Juneau elections

The filing deadline closed Monday afternoon to run for local elected office in Juneau. There are no new challengers. Barring write-in candidates, all five incumbents seeking reelection to the Juneau Assembly and Juneau Board of Education are unopposed.

On the Assembly, that means Carole Triem, Greg Smith and Wade Bryson are all headed into their second terms after the October election.

On the school board, Deedie Sorensen is headed into her second term and Emil Mackey is headed into his third term.

Members of both bodies serve three-year terms.

Troy Wuyts-Smith had filed a letter of intent to run for school board with a state commission, but he didn’t make the certified candidate list by the deadline.

In a text message on Monday, Wuyts-Smith said, “Things got messy at work today due to fog and I wasn’t able to get there in time. It looks like I’ll have to do a write-in campaign.”

Wuyts-Smith works for Alaska Airlines. He ran unsuccessfully for Juneau Assembly in 2021.

For write-in candidates to be valid, they must file paperwork by Sept. 27.

Last year, Will Muldoon put together the first successful write-in campaign in a local election since 1992. Muldoon is now a member of the school board.

Ballots in Juneau’s local election this fall won’t have questions about a proposed sales tax break on groceries. There’s been months of discussion on the topic at Juneau Assembly meetings. Now, the Assembly wants to finish the debate with a public opinion poll instead of asking voters directly on the ballot.

At the beginning of June, the Assembly was leaning toward asking advisory questions on the ballot. The questions would have paired the tax break with different options for new taxes to recoup most of the cost to the city.

The Assembly wants to know if voters would still want the tax break if it also meant one of these things would happen: raising the year-round sales tax rate to 5.5%, raising the sales tax rate seasonally to 6%, or raising property tax rates so most property owners would pay about 9.5% more.

But by the end of June, most Assembly members had become concerned about how those non-binding questions would look alongside separate, tax-related questions that will be on the ballot and are binding.

“These ballot questions I think would be super — just, confusing,” Deputy Mayor Maria Gladziszewski said in a committee meeting on June 27. “And then if the sales tax things pass, then we’d have to do it again, and people would have to vote on it twice, and then they’d be like, ‘Didn’t I vote on this last time?’”

The city charter doesn’t allow the Assembly to change the sales tax rate, so voters would have to approve it with another ballot question in another election.

There was also concern that including the advisory questions could confuse voters about three other ballot questions in the works that deal with funding major city projects. That includes funding to build a new City Hall.

“Man, I really had my heart set on removing sales tax with this Assembly,” said Assembly member Wade Bryson. “But I’m afraid if we try to squeeze it into this ballot, this October’s ballot, that it could have more harm than good.”

Gladziszewski suggested an alternative.

“So I’m wondering if we could achieve our same objectives by just hiring a firm to do a statistically valid survey,” Gladziszewski said.

Most of the other Assembly members were amenable.

A measure to commit up to $40,000 for the survey is set for public hearing and final vote at the Assembly’s next regular meeting on Aug. 1.

The timing for the survey hasn’t been decided. City Manager Rorie Watt told the Assembly he wants to avoid election season.

The group that wants to do away with Juneau’s mandate to share real estate sale prices says it has turned in enough signatures to get the question in front of local voters in the fall.

The group needed 2,130 signatures from qualified voters. By the initial deadline, the group turned in 2,501, but city election officials disqualified several hundred because of incomplete forms or other reasons. The group came up 107 signatures short but were given 10 extra days to collect more.

Ann Sparks, a local real estate agent working on the repeal effort, said the group turned in more than 500 additional signatures on Monday.

“We feel really confident that we will definitely have enough signatures,” she said. “Now it’s just a wait and see what the city decides — if they’re going to let it go to ballot, or if they want to go ahead and repeal it.”

City election officials have until next Thursday to review the additional signatures and to certify or reject the petition.

If it’s certified, the Juneau Assembly then has 30 days to either preempt the ballot question and repeal the ordinances itself or forward the repeal question to the October local election ballot.

Organizers of a referendum want to repeal the mandatory disclosure of real estate sales prices. And they appear to have collected enough signatures to get the question on the October election ballot.

The Juneau Assembly adopted a pair of ordinances in 2020 and this past February that made it mandatory to share the sales price and other information with the city assessor’s office.

City staff said the information would improve the accuracy of property assessments. The referendum supporters say it’s an invasion of privacy that could lead to higher taxes.

To get the repeal question on the ballot, they needed to turn in signatures of 2,130 qualified voters. On Saturday, city election officials accepted signature books with just over 2,501. Election officials have until June 14 to check the signatures for duplicates and other potential disqualifiers.

If the organizers clear that hurdle, then the Assembly could repeal the ordinances. Otherwise, the referendum will play out in the October election.