4 Special Coverage

Imagine one day a week in the summertime when there are no large cruise ships floating in the harbor, no tourists bustling down the docks and no buses driving people to the Mendenhall Glacier. 

If Proposition 2 is passed by Juneau voters this fall, that could become a reality.

The proposition, known as Ship Free Saturdays, asks voters whether to ban all cruise ships that carry 250 or more passengers from visiting on Saturdays and on the Fourth of July as soon as next summer. Throughout the spring, supporters gathered over 2,300 signatures to get it on the ballot. 

Advocates for the proposition say enough is enough and the reins need to be pulled on the growth of tourism, but opponents say the financial and legal implications could hurt the local economy.

Who’s for it, and who’s against it?

Karla Hart is a longtime activist against tourism growth in Juneau. She was at the forefront of getting the proposition on the ballot. 

“Ship-Free Saturdays would give us a relief,” she said during a recent forum. “Every week we will have one day of a pause. We can breathe, we can do things in our homes without helicopter noise. We can go out in the community and not be diluted by all the people who are here who aren’t from here.”

According to data provided by the city, Juneau’s cruise passenger volume has more than tripled in the last three decades.

At the forum, Hart and other residents like Steve Krall said the growth of tourism has drowned them out. Krall said they simply want one day a week during the summer to get a break from it. 

“What would we do if we had Saturdays? We’d actually live our lives like we used to, like we hoped to,” he said. “I used to be able to launch a kayak from downtown. I’ve got a sailboat, I could sail it in the harbor. I could actually maybe walk downtown and not wonder if I was going to get hit by a car.”

Hart said the Ship Free Saturdays campaign is a grassroots effort made up of everyday residents. According to campaign finance records, the group has only raised $380.

On the other side, hundreds of thousands of dollars have poured in from cruise ship company affiliates and businesses that want to stop the proposition in its tracks. Campaign records show that the group advocating against the proposition, Protect Juneau’s Future, has raised more than $300,000. That money has gone toward banners across town, social media ads and mailers. Big donors for the opposition campaign include a Norwegian Cruise Line affiliate and Westmark Hotels, which have each given $75,000 to the cause. 

It’s not just big companies that are against the proposition — many local businesses are too. Wings Airways & Taku Glacier Lodge, a local tourism business, has donated $10,000. Holly Johnson is its chief marketing officer.   

“This is not about Saturdays. It will never be good enough,” Johnson said at a panel hosted in August. “All days of the week would never be good enough for the people that are really pushing this. But they tacked on to something that was really emotional.”

Johnson and other members of Protect Juneau’s Future said during the panel that their businesses rely on tourism, and even taking away one day of the week would be a major financial blow.

According to data shared by the city, cruise visitors to Juneau in 2023 directly spent $30 million on Saturdays alone. They also produced $3.7 million in revenue for the city on those days. 

McHugh Pierre is the president and CEO of Goldbelt, Inc., a local Alaska Native corporation. The company owns the popular Goldbelt Tram tourist attraction downtown and has invested millions into a gondola project at Eaglecrest Ski Area. 

“I don’t want to be told when to do things and when not to do things, because when does it stop and start? Is it just visitors on Saturdays? Is it truck drivers on Tuesdays? Is it cultural storytellers on Wednesdays?” Pierre said during the August panel. “I don’t like any of it. It’s bad, and we just need to vote against it.”

What happens if it passes?

Some companies are already putting legal pressure on the city too, according to Juneau Municipal Attorney Emily Wright. 

“If this moves forward we likely would get sued,” she said in an interview.

Since April, the city has received three letters threatening lawsuits if voters pass the proposition. 

In a letter sent to the city attorney’s office in June, Royal Caribbean Cruises called the proposition unlawful under state and federal law. Allen Marine Tours said it violated federal maritime law and citizens’ constitutional right to travel. And, a law firm that represents the privately owned A.J. Dock also voiced legal concerns. 

“We could have multiple lawsuits that come in that get joined together because it’s the same issue. We could have the dock owners. We could have businesses who are having their businesses impacted. We’ve got the two private docks, and then we’ve got the cruise lines themselves,” Wright said. 

If voters pass the proposition, it becomes law. That means it’s the city’s responsibility to defend against lawsuits — using taxpayer dollars. 

This wouldn’t be the first time the city has been sued over conflicts with cruise lines. The industry previously sued Juneau over how it spends the money earned from passenger fees.

That three-year legal fight was settled in 2019. Juneau agreed to pay Cruise Lines International Association Alaska $1.5 million to cover legal fees, and both parties agreed to settle future disputes outside of court.

Juneau’s law department is closely watching a legal battle over limiting cruise ships in Bar Harbor, Maine. That’s where a ballot initiative to limit cruise passengers passed in 2022. A local business group tried unsuccessfully to sue the town and is in the process of appealing the ruling. 

Wright said if Ship Free Saturdays passes in Juneau, there could be injunctions filed over the proposition.

“An injunction means to stop something. So we would say, ‘Okay, guys, you’re not allowed here on Saturdays’ and the cruise ships would ask the court to stop us from enforcing that until the court makes a final decision about whether this is legal or not,” she said.

The business group in Bar Harbor tried to do that but failed. Wright said it’s hard to know how things will play out in Juneau if it comes to that. 

Voters have until Tuesday, Oct. 1 to make their choice. The final results of the by-mail election won’t be certified until Oct. 15. 

Find more election coverage at ktoo.org/elections.

Two people are vying to serve as Juneau’s next mayor in the Oct. 1 municipal election.

Incumbent Mayor Beth Weldon faces challenger Angela Rodell, who is running on a fiscally conservative platform and out-fundraising her opponent so far. 

Weldon has served as Juneau’s mayor since 2018. In an interview leading up to the election, she said her highest priority right now is flood preparation and mitigation following last month’s record-breaking glacial outburst flood.

“If we don’t figure out something or if we can’t get the federal government involved or figure out something local, our next year – could the flood be even worse? And that’s where our housing stock is in Juneau, is in the Valley,” she said. 

Meanwhile, Rodell said she is running because she thinks there needs to be a heightened focus on how the city spends its money. 

“I think we need to get back to basics and really focus on our spending priorities and what our community needs to keep our young families and our senior citizens here and make Juneau affordable,” she said. 

This is Rodell’s first time running for local office. She previously served on the Juneau Airport Board for six years. She was CEO of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation from 2015 to 2021, when the fund’s board of trustees voted to remove her from the role. She’s now a consultant and legislative staffer and serves as board chair of Launch Alaska, a nonprofit tech company based in Anchorage. 

Weldon is a retired division chief with Capital City Fire/Rescue and owns Glacier Auto Parts. She has two adult sons and is a lifelong resident of Juneau. If re-elected, it will be Weldon’s third, three-year term as mayor. She also served two years as an Assembly member before resigning to run for mayor.

The pair share common ground on local issues like the Ship-Free-Saturday ballot proposition or a recall of school board members, both of which they oppose. But they differ on two other ballot questions – the $10 million Juneau Douglas Wastewater Treatment Plant bond and the $12.7 million public safety radio bond. Weldon supports both, while Rodell opposes them. 

“They’re pretty ancient, and for safety reasons, and just being able to talk to other agencies – that’s really important to fix that system,” Weldon said about the public safety radio bond. 

But Rodell says the city should have set aside money for the projects a long time ago. 

“I’m concerned that we’re using debt for these two ballot initiatives simply because we have a number of reserves that we’ve held over time for various initiatives,” she said. “We’ve raised taxes significantly over the last four to five years, and I’m concerned that we’re not addressing ongoing maintenance needs when they happen, but rather it seems to get to a crisis point.”

Both candidates have attended a handful of candidate forums and events in the months leading up to the election. According to campaign finance records, Rodell has raised more than $23,000 toward her campaign while Weldon has raised just under $16,000. Several current and former Republican state lawmakers are among Rodell’s campaign patrons.

Election Day is Oct. 1, but the final outcome of all candidate races won’t be known until all of the mail-in ballots are received and the city certifies final results on Oct. 15. 

When Juneau voters fill out this year’s municipal election ballot, they’re going to see two recall petitions – one asking whether to recall Board of Education President Deedie Sorensen, and another asking whether to recall board Vice President Emil Mackey. 

The recall questions made it on the ballot after a local group gathered enough signatures for them to qualify — nearly 2,400 signatures each. 

But qualifying for the ballot doesn’t mean what’s written in the petitions is accurate. 

The ballot states that Sorenson and Mackey demonstrated misconduct and incompetence by failing to understand accounting errors in the fiscal year 2024 budget, resulting in a $7.9 million deficit and a taxpayer loan from the city. 

According to Municipal Attorney Emily Wright, the City and Borough of Juneau’s Law Department determines if there are legal grounds, or a reason, for the recall – not if that reason is true or factual.

“We as the Department of Law do not have to know whether this is true or not,” she said. “We don’t look to see whether it’s fixed or not. We don’t make any of those judgment calls. We just say, ‘Okay, does it meet the threshold?’”

The recall group originally wanted to include everyone on the board who voted in favor of the consolidation of Juneau’s high schools and middle schools earlier this year. But Mackey and Sorensen are the only current members of the board who are eligible for recall due to the timing of their terms.

The group cited several allegations against the pair, but only one met the threshold to trigger a recall. And, because it qualified legally, the rest is up to the voters.

“It’s now the voter’s job to determine whether it’s true or not. It’s not my job to say this is true or not,” Wright said. 

In fact, what’s written on the ballot as the reason for the recall isn’t completely accurate.

What actually happened?

The ballot says that Sorensen and Mackey failed to do their duty as board members during the 2024 fiscal year budget process – when district administration discovered accounting errors and overestimated enrollment numbers. It resulted in a multimillion-dollar budget gap. The school board ultimately addressed that deficit and never actually took out a loan from the city, as the ballot states. 

But, for the 2025 fiscal year — which started this past July — the board also had to address another multimillion-dollar deficit. That is what led the district to close some schools, consolidate grades and reduce staff. 

Mackey said he thinks that’s the real reason people want him off the board.

“A lot of it is just angry Thunder Mountain parents,” he said. “And I get it, they should be angry. But the truth is, is that it had to be done.”

Part of the consolidation plan closed one of the two high schools in town – Thunder Mountain in the Mendenhall Valley. That means students from both high schools are now at Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé downtown. And Thunder Mountain High School is now Thunder Mountain Middle School. 

“We had to shut down one high school or the other, or we were going to lay off another 30 to 60 teachers, depending on what we were looking at,” Mackey said. 

Sorensen agrees that the actual reason for the recall is the consolidation vote. 

“I believe that the impetus for and the hostility towards Dr. Mackey and I stems from the fact that we were part of the block of four votes that voted for consolidation, that consistently voted for consolidation. In particular, the closure of Thunder Mountain High School,” she said. 

But Jenny Thomas, one of the leaders of the recall effort, disagrees. 

“It’s not so much Thunder Mountain. I mean, you closed Floyd Dryden and you closed [Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School], and the narrative that’s being put out there is as angry TM parents — a large majority of my signers were middle school parents,” she said. 

The recall group is largely made up of parents, and Thomas is also running for school board this year.  

“I would hope that they would realize this is not coming from a place of anger because we didn’t get what we wanted, I know that’s being pushed out there,” she said. “It’s not just TM families, it’s everybody that was affected.”

What’s next?

Thomas knows that recalling the two school board members won’t undo the board’s decisions to close Thunder Mountain High School or the rest of the consolidation process. But she said it will fix some problems.

“I think it’s going to make the board listen to the public a little bit more. Because, I mean, you testify, right? Hours of testimony, you never hear back from them,” she said. “What’s the point of testifying? I mean, it makes you feel like your opinion and your voice doesn’t matter, and you don’t want anybody in the community to feel like that.”

Mackey said that recalling him and Sorensen will send a chilling message to future board members. 

“They’re going to look back at this if this succeeds, and they’re not going to make the hard choices, because they’re going to be scared they’re going to be recalled, they’re going to be drug in the mud, and they’re going to be held accountable for something that wasn’t their fault,” he said. “And that is scary — it’s terrifying.”

But Mackey said it won’t stop him from running again in the future. Sorensen and Mackey’s current terms end next year. Sorensen said she plans to retire after that.

There haven’t been many recall questions on Juneau’s ballots over the years. Since 1970, voters have only been asked twice whether someone should be recalled, according to city clerk records. 

If Mackey and Sorensen are recalled, the remaining school board members will have up to 30 days to appoint two new members.

Officials with the U.S. Postal Service intercepted a threatening envelope sent to the Alaska Division of Elections on Tuesday, one of a number of similar packages sent to elections officials in other states, Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom announced.

Dahlstrom, who oversees elections work in the state, said in a written statement that the Postal Service notified the division that it had been targeted and that postal inspectors had seized a suspicious envelope and its contents for further investigation.

Further details about the Alaska-bound envelope were not immediately available.

Similar suspicious envelopes have been reported by elections officials in several states. In Nebraska, officials described a large yellow envelope containing white powder and whose sender was identified as the “United States Traitor Elimination Army.”

That description was confirmed by Iowa officials, who briefly evacuated a public building after receiving a similar envelope. In Kansas, a suspicious envelope and a suspicious package prompted evacuations on Monday.

No illnesses or other physical harm has been reported in connection with any of the packages. In Oklahoma, officials said a white substance contained within a threatening envelope turned out to be flour.

No evacuations have taken place in Alaska.

“Our democracy is founded on the principle that every voice matters and every vote counts. Acts of intimidation, harassment, or violence undermine these core values and erode the trust in our electoral process,” Dahlstrom said in a statement. “We are committed to protecting our election workers and ensuring a safe and secure environment for them to carry out their duties. I urge everyone to respect the election process and those who make it possible. Threatening behavior, in any form, will be addressed swiftly and with the full force of the law.”

Republican U.S. House candidate Nick Begich III has won the endorsement of former President Donald Trump.

Trump initially supported Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom for the seat, but she finished behind Begich in the primary and dropped out of the race. Two years ago, Trump endorsed former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and not Begich for Alaska’s sole seat in the House.

But in a social media post Tuesday Trump praised Begich as a successful small businessman who will help enact MAGA policies.

Also Tuesday, Trump seemed to confuse the name of an air base in Afghanistan with the controversy over whether to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR.

“We just have the best,” Trump said at a campaign event in Flint, Mich., referring to energy resources. “We have Bagram, in Alaska. They say it might be as big – might be bigger — than all of Saudi Arabia. I got it approved. Ronald Reagan couldn’t do it. Nobody could do it. In their first week they terminated. Check that one out: Bagram.”

About 30 seconds into his discussion on the subject, Trump seemed to realize his mistake and said “ANWR,” loosely linking the Arctic refuge to the U.S. departure from Bagram Air Base.

Trump’s style of speech has drawn attention in the campaign, especially now that he’s the oldest candidate in the race. He often jumps from subject to subject. He insisted Tuesday he doesn’t ramble.

“I give these long, sometimes very complex sentences and paragraphs, but they all come together,” he said.

Six Juneau School Board candidates running in the Oct. 1 election answered questions about local education issues during the 2024 League of Women Voters School Board forum on Wednesday.

KTOO’s Clarise Larson and the Juneau Empire’s Mark Sabbatini moderated the live forum.

See Tuesday’s Juneau Assembly candidate forum here.

Find more elections coverage — including candidate profiles — at ktoo.org/elections.