Juneau

Seven artists and organizations will be recognized on Friday for their contribution to Juneau’s art scene. This year’s Mayor’s Awards for the Arts takes place at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center.

When the awards started in 2007, Bruce Botelho was mayor. Botelho said it was Nancy DeCherney’s idea. She was the newly-appointed executive director of the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council.

“And I think largely to emulate what has been a long standing practice in the state by the State Arts Council with the Governor’s Awards for the Arts,” he said.

DeCherney remembers it differently.

“The arts council was in the basement up on Franklin Street and Mayor Botelho came in and just wanted to chat and suggested that one of the things that might be really nice would be if we did a Mayor’s Awards for the Arts to sort of highlight all the wonderful things that go on in the community. So we did,” said DeCherney.

I told her Botelho’s version, and she laughed out loud.

“OK, memory fades. You know how it is,” she said.

The Arts Council chooses the awardees based on nominations from the community. Since 2007, it’s given 48 awards. Photographer Ron Gile will receive this year’s innovation award. He says he might have been chosen because of a Facebook page he helped develop to alert fellow photographers when Romeo the wolf was out and about. Or maybe it’s because of the themed competitions the Juneau Photography Group hosts.

“One of the things about photography is that people get into a niche; they’ll get into a rut is a better way of looking at it,” said Gile. “They’ll shoot one thing and one thing only. Like they’ll go shoot airplanes or they’ll just shoot landscapes. We started a challenge, a bi-weekly challenge, there’s no awards given other than you get to be the next judge for the following challenge.”

The latest challenge is called “Tales from the Jungle.” It urges participants to “capture stories and players in the forests of Southeast.”

“But is was to try and get people to go out of their comfort box, and to try and find new ways of looking at things around us. To break that mold, and to expand and grow as a photographer,” said Gile.

The other six other awards are going to:
• Dancer and teacher Pat Belec,
• arts educator Heather Ridgway
• Juneau Lyric Opera
• Annie Kaill’s for business leadership
• ConocoPhillips Alaska for being a patron of the arts, and
• Juneau Jazz and Classics Executive Director Linda Rosenthal for lifetime achievement.

The free event is casual, begins at the JACC at 5:30. Assemblywoman Debbie White will present the awards in lieu of Mayor Merrill Sanford.

Classes in Juneau are just starting on Thursday, but some high school activities have been underway for weeks. This school year, the district has drastically cut funding for activities and athletics, leaving some parents paying hundreds of dollars more for their kid to participate.

Michelle Norman has two kids at Thunder Mountain High School. Her daughter is on the swim and dive team. At the first parent meeting for the activity, she was asked to pay “an activity fee of $600 and approximately $150 travel fee for each meet out of Juneau.”

Last year, Norman paid $275.

She says this higher fee struck her as ridiculous. So Norman did her own research on travel costs to meets in Ketchikan and Sitka, and says the $600 activity fee only makes sense if her daughter qualifies for state competition.

“My daughter has a good chance of qualifying for state and I expect if that happened that I’d contribute more, but I’m not comfortable with paying $600 now for a $200 expense,” Norman says.

According to Juneau School Board policy, individual activity fees for participation and travel must be approved by the activities director and the superintendent. For students who are in financial need, the district has a scholarship fund.

Superintendent Mark Miller says he hasn’t approved any activity fees.

“To my knowledge we do not have actual individual fees,” he says.

Miller doesn’t call the costs put on students or parents “fees.”

“Different sports are going about fundraising in different ways and some are asking for contributions from participants in order to limit or defray the amount of fundraising that they do,” Miller says.

Thunder Mountain High School Activities Director Jake Jacoby says every fall sport does have an activity fee.

“This is an individual fee that varies from activity to activity and it’s very low for activities that have low budget needs and it’s pretty darn high for the more expensive programs,” Jacoby says.

He says $600 for the swim and dive team isn’t the highest. The coaches come up with the fees, and Jacoby approves them, but he hasn’t taken them to the superintendent.

Jacoby says the fees go toward gear and travel, but the cost shouldn’t be coming out of pocket.

“There are fundraising opportunities that need to be provided by the teams in order for students to raise the money,” Jacoby says.

In an email from the swim and dive booster board at Thunder Mountain High School, parents were instructed to “bring your checkbook” to an Aug. 4 meeting. The main fundraising event is selling Christmas trees and parents were asked to think of other ideas.

Due to district budget cuts to activities, Jacoby says everyone – coaches, booster clubs, parents, activities directors – is working through a new process this year.

“I have had conversations with various coaches within the last week about fundraising and funding and we’ll continue to do so as all teams figure out what this means as far as funding all of their own travel,” Jacoby says.

Last school year the district budgeted about $1.5 million for the high school activities program, including staff. About $600,000 of that went toward travel.

For this school year, the district budgeted less than a million dollars for high school activities. Close to $600,000 of that came from the Juneau Assembly, and the majority of it goes toward administrative costs.

Superintendent Miller says in the past, the district covered the majority of travel costs for high school activities.

“Unfortunately we’ve been dipping into the bank in order to cover those costs and our bank account ran dry last year and so this is really the first year that we’ve had to say we can’t go over what we’ve allocated under any circumstance and we can’t allocate what we used to,” Miller says.

The district has set aside $150,000 of the Juneau Assembly money for potential travel to state competitions, travel that teams don’t necessarily budget for because it’s last minute. It’s hard to say if that’s enough money because it depends on how well teams do. There will likely still be fundraising post-postseason.

The Juneau Police Department announced Wednesday that the suspect in a rash of out-the-road burglaries may also be connected to a burglary at Don Abel Building Supplies off Industrial Boulevard.

Police last week arrested Albert Martin Mazon, 25, and charged him with five counts of felony theft and burglary. Those charges are unrelated to the Don Abel case. Mazon was in pretrial custody at a halfway house, but left over the weekend and is now wanted for felony escape, too.

In a statement, police say they “may have” collected some of the tools stolen from Don Abel from Mazon. But police add that, “A large amount of property is unaccounted for and may have been hidden or is in the possession of other people.”

The Juneau Crime Line is seeking the public’s help identifying possible suspects and locating dozens of tools and about 40 knives stolen from a Don Abel display case on Aug. 8. All told, the goods are valued at nearly $4,000.

Report tips to JPD at 586-0600 or at juneaucrimeline.com. You may be eligible for a reward.

Jody Hass is only the second person in Juneau’s Golden North Salmon Derby’s 69-year history to win the top prize more than once. Ryan Beason won in 2001 and again the following year. Hass won in 2013 with a 29.2-pound king. Here’s how she landed this year’s derby winner.

Jody Hass says it might have something to do with a comfy sweatshirt, blue jeans and Xtratufs.

“I wore the same fishing clothes that I won the derby in last time, so that was my good luck charm,” Hass says laughing.

Although that didn’t work last year. Whatever it may be, Hass reeled in the big fish south of Juneau within hours of the derby starting Friday morning.

“It was really slow actually. We had gotten a couple bites and two small shakers that we threw back. Then all of sudden, it just hit and it hit hard. I grabbed the pole and I knew it was a bigger one. I didn’t know it was the big one,” Hass says.

The big king salmon didn’t fight as much as Hass expected, but it did do some running.

“It almost spooled us. We actually had to go in reverse a little bit so that it wouldn’t spool all the line off the reel. Then it just immediately stopped running and turned directly around and starting running towards the boat and it was hard to keep my reel going as fast as he was swimming towards the boat,” she says.

After getting the fish on, Hass and her family went directly to Douglas Harbor and weighed in the fish just before noon. Then, the family turned around and fished for the rest of the weekend.

“Twenty-seven-point-four is a pretty small fish and it’s surely beatable and that’s what we were expecting all weekend, for it to be beat,” Hass says.

But it never was. The number two derby fish came close at 27 pounds.

Last time Hass won the derby, her family used the $10,000 prize money to buy land in Gustavus. This year, the first purchase Hass plans to make is electric downriggers.

The filing deadline to run for Juneau Assembly and Juneau School Board closed Monday  with 11 candidates vying for six seats.

Juneau’s candidates for local office tend to file at the last minute, and that was true of this cycle, too.

In 72 hours, the capital city went from having just one contested race and zero candidates for a pair of Juneau School Board seats, to having just a single uncontested race.

Juneau Assemblyman Loren Jones is unopposed seeking his second term, barring write-in challengers, who have until Oct. 1 to file their paperwork.

Fisheries consultant Greg Fisk is challenging incumbent Juneau Mayor Merrill Sanford. Fisk says he’s concerned about the economy like everyone else. He wants to diversify it and says a lack of affordable housing inhibits a lot of potential. He supports mixed-use and transit-friendly development.

“I think the mayorship is a chance to heighten awareness of certain items. I mean, it’s a bit of a bully pulpit as they say. You get asked a lot, you get a chance to speak on the city’s behalf, and I think there’s a lot we can do,” Fisk says.

In Juneau’s council-manager form of government, the mayor doesn’t directly manage municipal employees and is largely ceremonial. The mayor presides over the Juneau Assembly with the same voting power as the other eight members, and that body collectively sets policy and directs the city manager.

The other Assembly seat in the October election remains a three-way race between incumbent Jerry Nankervis and challengers Jason Puckett and Dixie Hood.

Juneau School Board

On the Juneau School Board, two longtime incumbents who were on the fence about seeking another term did not file. Board President Phyllis Carlson and member Destiny Sargeant will not be on the October ballot.

A third longtime incumbent, Andi Story, will compete in a five-way race for three seats with Jeff Redmond, Josh Keaton, Emil “Robert” Mackey and Jason Hart.

All four of the new candidates filed their paperwork on the last eligible day.

Election day is Oct. 6.

Juneau police say the suspect in multiple out-the-road thefts is wanted after leaving the custody of a halfway house.

The Alaska Department of Corrections was Albert Martin Mazon’s custodian. They notified police of his escape on Sunday night.

Corrections spokeswoman Sherrie Daigle didn’t have specifics about Mazon’s case, but said people in halfway homes are usually given some flexibility to leave for treatment or work. Failing to check back in is considered escape.

Police arrested Mazon last week. He was charged with five felonies for theft and burglary. Escape would be a sixth felony charge.

The 25-year-old was last seen wearing a tan hat, black shirt and blue jeans. He has distinctive tattoos on his neck.

The Juneau Police Department discourages approaching him, but wants to be notified immediately of sightings.