Juneau

Juneau teacher Amy Jo Meiners has been named 2016 Alaska Teacher of the Year.

Alaska Education Commissioner Mike Hanley made the announcement Sunday at the Association of Alaska School Boards conference.

Meiners works with gifted and talented students as an extended learning teacher at Auke Bay and Riverbend elementary schools.

The selection process is based on a written application reviewed by a committee of educators, followed by interviews with the top ranked applicants.

The state title puts her in the running to be the National Teacher of the Year to be announced in April. The national teacher of the year serves as a spokesperson for the profession who is given a paid leave of absence for one year to travel for speaking engagements and policy commissions.

Juneau skiers may be forced to accept a future with warmer winters and less snow.

Scientific data suggests that over the last 30 years, Southeast Alaska has experienced a warming trend, matched with more precipitation, and perhaps, less snowfall.

Skier Ben Lyman has adapted by migrating.

“Well, right now I’m converting a bus into an RV and part of the intention of that is being able to go where the snow is,” he said.

Lyman is in Wisconsin working on “Velda the Wonder Bus,” which he plans to use to follow snow.

“After last winter being surprised to see snow in North Carolina and New Mexico, makes me think I need to be a little more mobile in the winter,” Lyman said.

According to the U.S. Forest Service, climate change is affecting Alaska more than any other state in the country because of its northerly latitude.

Since 1971, Juneau’s average monthly temperature has warmed 3.54 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a University of Alaska Fairbanks research organization. The Scenarios Network for Alaska and Arctic Planning predicts that this warming trend will continue over the next 84 years.

“You can see the temperature creeping up,” said Rick Fritsch, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Juneau.

In the past, the average winter temperature in Juneau at sea level was around 32 degrees, Fritsch said. Now, it seems to be slightly higher than freezing. This could mean more rain and less snow.

Eran Hood, a professor of environmental sciences and geography at the University of Alaska Southeast, agreed. He said Southeast is particularly sensitive to climate change.

“Whereas if you go to the interior Alaska where it’s very cold and you change the temperature by a few degrees you are still going to have snow,” Hood said.

This means unreliability for skiers like Ben Lyman.

Lyman, 38, grew up in Alaska and said he’s always skied. He said some of his earliest memories are riding in a baby backpack while his father was skiing. Lyman began teaching skiing at Eaglecrest when he was 14. Now he just skis for pleasure, but he’s noted some changes in snowfall in his lifetime.

“It certainly seems like overall we get less snow down at sea level and certainly at the base area, although I think we’re still holding pretty well at the top,” Lyman said.  “My memories are definitely of more prolific snowfall than we’ve had in most recent years, although we did have a pretty amazing year in 2007.”

Last winter, Eaglecrest had so little snow that the lifts barely ran.

In 2007 a Juneau climate change panel produced a report forecasting the effects of global warming on the city, including the future of Eaglecrest. It predicts warmer temperatures will work their way from sea level up mountainsides.

The panel asserted that “skiing, sledding, ice skating and other snow-dependent activities will be less available to Juneau residents as the climate warms.”

Over the last year, Eaglecrest has created a connection to a chairlift that will enable skiers to get higher on the mountain, cleared additional ski trails and purchased more snowmaking equipment.

“We did buy another snowmaker which increases our snowmaking ability by 33 percent,” said Matt Lillard, general manager of Eaglecrest.

If Eaglecrest doesn’t adapt, skiers will.

In Wisconsin, Lyman’s bus is a work in progress.

“It’s a 1999 International Genesis, 72-passenger rated capacity, 31,000 pounds, and 39 and a half feet long. We just finished painting her today, midnight blue,” he said.

Lyman said that by the time he finishes his bus, he will know where the snow is.

Weather permitting, Eaglecrest Ski Area is scheduled to open Dec. 5.

A Juneau man known to some locals as the “Shrimp Guy” pled no contest Friday to one count of operating commercial Dungeness crab gear out of season.

According to a trooper dispatch, Dennis J. Capua, 60, was investigated by Juneau wildlife troopers. He was charged for failing to remove at least 64 commercial Dungeness crab pots near Stephens Passage after the season had closed Aug. 15.

It’s not the man’s first violation for fishing out of season.

In 2001, Capua was found guilty of negligently storing a shrimp pot. He was fined $3,000 with all of it suspended, and was fingerprinted and put on probation for one year.

In 2011, Capua was found guilty of illegally storing commercial shrimp pots. Capua had left 88 commercial shrimp pots near Endicott Arm, south of Juneau, after the district was closed to commercial shrimping. Capua was told not to commit any more fishing violations and was given one year of probation and a $6,000 fine with $3,000 suspended.

He got nearly the same punishment for his most recent violation; this time he’ll be on probation for 18 months.

According to the Department of Commerce, Capua had a business license for Coronation Seafoods from 1996 until 2005. The Juneau Empire has profiled Capua at least twice — in a 2001 story he was called the “Shrimp Guy.” In both stories he says he first started selling live prawns at Harris Harbor during the Thanksgiving storm of 1984. His most recent commercial fishing license was issued in October.

The burned out Gastineau Apartments are supposed to be demolished in April, but a last-minute deal could restore the downtown dwelling. Three years after the fire, the owner has a purchase agreement with a Seattle developer. It’s on Monday’s Assembly agenda.

Will Muldoon lived at the Gastineau Apartments for about five years. He says the street was always bustling with activity: bars letting out after last call, the occasional smell of acetone from the nail salon below.

And he says sure, sometimes it could be uncomfortable.

“Part of living downtown is one time, I stepped out the shower and my neighbor saw me so I had to go over and say ‘I’m sorry’ to them. But it’s part of the fun of living downtown in such close quarters,” Muldoon said.

That neighbor was working at the doll museum across the street. Still, he says he loved living in Gastineau in a small one bedroom.

Muldoon paid around $950 a month for rent. He worked two jobs. The location gave him the flexibility to walk to work in the day, then come home and do information technology work at night.

“It was kinda neat,” Muldoon said. “My life was pretty localized and I liked it that way.”

Then three years ago this month, his life changed. Clanging fire alarms woke him up, but he rolled back over and went to sleep.

“The way Beck was knocking, Officer Beck was knocking, I could tell it wasn’t just like a ‘hey, let’s chat kinda thing.’ It wasn’t no ‘hello, I’m trying to sell something.’ Or anything like that,” he said.

Muldoon escaped with a pair of XTRATUFS and his dog. Even the clothes on his back had to be thrown away from smoke damage. But all of the other tenants, minus one pet cat, made it out.

Gastineau’s owner, James Barrett, repeatedly missed city deadlines for repairs or demolition. And the building caught fire again. It’s been a huge eyesore, even declared a safety concern. So the city put together a bid package for Gastineau to be torn down.

The contract was supposed to be finalized with CBC Construction at the end of last month.

“Well, the Barrett family has now relinquished control of the property to us,” said Jim Hurley, a Seattle-based consultant.

The city is holding the notice to proceed for the demolition.

Private Public Partnership LLC and a local company, Coogan Alaska Construction, want to renovate the apartments. Not tear them down. The group has entered into a purchasing agreement with the Barretts. But haven’t bought the building yet. The Barretts couldn’t be reached for comment.

“We have a plan that could involve a construction cycle that could be completed in 18 months. If we had cooperation with the city,” Hurley said.

The Assembly would first have to cancel the bid it awarded to CBC Construction.

Hurley says it’s still in the development stage, but there are tentative plans to turn the apartments back into market-rate or subsidized housing. Of course, this would take longer than just tearing it down.

“Here’s the thing, I don’t know much about the history in terms of the politics of it,” Hurley said. “What I do know is there’s not much risk for the taxpayers to listen to what we have to say.”

But he says there are risks with the demolition. The city hoped to recoup over a million dollars from the Barretts; after demolition, Hurley estimates the land is only worth about $200,000.

“We’re fresh now and can bring our vision of an alternate plan to the city. And they can have an apples-and-oranges plan to what’s on the table,” Hurley said.

For Muldoon, the fire that destroyed his apartment seems like a lifetime ago.

“My life has changed. Now I live out in the valley, I have a state job and help raising kids and all these things,” Muldoon said.

He lost most of his possessions but says he was able to bounce-back with the help of his family and community.

Seeing the twinkle in his eye when he talks about living downtown, I have to ask if he would move back into the Gastineau Apartments if it was renovated.

“I would, I would,” he said enthusiastically. “I’ve got a really nice setup in the valley right now. But it would be hard not to. I had a lot of fun living there. It had a 100-year-old history. So I’m kinda excited to see if they can do the restoration, what Gastineau 2.0 will mean.”

The assembly will be discussing that possibility with the developers.

Full disclosure, Will Muldoon is a member of KTOO’s Board of Directors.

A volunteer resident at The Glory Hole emergency shelter and soup kitchen is starting a blanket drive.

“Keeping our friends on the street warm this winter,” Logan Henkins said.

He’s got a specific subset of needy folks in mind to give blankets to.

“Pretty much only a select few, the ones that are sleeping outside, in doorways, on benches are who I’m aiming for,” he said. “It’s mostly people that are intoxicated or been eighty-sixed from The Glory Hole.”

Drugs and alcohol are forbidden at the shelter.

Henkins said donated blankets will be accepted during the shelter’s regular hours. He said donors can also arrange pickups by calling 586-4159.

Perseverance Theatre’s production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, opens Friday night.

Actor Enrique Bravo plays Benjamin Barker, aka Sweeney Todd, in the musical. On a Juneau Afternoon, Bravo sang a few lines that are the foundation of the story.

“There was a barber and his wife,
And she was beautiful.
A foolish barber and his wife.
She was his reason and his life,
And she was beautiful.”

Listen to the audio version of the story and Bravo sing here:

Enter the evil judge Turpin who is interested in Barker’s wife and unjustly sends the barber off to prison in Australia. Barker breaks out, returns to London and finds out that his wife, Lucy, poisoned herself and that their daughter, Joanne, is a ward of the judge.

One might assume the rest of the plot would be a predictable revenge tale until Barker teams up with Mrs. Lovett who runs a pie shop — that serves meat pies.

“She’s been in love with Benjamin Barker for a long time, so that fuels that relationship,” Bravo said.

So does their business arrangement where Barker dispatches his victims with a straight razor and Mrs. Lovett cooks them in pies. But the play is about more than that.

“There’s a lot of themes of classes in society. The rich basically taking advantage of the poor. So it’s got a lot. It’s a meaty musical. It’s not one of those fluff musicals,” Bravo said.

A meaty musical! The cast includes 14 actors and singers and 6 musicians. Music director Todd Hunt said he’s gained new respect working with the play’s sometimes complicated music composed by Stephen Sondheim.

“You can see, though, that in all of the difficult things that he put in, there’s always a dramatic reason for why. Like when there’s something repeated, it’s not exactly repeated; it’s a little bit different or the harmonies are a little bit different underneath it. It’s because things are always changing. And in that way it’s very organically written music, and that has been wonderful to discover,” Hunt said.

Note that there are both a pie and a barber shop within walking distance of the theater. OK, well pizza and a hair salon, but you never know.

The play opens Friday at 7:30 p.m. and runs through Sunday, Dec. 6. Tickets are available at ptalaska.org.