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Juneau’s 2025 municipal election is just around the corner. Candidates for Juneau Assembly and school board are on the ballot this year, alongside three questions.

Ballot propositions one and two aim to reduce the tax burden on individual residents, but officials say that will come at a cost to the city’s coffers. Ballot proposition three attempts to boost city tax revenue by increasing the sales tax rate when cruise tourists are in town, then lowering it again in the off-season. 

Christine Woll is a longtime Juneau Assembly member and chairs its finance committee. 

“I actually think this is probably the most consequential election we’ve had locally in the 15 years I’ve been here in Juneau,” she said. “Each of these will have a big impact on the city’s budget and ability to fund services in our community.”

An advocacy group called the Affordable Juneau Coalition gathered enough signatures this spring and summer to place propositions one and two on the ballot. Angela Rodell is the treasurer of the group and formerly ran the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation. She said the propositions are designed to make Alaska’s capital city more affordable. 

“We have a very high cost of living, and that impacts almost everybody, except, obviously, the wealthy,” she said. 

Proposition 1

Proposition 1 seeks to cap the local property tax rate, also known as the mill rate. One mill is equal to $1 per $1000 in property value. 

“Everyone who owns property in Juneau pays property tax to the city based on the value of their property,” Woll said. “This would be capping the rate at which the Assembly can charge them for that.”

Right now, the city caps the mill rate at 12 mills. But, if voters pass Proposition 1 this election, that cap would be lowered to nine mills. 

Now, that change could lower property taxes for property owners. But it also means the city would take in less revenue each year. For each dollar the city collects in property taxes, a bit more than 50 cents goes toward education and a little under 40 cents goes toward city services. 

The rate cap wouldn’t be immediately devastating to the city’s roughly $140 million in annual discretionary revenue. But, Woll said over time it could substantially influence the city’s ability to fund the services residents usually expect. 

“It results in about a $2 million loss to city revenue every year, which is significant,” she said. “But when I think long term, it’s maybe less about the money and more about the city’s ability to respond to changing environments.”

The city estimates that owners with property assessed at half a million dollars or less would save about $80 per year in property taxes if the proposition passes and their home value stays the same. 

Woll said the proposition’s passing will be most beneficial to Juneau’s wealthiest residents and large commercial land owners — not low income people.

“That’s kind of the question that’s being asked this year is, ‘do you think we should be focusing on making this a community that has services for our lowest income people, or do you think that we should cut taxes for the wealthiest in the community to make things more affordable?’” she said. 

Rodell disputes that, and argues the change will force the Assembly to focus its spending on needs versus wants — something the Affordable Juneau Coalition thinks it hasn’t been focusing on. 

“I think we can figure out how to tighten that belt a little bit,” she said. “I think it’s really imperative that the city show its residents that they care about affordability and want to really focus on the things that make this community very livable.”

Proposition 2

Proposition 2 would also shrink the amount of revenue the city brings in each year. The proposition would exempt essential food and residential utilities from local sales tax. Right now, the city taxes food and utilities like just about everything else – at 5%. But if the initiative passes, it would drop to zero percent for everyone, regardless of their income. 

Economists say that taxes on food hit low-income people the hardest. Juneau Assembly member Neil Steininger is an economist, and he supports the concept. 

“We don’t have the supply chains that can provide us lower-cost food, like a lot of areas down south do,” he said. “That really impacts your day-to-day living, because you got to eat every day.”

But, he warns that the current 5% tax on food and utilities brings in a combined $10 to $12 million in revenue to the city annually. He said removing that tax would leave a serious hole in the city’s budget. 

“That’s more than just a little belt tightening, you know, that’s more than just, you know, buying less paper clips and buying less Post-it notes,” Steininger said. “That’s really looking at the overall spectrum of services we provide and choosing some to not provide.”

Proposition 3

That potential cut to services is why the Assembly put Proposition 3 on the ballot. It asks voters whether to implement a new seasonal sales tax system next year. They’re hoping it would recoup some of the revenue lost if the property tax or food and utility tax propositions are passed by voters. 

“The seasonal sales tax, basically will make up for that $9 to $12 million revenue loss by shifting the tax burden from residents to our summer visitors,” Woll said. 

This proposal would raise sales taxes in the summer months and lower them in the winter. It’s aimed at taking advantage of the roughly 1.7 million summer cruise ship tourism visitors that come to town each year. Other nearby Southeast towns like Ketchikan, Sitka and Skagway have similar seasonal tax structures in place already.

Juneau currently charges 5% in local sales taxes. That’s made up of both permanent and temporary taxes. They help pay for general government costs, voter-approved projects and community interests.

If voters pass Proposition 3, shoppers would instead pay a 7.5% tax from April through September and a 3% tax from October through March. 

“We have a lot of out-of-town visitors, and we have a lot of economic activity from non-residents in the summer,” Steininger said. “It allows us to shift some of that tax burden away from residents, making it even more affordable for individual residents in Juneau.”

But Rodell said she’ll be voting no on the measure and the Affordable Juneau Coalition is advocating against it. Her opinion is that it won’t actually save money for year-round residents and businesses. 

“It needs to go back to the drawing board,” she said. “They need to do a better job about defining how it’s going to help the residents of this community.”

The last day to vote in Juneau’s by-mail election is Oct. 7. Ballots will be mailed to registered voters Friday. Completed ballots can be returned by mail, in city drop boxes starting Friday or to city vote centers starting Monday. 

More information about when and how to vote can be found at juneau.org/elections. 

Find the latest local election coverage at ktoo.org/elections. 

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bernadette Wilson announced Tuesday that state Senate Minority Leader Mike Shower, a Wasilla Republican, would join her ticket as her pick for lieutenant governor.

Shower is a conservative who has served in the state Senate since 2018. He’s a commercial cargo pilot and retired Air Force officer. He has focused some of his legislative work on election security, though his reforms have largely failed to find support in the state Legislature.

Wilson highlighted that work in a statement, calling him a “deeply respected conservative leader.” If elected, Shower would be responsible for administering state election laws and appointing the director of the Division of Elections.

In a statement, Shower called Wilson “the clear choice to be Alaska’s next Governor.”

Wilson is a business owner, conservative activist and former talk radio host. She has never held elected office and pitches herself as an outsider.

Juneau may be getting a ‘new’ City Hall after all – but this time voters won’t get to decide on whether to approve it. 

At a committee of the whole meeting on Monday, the Juneau Assembly moved forward with a plan to purchase and renovate two floors of the Michael J. Burns building, which houses the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation downtown. 

If approved by the Assembly at its next regular meeting later this month, it would become the new location for City Hall. The cost to purchase the floors is $10.2 million. Renovation costs could add more than $7.5 million. 

At the meeting, City Manager Katie Koester told members the city estimates the move and renovations will be cheaper in the long run than maintaining the city’s current status quo.   

“Purchasing two floors of a box outside of the downtown core is not my dream situation. It’s not my legacy. It’s not anything like that,” she said. “I just think that it’s a very practical, fiscally responsible thing to do.” 

The current City Hall near Marine Park fits less than half of the city’s employees and needs millions of dollars in maintenance and repairs. The city rents other office space around town to house the rest of its staff. But city administrators say that’s unsustainable and expensive. They have advocated for years for a new space that would fit everyone. 

The city asked voters twice during recent municipal elections to approve bond debt to help pay for the construction of a brand new City Hall building. Voters said no both times. 

Now, the city has enough money set aside to purchase the floors in the Burns building, which means it won’t need to ask voters to approve any bond debt. The decision will instead go to the Assembly. 

Assembly member Alicia Hughes-Skandijs said she doesn’t like the plan, but she won’t object to it. 

“I share some people’s sense of, This isn’t what I wanted,’ but we do owe it to our community and to the folks who work for the city and for the community to come up with a solution,” she said. 

The Assembly asked for a more detailed estimate of what the renovations would cost. The Assembly is slated to take public testimony on the purchase of the floors and vote on it at its next regular meeting on Monday, Sept. 22. 

Alaska’s 2026 governor’s race is becoming a very lopsided affair. While a dozen or so Republicans are either running or believed to be preparing a run, a big question hangs over potential Democratic hopefuls: What will Mary Peltola do?

Nobody has reliable intel, not even Alaska pollster Ivan Moore.

“Well, hang on. Let’s do this: I have three Alaskan buddies here in the car,” he said Monday, when he happened to be driving through western Canada.

He put his phone on mute to do some quick research.

“We had one yes and two nos to the question, ‘Is Mary Peltola going to run for governor?'” he said.

Moore himself is in the yes-she-will camp, making it 50-50 odds in one very unscientific sample.

What does former Alaska congresswoman Mary Peltola say about her plans? She declined to comment for this story. But she attended fundraisers this summer, met with important political players and spoke at the Alaska Democratic Party’s annual picnic, fueling much speculation and inquiry.

Peltola is the only Democrat to win statewide in years. She lost her seat last year to Republican Nick Begich. But Moore said, — based on his real polling, beyond the occupants of his car —that she remains popular. If she enters, Moore said she’d do well in the open primary and would be “overwhelmingly likely” to win one of the four spots on the ranked choice general election ballot in November 2026.

“So it’s kind of an awkward situation: Do you wait for Mary or do you get in?” Moore said, channeling the dilemma other Democratic hopefuls are in. “And if you get in, do you say that you’ll get out if she gets in? Because no one wants to just be in a race to lose it. No one wants to take money away from Mary.”

As he sees it, Alaska Democrats have an innate culture of not competing against each other, because they can’t afford to. There are fewer of them.

The only Democrat to enter the governor’s race so far is former state senator Tom Begich. He pledged to step aside if Peltola runs.

“And I’m hopeful that she will be in a statewide race, too, and that that statewide race will be for the U.S. Senate,” said Begich, who is the uncle of the current Alaska congressman.

Moore polled on the possibility that Peltola might challenge U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan. He found that more respondents had a positive view of Peltola but, in a head-to-head match, Moore’s poll suggests Sen. Sullivan would win.

Moore described those two findings as “very unusual” and attributes it to the incumbent advantage.

Axios and other news sites reported last month that Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer is recruiting Peltola to run against Sullivan. That could mean another multi-million contest, with national Republicans spending a ton of money in Alaska to defend what’s otherwise a safe seat for them. The National Republican Senatorial Committee says it’s not worried.

“Chuck Schumer’s best options in red-state Senate races are losers like Mary Peltola,” a spokesman told Axios.

Anchorage political consultant Jim Lottsfeldt, who generally helps Democrats and moderate Republicans, ardently hopes Peltola enters the governor’s race.

“I think she will just sail far and above everybody else, based on her popularity, her accomplishments, her name ID,” he said. “And the Republicans will be busy in a knife fight amongst the 47 of them to try to get the right to challenge her. It’s sort of a perfect race for her.”

Peltola could spend a year raising money and consolidating support across the left and middle, he said.

“Whereas, with that crowded Republican primary, everybody on that side has to figure out how to get to the second-, third- and fourth-places,” Lottsfeldt said. “And they’re going to be pursuing their niche.”

He figures they’ll take far-right positions to stake out specific GOP lanes to do well in the primary, and then have to walk it back by November.

Alaska AFL-CIO President Joelle Hall said it may feel like potential Democratic candidates are hanging back and waiting for Peltola, but it’s still early. The candidate filing deadline isn’t until June 1, 2026.

“She’s the most electable Democrat in the entire field, and so, yeah, it is natural for everybody to want to know what she’s thinking,” Hall said.

While Peltola lost in 2024, that was a presidential election year. Non-presidential years have lower turnout and Hall said the Alaska voters who stay home skew conservative.

Hall said she doesn’t care which race Peltola files for — governor or U.S. senator — as long as she runs.

“And then when she makes her choice,” Hall said, “we will organize ourselves to try to make the most out of the choice that she makes.”

A document submitted by the Alaska Division of Elections to the U.S. Department of Justice in response to a nationwide data request names 70 possible noncitizens who voted or attempted to vote in state or local Alaska elections since 2015.

Among the 70 people are 10 American Samoans from Whittier who now face state criminal charges related to their voting. American Samoans are not considered U.S. citizens by the federal government, and civil charges against an 11th individual are now being considered by the Alaska Court of Appeals.

Noncitizen voting remains extraordinarily rare, nationwide figures show, and Carol Beecher, director of the Alaska Division of Elections, said there is no evidence that noncitizen voting changed the result of last year’s elections here.

Ahead of last year’s elections, Donald Trump and other Republican politicians said they believed large numbers of non-U.S. citizens would seek to vote and influence the result of elections.

Since becoming president, Trump has asked Congress to impose citizenship checks on all potential voters. His Department of Justice has asked all 50 states for copies of their voter lists in order to create a national government database.

Alaska turned over its voter list and other documents to the U.S. Department of Justice last month.

In response to a public records request filed by the Alaska Beacon, the Alaska Division of Elections provided copies of documents it delivered to federal authorities.

Most of the documents, including a copy of the state’s official voter list, were already public. The voter list, for example, is available for purchase from any state elections office and doesn’t include sensitive information beyond a voter’s name, how often they’ve voted, and where they live.

The state’s inactive voter list — showing people whose voter registrations have been flagged for review and possible removal — is also a public record, but it isn’t commonly circulated. Inactive voters can’t cast a ballot without additional ID checks.

The inactive voter list provided to the DOJ and to the Beacon is from August. It includes 541 people whose voter records were tagged “NC” for non-citizen.

But it’s not clear whether these Alaskans are noncitizens or were on the list because of mistakes.

Carol Beecher, director of the Alaska Division of Elections, said some people may have been erroneously labeled, so it isn’t correct to say that there were 541 noncitizens registered to vote.

“As we get more information, things change. So what I’m telling you today on a number may change tomorrow because of new information that we got,” Beecher said in an extended interview on Wednesday.

Stephen Kirch, the division’s spokesperson, said by email that “the DOE cannot say with any degree of certainty whether the current number of NC-coded entries is ‘abnormal’ or ‘unusual’ in a historical context. This is because the number is a moving target and not a static one; it is not tracked.”

The inactive voter list shows only people whose records have been flagged for additional attention and isn’t confirmation that they are not citizens. It may include people who filled out paperwork incorrectly or registered to vote shortly before becoming a citizen.

“It’s really hard to say whether this particular number (541) is a problem, because there’s so many questions behind even that particular number,” said Mara Kimmel, a former immigration attorney who now works as executive director of the Alaska chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

That total also might miss noncitizens who are on the active voter list but haven’t yet been identified.

Beecher said she considers the “NC” tag to be “kind of like a file drawer. You put things into that file based on the status when you put it in there. But that could change.”

Kimmel said that the issue is “never as easy as it seems or as it would be framed. … Noncitizens voting has become a real political hot-button issue.”

In her experience, “there’s so much confusion and misinformation that is born out of a benign desire to participate in your new home.”

In Alaska, residents can register to vote by contacting the Alaska Division of Elections. Residents are also asked if they want to register when they update their driver’s license, get a new driver’s license, and apply for the annual Permanent Fund dividend.

As Beecher explained, if someone attests that they’re not a citizen through one method but says they are a citizen via a different method, that gets the attention of authorities.

“When we have gone in there and looked and contacted them, we have found that usually it was a mistake,” she said.

In other cases, particularly with the state’s “motor-voter” program, the mistake might come from a typo or someone’s misunderstanding of the rules, particularly if they don’t speak fluent English, as might be the case with new immigrants.

The Division of Elections doesn’t have investigative powers, which means voting officials rely on an applicant’s sworn oath about their citizenship. There’s no automatic double-checking, and it’s federally unconstitutional for the division to ask for proof of citizenship.

Judges have thrown out a Kansas law that required voters to verify citizenship, and the U.S. Supreme Court has only partially allowed a different Arizona law.

“All we get is the affirmation, and however frustrating that can be for everyone out there to say, ‘Well, why can’t you make sure?’ Well, we are not given that authority. So essentially, the division takes people at their word is really what it comes down to,” Beecher said.

If someone’s registration is flagged by a complaint or because of a discrepancy in the records, the division forwards the case to the Alaska Department of Law for investigation.

“We provide them with documents if they request that, as pursuant to an investigation, but if not, we may never hear from them,” Beecher said of the investigation.

In 2023, the division flagged the registration of Tupe Smith, a Whittier resident, after she ran for and won a seat on the local school board.

Smith was born in American Samoa, an island territory in the South Pacific. Its residents are U.S. nationals — having some of the same legal rights as other Americans — but aren’t citizens.

During the subsequent investigation, Alaska State Troopers learned of 10 other American Samoans who had voted in Alaska. The state charged them with civil crimes in April, and this week, they were indicted.

All 10 are labeled noncitizens on the inactive voter list supplied to the Beacon and Department of Justice. They, and another 60 other people, are shown as having voted or attempted to vote at least once during the past 10 years.

It isn’t clear whether all of those ballots were actually counted. Many are labeled as “questioned,” meaning that they were subject to additional ID verification. Beecher said “it’s possible” that some were counted but that she didn’t have numbers.

She believes “very few” noncitizens have voted.

“I’m speaking very anecdotally, because I don’t have those kinds of numbers for you, but our sense is that it’s very small. And I think the underlying reason for that is because there is no nefarious intent out there to try to sway an election. It’s people who either — and this is my personal opinion — they’re confused about the rules or somehow ended up marking something that they didn’t understand,” Beecher said.

Alaska had 605,302 registered voters on Aug. 3, according to Division of Election statistics.

If the noncitizen-tagged voters on the inactive list had still been active, they would have represented just 0.09% of Alaska voters.

Last year, 340,981 Alaskans voted in the state’s November general election. The division’s inactive list shows six noncitizens either voted or attempted to vote in that election.

In Michigan, officials announced in April that they had found 16 credible cases of noncitizen voting out of about 5.7 million votes cast overall, or one per every 360,000 votes.

Nationally, noncitizen voting remains exceptionally rare.

Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage and a supporter of election reform legislation in Alaska, noted that the rate of noncitizen voting in Alaska is likely well below the rate at which legitimate voters are being disqualified because of problems with the state’s absentee voting system.

“Any time you have people who are voting that shouldn’t be voting, that’s cause for concern,” Wielechowski said in an interview Wednesday.

“But at the same time, we’ve got hundreds of people that we know of, actually thousands of people who were disenfranchised,” he said, referring to the state’s regular practice of disqualifying absentee ballots because of submittal errors.

“In rural Alaska, we had 10% or 15% of the population in rural Alaska that was disenfranchised a couple of years ago, legitimate voters who were disenfranchised because of a bureaucratic technicality that’s not even checked. So I think there’s bigger problems,” Wielechowski said.

In 2023, Rep. Sarah Vance, R-Homer, proposed legislation that would have required the Division of Elections to cross-check the state’s voter rolls with a national citizenship database.

“I always like to presume innocence, but we have to put the safeguards in place, and by having the division use those databases as a check and balance, I think that’s a very simple way to make sure that we’re crossing our T’s and dotting I’s,” Vance said Wednesday.

She noted that current Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, won his 2006 primary election via a coin toss that followed a tied election.

“When you look at how slim some of our elections are, how tight races can be, these numbers matter,” she said.

The Alaska Senate stripped out Vance’s citizenship provision and passed a revised bill, but the Republican-led House failed by a single vote to take up the legislation on the last day of the regular session in 2024. The bill died at the end of the session, and lawmakers started anew this spring.

In recent years, the Alaska Department of Law has requested funding for a part-time elections investigator. The Legislature has not approved that request.

“We shouldn’t have anyone voting in our elections on any level who shouldn’t be,” Vance said.

“This is important and significant because we want to make sure that we protect the sovereignty of every individual’s vote,” she said.

Sunday is the last day to register to vote or update your mailing address for Juneau’s 2025 municipal election.

This year’s election features three ballot propositions, three open Assembly seats and three open school board seats. Ballots will be mailed to voters on Sept. 19 and vote centers for in-person voting will open on Sept. 22.

The last day to vote is Oct. 7. Final election results will be shared later that month. Go to the city’s election page for more information. 

Have questions for candidates? Submit your thoughts to the KTOO newsroom through the form at the bottom of ktoo.org/elections or below.