and brooms from your house, that helps us. We have plenty of trash bags and rubber gloves,” he says.

Pocket Park — next to the burned out Gastineau Apartments – is a symbolic place to start the cleanup, Denton says.

“The reason for meeting at Gunakadeit Park, it’s like OK, let’s take it back,” he says.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            The park has become a favorite spot for Juneau street people to congregate and drink, and the resulting behaviors keep others out.

The street people can’t just be swept away and the Downtown Improvement Group is beginning to talk about those issues, too.

In the meantime, Denton says he hopes a hundred people show up ready to attack the easier stuff.

Editor’s Note: KTOO continues its series on downtown issues on Friday, with a look at permanent housing for the homeless who have substance abuse issues.

The Auke Bay roundabout is supposed to be done by the end of the week.

“Almost over,” project manager Dan Noziska says with a laugh.

The Alaska Department of Transportation engineer says the public has not been shy in commenting on the very visible project.

“It was hard to take a T-intersection and turn it into this roundabout. It’s kind of like remodeling your house. You’re living in it and still have to live with the mess,” he says.

Work began on the traffic circle last July, and was supposed to have been done before winter started. But the project required a lot of fill material and in September it was discovered the soil in the area probably couldn’t handle the fill without settling.

“That issue was not discovered until we starting construction and it should have been during design, and then the whole project schedule would have revolved around that, because you have to let the material settle,” he says.

So DOT delayed the project to give the fill material time to settle.

“And lo and behold it didn’t really settle, but some of the projections by our geotechnical people were that it could have settled,” he says. “If that had been the case that would have been a worse situation to spend all that money to build that concrete circle and curb and gutter, and then have the thing settle.”

Noziska says the current contract with Miller Construction called for completing the roadway part of the project on July 15, but that’s been pushed to Friday.

“There still may be some signing  and things like that, and painting, but the pavement itself should all be down,” he says. At least “that’s what the goal is.”

Noziska knows motorists will be relieved.

The  state-funded project, from acquiring right-of-way to completion, will total nearly $8 million, about $1 million over estimates, Noziska says. Contractor Miller Construction Co. was awarded $5.032 million for construction.

Juneau voters will be asked in October if an empowered board should be created to run both city-owned swimming pools.

The Assembly Monday approved a ballot proposition to establish such a board in the City and Borough charter.

The idea has been around several years — since the inception of the Dimond Park Aquatic Center — but got new life in April when the city was cutting the budget and suggested shutting down the Augustus Brown pool.

Both pools are run by the CBJ Department of Parks and Recreation. A volunteer Aquatic Facilities Advisory Board offers advice.

“We on the advisory board believe the empowered board is a superior model to the advisory board,” said vice chair Bob Storer.

Storer said such an operating board would have the ability to raise revenue outside of city taxes and user fees, and decisions would be made in a more public process.

“The users would come; they would have the opportunity to hear the conflicts of users and budget and things like that, and it would be in a public arena,” he said.

Glacier Swim Club Board President Patty Ray told the Assembly that an empowered board could run the pools better than the city.

“As a user group our experience has been one of increased user fees every year, reduced pool time, reduced access and I understand that those things are necessary given our budget considerations, but I also think an empowered board will have a bit better ability to efficiently run our pools,” Ray said.

Eaglecrest Ski Area has become the model for the proposed aquatics board. An Eaglecrest board of directors sets operating policy and hires the manager. While Eaglecrest has reached about 70 percent cost recovery, it will always have city general fund support.

That means the Assembly can tinker with its budget.

Assembly member Jesse Kiehl said the board model doesn’t really protect an enterprise from budget cuts.

“In a tough budget situation this year we took a highly successful board that’s met its operating budget cost-recovery targets for several years and we whacked their operating budget. And then we went ahead and whacked their capital budget, too. So if anyone finds themselves under the impression that the pools are protected by an enterprise board, I encourage you to look at our recent history,” Kiehl said.

Though the empowered aquatics board got the Assembly’s support, Kiehl and other members said they don’t have enough information to tell voters whether or not it’s a good idea. As Finance chair Karen Crane said, “The devil’s in the details.”

The issue will be on the October 7^th municipal election ballot. Voters will be asked if the city charter should be amended to allow the Assembly to actually create to new aquatics board.

Meanwhile, the Assembly decided to hold off on a proposal to put Treadwell Arena under the Eaglecrest board.

Both the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board and the Eaglecrest board said the idea was too vague.

Mike Stanley is chairman of the Eaglecrest board.

“There’s too many issues, too many questions about what this would all mean. Not only for Eaglecrest, but also for Treadwell,” Stanley said.

In a letter to the Assembly, the board laid out numerous questions, just the beginning of those that would need to be answered before the ski area board could assume control of the ice arena.

The Assembly decided to create a task force to come up with the answers and a report  by February. The Assembly plans to address the issue again next March as it begins working on the CBJ budget.