Recent News

The City and Borough of Juneau is finalizing an annexation petition to be filed with the state’s Local Boundary Commission for lands that Petersburg wants to include in a proposed borough.

Last night, the CBJ Assembly approved several maps to be included in the petition. They show 92.6 percent of the contested area is in the Alaska Department of Fish & Game’s Juneau Game Management Unit; 93.7 percent is in the U.S. Forest Service’s Juneau Ranger District; and 71.4 percent in the Juneau Recording District.

The area was previously identified for annexation to Juneau. It includes all the territory from the southern CBJ boundary and east to the Canadian border; the Tracy Arm / Ford’s Terror Wilderness and Endicott Arm as well as Holkam, Windham and Hobart bays.

Before now, the CBJ hadn’t filed for the area in deference to Juneau Native Corporation Goldbelt, which owns 30-thousand acres at Hobart Bay. Goldbelt hasn’t expressed a preference for which borough it wants to be in, now that there will be competing claims for the land.

Juneau Mayor Bruce Botelho says the Local Boundary Commission may still decide not to include it in either Petersburg or Juneau.

“But absent our intervention there will be only one petition asserting a claim over that land,” says Botelho.

October 26th is the deadline for submitting competing petitions and opposing briefs to the Local Boundary Commission. The assembly will introduce an ordinance to approve its petition at its regular meeting next Monday.

A resolution authorizing City Manager Rod Swope to apply for state funds to pay for half of a new Mendenhall Valley library is on its way to the Juneau Assembly.

On Monday, the assembly’s Public Works and Facilities Committee sent the resolution to the full panel for approval.

The nonprofit group Friends of the Juneau Public Libraries has committed one-million dollars to the project, which is estimated to cost at total of 14-million. Friends president Jeff Vogt says it’s important to get it done now, while state funding is available.

“If we let this slip by our fear is that instead of looking at a 7-million dollar project to the city – of which the Friends have already committed a million at least – if we let this slip by at this point in time it could slip by for a long, long time,” Vogt says.

In addition to the Friends money, the city could count the value of the land at Dimond Park, where the new library would be built, toward its half of the project. Juneau Library Director Barbara Berg says other funds could come from an extension of the city’s one-percent temporary sales tax, private foundations, and fundraising.

“There’s potential for Rasmussen [Foundation money]. The Library Endowment Board has approximately 300-thousand dollars available at this time in its major project fund to put toward this, and the Friends are intending to run a capital campaign and other fundraising to support this project,” says Berg.

Applying for the grant now doesn’t commit the city to the project. The assembly will vote on the resolution next Monday.

No injuries reported after loose rock fell underground at the Kensington Mine Sunday, damaging a water line.

Coeur d’Alene Mines Vice President Wendy Yang says crews were doing routine maintenance in a main access drift – stabilizing an excavation by bolting rock – when some of the loose rock fell. No one was trapped and both the primary and secondary access routes remained open.

Yang says the water line has since been repaired, and normal operations were not disrupted.

Juneau Mayor Bruce Botelho is one of three local elected officials from around the state spearheading an effort to resuscitate the Alaska Coastal Management Program.

Before shutting down at the end of June, coastal management worked with developers, local residents, and state and federal permitting agencies to review proposed projects along the state’s coastline.

Botelho says it was disheartening to see the program go away after the governor and legislature couldn’t agree on terms to reauthorize it. Now a citizen’s initiative, sponsored by Botelho – along with Kodiak Island Borough Mayor Jerome Selby and Kenai Peninsula Borough Assemblyman Mako Haggerty – would revive the program.

Botelho says an application for the initiative petition, signed by more than 200 people, was delivered to the lieutenant governor’s office on Friday.

“Our initiative is intended to encourage our state leaders to redouble their efforts to create a credible coastal management program during the 2012 legislative session,” says Botelho. “And if they are unable to do so, Alaskans will have an opportunity to express their support for Alaska’s coastal program in November 2012.”

The proposed initiative differs from a bill to reauthorize coastal management that was on the table during this year’s legislative sessions. It reverts to the way the program was run prior to 2003, when Governor Frank Murkowski implemented sweeping changes to it. Many local communities opposed those changes.

“What we’ve tried to do here is design a program that we think is most suitable for Alaska,” Botelho says. “And part of that is looking and making sure that the permitting process is streamlined, that it encompasses all programs done by our resource agencies, and that it be done in a coordinated, collaborative way.”

Hagerty says he was disappointed with the legislative process, and thinks the initiative is a better alternative.

“We’re not just going to be delivering signatures. We’re going to be delivering a message that this is a program that the state needs to participate in,” says Haggerty.

Lieutenant Governor Mead Treadwell has 60 days to determine whether the initiative meets the legal framework to go before the public. At that point, the sponsors can begin collecting the nearly 26,000 signatures needed to qualify it for the ballot.

Botelho says the goal is to finish before the legislature begins next year’s session in January. That would give lawmakers the option of passing a substantially similar law or allowing it to proceed to a vote.

Holy Trinity Episcopal Church and McPhetres Hall publically celebrated the new facility last Sunday. Amanda Compton joined the approximately 150 to 200 community members who attended the event.

The CBJ Assembly meets tonight as Committee of the Whole.

It’ll be the last meeting chaired by Deputy Mayor Merrill Sanford, who is nearing the end of his third consecutive term on the assembly. Due to term limits, Sanford will leave the panel next week when new members are sworn in.

On the agenda for tonight’s meeting is a presentation from the Alaska Department of Transportation on the new Southeast Alaska Transportation Plan. City Engineering Director Rorie Watt will also be on hand for ongoing discussion of the AJ Mine issue. Watt will give an update on the public outreach he’s doing as part of a study of the city’s water supply. The old mine, which the city and borough partially owns, is located in Last Chance Basin, Juneau’s main source of drinking water.

The Committee of the Whole meets tonight at 6 p.m. in City Hall Assembly Chambers.