Community

A crosswalk in a downtown Juneau neighborhood is constantly being painted over in rainbow colors.

Depending on who you ask, it’s either an expression of creativity or simple vandalism.

The corner of 7th and Gold Streets isn’t particularly busy. But one of its crosswalks has been getting a fair amount of attention since someone began painting a rainbow over the white lines.

Sue Warner lives two doors down.

“The first time I saw it, I was kind of having a hard time and I was walking to work on a sunny morning,” Warner said. “It just was bright and cheerful and it made me smile. And then I’ve watched other people stop and take pictures and point to it. I see it makes everyone smile. It’s a bright cheerful color.”

The city had the crosswalk repainted. That was last summer.

“The manual for uniform traffic control devices doesn’t give us an option. Crosswalk lines are to be white. It’s in bold in the regulation,” said Ed Foster, the city’s superintendent of streets. “They have to be white and that’s based on studies that they’ve done to determine that the white is more visible than any other color. So they have to be white.”

It didn’t end there. The rainbow has been reappearing.

Each time it does, the city has to repaint. It’s happened at least three times this summer.

Foster said it’s getting ridiculous — and expensive.

“We contract out the roadway to a contractor and they charge us $195 for every crosswalk,” Foster said.

An email list maintained by the Downtown Juneau Neighborhood Association lit up this month with discussion about the fate of the rainbow.

It found many fans. There’s been at least one offer to pony up hundreds of dollars for the city’s expense to date if they’ll just leave it alone.

Foster said people can petition the Assembly for a variance to allow multi-colored crosswalks, if they want. Otherwise it’s vandalism.

“It’s no different than someone takes a spray can and starts painting light poles, trash cans, power transformer,” Foster said. “It’s graffiti and we’re gonna clean it up.”

The identity of the guerrilla crosswalk painter or painters isn’t known. There’s been no claim of responsibility; no manifesto left at the scene.

Neighbor Sue Warner said she appreciates the effort whoever might be responsible.

“I don’t know who’s painting it … the more color in our lives in this gray town, the better,” she said.

But the city’s streets department isn’t amused anymore.

Foster has this simple plea: “Please stop painting over the white paint.”

Editor’s note: The headline has been changed to reflect that a crosswalk has been painted rainbow colors. A previous version of this headline incorrectly referred to it as a sidewalk.

Residents in a homeless camp on the edge of downtown Juneau have been served with a formal trespassing notice by the landowner, the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority.

Juneau Police Department officers and social care agencies walked through Tuesday afternoon delivering formal trespass notices. The encampment off Egan Drive mushroomed in recent months after police began enforcing park closures downtown.

Police Officer Ken Colon said the notices explain that people need to be off the property by Sept. 5 or face prosecution. They also include names, addresses and phone numbers of local social service agencies that could help.

This land is part of the Alaska Mental Health Trust. The trust’s land office is negotiating the sale of at least one of the parcels for redevelopment and wants to clear both parcels of vegetation.

Closest to the road are a collection of tarps rigged up to keep a cooking and sleeping area out of the rain.

“When we got here it was pretty rough,” said resident Tapia Church, 45. “Then a couple of us got together and were like, ‘Hey man, we can’t have this stuff here. Pick up your garbage and throw it in the trash.’ Simple stuff.”

He’s been here for about two months but admits the site isn’t perfect. He said further back in the bushes, there’s hard drinking, hard drugs and occasional bouts of violence.

“A lot of it just had to do with drinking, really,” he said. “Drinking and fighting that was about it.”

Juneau is grappling with a homeless crisis. It’s complex. Housing costs, mental illness and substance abuse, compound it.

This week the city applied to the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority to fund a coordinator for homeless services. The request is for about $100,000 annually for three years.

The trust authority’s chief operating officer, Steve Williams, stood by as police officers talked to camp residents. He said the agency’s board will consider the city’s grant request.

“I haven’t looked at the grant application,” Williams said, “but I’m sure it’s to try and help pull together the resources here in the community to try and do a concerted effort on outreach and, you know, developing solution for homelessness.”

The city is considering extending operation of the seasonal Thane campground. It usually shuts down in October but may stay open longer this year.

The campground hasn’t been popular with Juneau’s homeless.

“There’s two reasons: number one it’s quite a walk from town and number two it’s not continuously open,” said camper Nick Beers, 30.

Where these people will go isn’t clear. Many don’t know themselves. But residents said they’re resigned to the fact that they’ll have to move on.

“We just wanted something, a nice little spot, a little hunker down for four or five of us,” Church said, “A little community, that’s what we did here.”

Shelter beds are scarce and social agencies say resources are thinly stretched.

The Juneau Housing First apartments are slated to open next month – that will offer shelter to 32 of the most vulnerable homeless residents. But a survey this year counted at least 215 homeless people in the community.

The Canadian company buying Alaska Electric Light & Power Company’s parent corporation isn’t interested in selling off Juneau’s electric utility any time soon.

That was the gist of a letter from Hydro One’s CEO to the City and Borough of Juneau.

The city had written a letter to the Toronto-based power company last month urging the company to meet with representatives of Juneau Hydropower.

The aspiring independent power-producer and local investors are interested in buying AEL&P.

Keith Comstock of Juneau Hydropower said he wasn’t surprised by Hydro One’s answer. Local investors will continue to pursue the goal of eventually returning AEL&P to local ownership, he said.

“We believe that local ownership in any form is in Juneau’s long-term, strategic interest and that it’s a goal worth pursuing vigorously,” Comstock said.

Members of the Juneau Assembly are still interested in the prospect of the city owning a stake in the power company.

The Assembly asked the Finance Department on Monday to pen a report looking at the issue and report back next month.

Finance Director Bob Bartholomew said his task is to examine, “the issues, the risks or the opportunities related to potentially owning the local electric utility.”

Hydro One’s Aug. 14 letter says that if its acquisition is approved by regulators, it has no interest in selling any of its new assets or subsidiaries.

“Hydro One fully supports AEL&P’s 124-year old vision of bringing safe, reliable, affordable power to Juneau,” Hydro One CEO Mayo Schmidt wrote.

The company declined further comment.

NOAA’s federal property on Auke Bay will be split between the University of Alaska Southeast and City and Borough of Juneau.

The deal to subdivide the waterfront acreage was announced Monday.

“This agreement between UAS and CBJ to partition the Auke Bay Marine Station property is good for Juneau because it both supports marine education and research at UAS, and allows for future harbor expansion,” University Chancellor Rick Caulfield said in a joint press release with the city and university. “This is a ‘win-win’ for all involved.”

The former NOAA marine lab has been largely vacant since the Ted Stevens Marine Research Institute on Lena Point opened in 2005.

Last year, both the city and university submitted competing applications to take over the 4-acre property and its buildings after talks to share the property stalled.

But in February the Juneau Assembly urged both sides to return to the table. Those discussions resulted in the formal agreement that’s been signed and forwarded to the federal agency in charge of surplus property.

The university plans to use the former lab building for research and education programs in marine biology and other disciplines.

Juneau Docks & Harbors will use the water access to add to its expansion of Statter Harbor where it plans to build a larger breakwater for larger ships.

“We reached a goal to jointly acquire the facility,” CBJ Port Engineer Gary Gillette said in the release. “We’re hoping to get it all taken care of so both UAS and CBJ can move forward with their plans.”

The Coast Guard already leases part of the facility. Its future on the site isn’t certain though the city has said it would like to keep it as a tenant.

The federal government could turn over the facility as early as November 1.

The federal government won’t charge for the property.

City officials have previously indicated that taking over its share of the facilities could cost about $250,000, which would likely require approval from the planning commission and Juneau Assembly.

Residents in a homeless encampment in Juneau are facing a new deadline to vacate a downtown property.

The Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority has notified the city that it wants its property cleared of trespassers in two weeks.

About a dozen campsites sprang up this summer at the former sub-port property off Egan Drive. The Trust Authority says property needs to be cleared of trespassers by September 5.

“We have a growing number of complaints about impacts of the homeless camp and it’s not just on the mental health trust property right there, it has expanded,” Wyn Menefee, deputy director of the Trust Land Office, said Friday. “But we also are trying to help these people transition to a different location.”

The Trust Land Office manages land owned by the Alaska Mental Health Trust.

The Trust Authority has reached out to the city and social care agencies about relocating people in advance of the deadline.

“We have been working up to this transition,” Menefee said. “But we’re trying to do it in a way that it gives the people that are residing at the homeless camp the ability to move in a dignified fashion over to something else.”

The city estimates about a dozen people have been living on the 2-acre parcel. The Trust Authority is in talks to sell an adjacent parcel and wants the area cleaned up.

“We recognize that folks are camped out there and our goal would be to connect them in with other services available in the community,” Deputy City Manager Mila Cosgrove said Friday.

Cosgrove added the city is considering extending operation of the city-run campground south of downtown that normally closes in mid-October due to avalanche danger.

“We still have space available in the Thane Campground,” she said. “In terms of a like-environment, that also exists.”

Social care agencies have said the lack of transport to the Thane Campground, which lies 2-miles down an unlit road, makes it unsuitable for homeless people suffering from disabilities.

Shelter space is also at a premium.

The Glory Hole, a downtown shelter and soup kitchen, has been running above capacity. The shelter counted 46 people overnight Thursday in the 40-bed facility.

“It’s not unusual in the winter for us to sleep, you know, over capacity,” Executive Director Mariya Lovishchuk said. “Definitely it’s very unusual this time of year. It definitely creates a pretty stressful atmosphere.”

Clearing the camp will likely increase pressure on the shelter.

“We would certainly not turn anybody due to lack of space, but it will be pretty hard to house more people,” Lovishchuk said.

Earlier this year the Juneau Assembly passed an ordinance prohibiting camping on private property in the downtown core.

After some homeless people moved onto public property including Marine Park, Juneau police officers began enforcing park hours.

There may be some relief to Juneau’s homelessness crisis.

The 32-bed Housing First apartment complex, which is designed to house Juneau’s most vulnerable homeless residents, is due to open next month.

Juneau police are looking for a 28-year-old woman who vanished August 13.

Juneau Police Lt. Kris Sell said that Alexis Ashley Ehlers of Juneau hasn’t been heard from since being involved in a minor fender-bender.

“Ehlers has been distraught over personal issues and walked away from a very minor vehicle collision prior to the arrival of responding officers,” Sell said Thursday. “Ehlers has not communicated with her family since and they’re very concerned about her welfare.”

Police request that anyone who sees Ehlers to contact the department at 586-0600.