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Update | 2:10 p.m. Monday

The National Weather Service in Juneau reports 10.6 inches of snow has fallen at their office in Mendenhall Valley since midnight Monday.

Original Story | 1:50 p.m. Monday

Several school buses were stuck in the snow Monday morning.

David Means, director of administrative services for the Juneau School District oversees busing services.

“There was a bus stuck in Douglas on Second Ave. there. They just needed to put chains on it and then it drove itself out,” Means said. “There were some other special education buses stuck on roads that were not plowed, basically on turnarounds as they were trying to pick up special education students.”

Means said one or two more buses may have been stuck.

He said a spokesman for First Student, the company holding the district’s busing contract, was pleased with how this morning went despite the hangups.

“He noted that some routes were running late, primarily due to the slowness of traffic and they were running late,” Means said. “But overall he said he was very pleased with how things came out this morning.”

The district runs 38 buses.

Some parents have complained that school should not have been open considering how much snow has fallen.

The district made the decision to keep school open using the best information available early this morning, Means said.

This morning, First Student drove the roads to evaluate them. They decided the major thoroughfares were passable. The district also consults The Juneau Police Department and the City and Borough of Juneau before it decides whether to hold classes.

“(If) we make a decision to close school, that would be a day that would have to be made up and also many parents who both work often would have to find very last minute daycare arrangements and, or, choose to stay home themselves,” Means said. “We find that when we make a decision to close schools, we’re making it not just for our school system but for the whole community.”

Superintendent Mark Miller said this is his second time deciding whether to close school for snow in his three years with the district. He said whether students can commute to school and back safely is the only factor considered in his decisions.

The National Weather Service expects 3-5 inches of snow to fall today. There is a winter storm warning in effect until 6 pm.

Editor’s note: In a previous version of this story, the word “disapproval” was misspelled in the headline. It has be corrected.

Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King, who has a history of controversial statements on immigration and race, is drawing condemnation for a Sunday tweet in support of a right-wing Dutch politician, in which King wrote, “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”

Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies. https://t.co/4nxLipafWO

— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) March 12, 2017

King’s tweet came in support of Geert Wilders, a Dutch parliamentarian who hopes to lead that country’s government in Wednesday’s elections. Wilders has called for banning the Quran in the Netherlands and shutting down mosques.

That has led to a series of statements and tweets slamming King. Iowa GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufmann said, “I do not agree with Congressman King’s statement. We are a nation of immigrants, and diversity is the strength of any nation and any community.”

Conservative commentator Bill Kristol tweeted: “Is it worth making the obvious point that what American history has been about is ‘restoring’ ourselves with ‘somebody else’s babies?’ ”

Is it worth making the obvious point that what American history has been about is “restoring” ourselves with “somebody else’s babies?” https://t.co/DZAjW670Ur

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) March 12, 2017

NBC News special correspondent Tom Brokaw, author of The Greatest Generation, sounded a similar note:

“somebody elses babies” are in US mil uniforms and in harm’s way. volunteers to protect America.
Cong King, please!

— Tom Brokaw (@tombrokaw) March 13, 2017

But King also has his supporters, including former KKK grand wizard David Duke, who tweeted “GOD BLESS STEVE KING!!! #TruthRISING.” Duke also suggested “sanity reigns supreme” in King’s congressional district.

GOD BLESS STEVE KING!!! #TruthRISING https://t.co/oDFel8JDrP

— David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) March 12, 2017

Duke’s support seemed to spur the response from Kaufmann, the Iowa GOP chairman, which came under the heading: “David Duke isn’t welcome in Iowa.”

And King himself refused to back away from the tweet. On CNN Monday morning, King said, “I meant exactly what I said,” and that he’d “like to see an America that’s just so homogeneous that we look a lot the same, from that perspective.”

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Closing the Bergmann Hotel left some of its tenants homeless and now they’re wondering what they’ll do next.

The Glory Hole soup kitchen is the only short-term shelter open to men, women and children in Juneau. It’s the perfect place for Charlie Joseph to stay warm and wait out the day.

Joseph was at a barbecue the night police and other officials came to close the Bergmann Hotel. So when he went home, he was surprised he couldn’t get in.

“And I went down there and I seen the plyboards on all the windows and when I went to the front, everything was plyboarded off so I didn’t know what was going on,” he said.

The historic building has suffered from years of neglect and mistreatment. Juneau officials condemned it because the building isn’t safe but for Joseph and other Juneau residents, it was home.

The Salvation Army church opened a temporary warming station downtown specifically for the Bergmann residents, but Joseph didn’t know that until the next morning.

He says he just walked the streets all night. He didn’t get any of his things, including his medicine for hypertension and post-traumatic stress disorder before being evicted.

Juneau officials posted a sheet of paper condemning the Bergmann on Thursday. The paper had orders for all the tenants to be out in 24 hours. They also sent a letter to the owners and the property manager listing 15 ways the building violated city code.

When police cleared the building Friday, they promised Bergmann residents that city officials would let them recover their belongings left in the building.

Joseph says no one told him about the pending closure but he had heard rumors about what might happen.

“Everybody was telling us that that’s what they were going to do, but I didn’t get no paper (and) nobody came and talked to me about it, so everything was up in the air,” Joseph said.

He plans to spend his next night indoors in the warming station in the Salvation Army church’s lower level.

There are seven people sleeping here tonight and four are Bergmann tenants. The night before about 15 people came for soup and seven spent the night. The Bergmann property manager said the hotel averaged 30 residents per month.

Chris Clark is playing cribbage with two friends. He says he found out the Bergmann was being closed two hours before he had to leave.

“There were four fire marshals standing out on the lawn and I asked them what they were doing there and they said, ‘We’re condemning the place,’” Clark recalled. “He said, ‘You need to go up and you need to start packing your stuff because you’re out.’ I paid $750 and they’re not giving me that money back. We’re just out.”

Clark says losing his home has made everything harder.

“I’m not only homeless. I’m homeless with AIDS and I have no clothing, no medication, no anything. I have nothing.”

A Salvation Army volunteer brings Clark tissue so he can wipe away tears. He also has a bad back and is on disability.

“You know, I was really proud of being able to pay for my own home and now it’s gone and so is my money. So yeah, I’m a little upset,” he said.

Clark says he and his friends spent the day at the bus stop where they went to keep warm. He’s thankful for the Salvation Army.

Lt. Lance Walters with the Salvation Army says this warming station is on a trial run.

“We’re going to be open from 7 in the evening to 7 in the morning and we’re going to go till Tuesday morning,” Walters said.

Whether they open again depends on how many people volunteer to help.

Walters says the station is a second chance for people who can’t sleep in the Glory Hole. The shelter won’t take people with a blood alcohol level over 0.1.

Walters says the Salvation Army won’t turn away people who are drunk unless they cause too much trouble.

The City and Borough of Juneau’s letter to the Bergmann’s owners gave them a chance to fix the building and open it to tenants in the future.

When each of the 15 violations are fixed, the letter says to contact the CBJ for an inspection.

Alaska Energy Desk’s Rashah McChesney contributed to this story. 

Tribes in Southeast will soon have more say in their emergency preparedness plans. The Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska is the recipient of a $240,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA.

The funding is part of FEMA’s Emergency Management Performance Grant, a national effort to encourage state, local, territorial, and tribal governments in planning for disasters. The Central Council will work alongside Alaska’s Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management to implement plans throughout Southeast.

A press release from the Central Council announcing the grant also announced the promotion of Village Public Safety Officer Sergeant Corey Padron to Emergency Management Coordinator. The FEMA grant will be paid in salary reimbursements, with $80,000 available through July of this year and another $160,000 through July 2018.

Padron has served as a VPSO in Saxman through the Central Council for five years. He also teaches at the Village Police Officer Academy in Bethel and the Alaska Public Safety Training Academy in Sitka.

In a statement to the Central Council, Padron says he plans to work directly with other VPSOs and partner communities. He plans to review and update any existing emergency preparedness plans and then draw up new ones where necessary.

Padron says he’ll look for training opportunities and additional grants to increase the disaster resiliency of tribes and communities across Southeast.

The historic Bergmann Hotel used as a tenement has been condemned by the City and Borough of Juneau over health and safety hazards.

Tenants were coming to terms Friday with the city’s condemnation order.

Code violations have been ongoing for years, but few tenants realized this was really the end.

“I read that sign and walked right past it just like most every other tenants did, probably most of them didn’t even read it — a few of them can’t,” said Dave Lane, a carpenter who works as a handyman in exchange for lodging.

The Bergmann Hotel was built in 1913. It’s been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1977.

The city says the owners had been on notice since October.

“There’s significant health and safety issues at the Bergmann including an inoperable sprinkler system for fire, inconsistent heating, no hot water, sewage issues and improper roofing,” Deputy City Manager Mila Cosgrove said, “All of those issues pose significant risks to the people who are tenants there.”

About 50 people live in the building. Most pay about $600 a month. Tenants do much of the repair and upkeep themselves to keep the heat on and water flowing.

James Cole, 49, said he was caught off guard as he worked to clear out the basement.

“The whole point of it is I just gave them $600 yesterday for rent and the guy — he wouldn’t give me my money back,” Cole said. “I told him, ‘Dude. I just gave you $600 just yesterday.’ Now if I don’t get my $600 back — I’m going to take him to court. I want my money back if I can’t stay here.”

The city said it’s working with social service agencies to help displaced tenants with nowhere to go. As many as 30 spaces have been available at its downtown church.

“We’ll be open every night for them until Tuesday from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. so they can sleep,” said Lt. Dana Walters of the Salvation Army. “We have cots, we have blankets. People are allowed to bring like one bag with them but then they have to take it. We unfortunately don’t have room for people to store things.”

The hotel property is controlled by Camilla Barrett who owns it through a limited liability corporation.

Barrett also is a defendant named in a lawsuit brought by the city in its attempt to recover the cost of demolishing the Gastineau Apartments, a fire-ravaged downtown property owned by a limited liability corporation controlled by the Barrett family.

Dave Lane said he’s worked for about three years to try to keep the building habitable.

But there’s been little investment from the Barretts, he said.

“Right now they don’t get a lot out of it so they don’t want to put a lot into it,” Lane said. “They’re not looking into the fact that, ‘Okay — if we put some money into this’ Because I mean, look at this place … it wouldn’t really take that much to put this into — have it a really nice building.”

Efforts to reach Camilla Barrett – whose legal name is listed as Kathleen Barrett — and her attorney that represented her in the city’s lawsuit over the Gastineau Apartments were unsuccessful.

Many of the residents suffer from mental illness and substance abuse.

“We do support safety and things like that. We don’t want to see our mental health consumers housed in a dilapidated situation,”said Gregory Fitch, executive director of the Mental Health Consumer Action Network in Juneau. “But considering the cold — I think we could’ve waited a week.”

The National Weather Service forecasts temperatures to dip into the 20s over the weekend.

Juneau struggles with homelessness and a lack of affordable housing. It remains unclear what options many of these tenants will have after the city boards up the Third Street property.

Update | 10:48 a.m. Friday

Deputy City Manager Mila Cosgrove says the problems at the Third Street property are serious.

“There’s significant health and safety issues at the Bergmann including an inoperable sprinkler system for fire, inconsistent heating, no hot water, sewage issues and improper roofing,” she said. “All of those issues pose significant risks to the people who are tenants there.”

Bergmann Hotel owners have until 4 p.m. today to address the violations or the city is ordering its tenants out.

~ Jacob Resneck, KTOO

Original story | 10 p.m. Thursday

The owner of downtown Juneau’s historic Bergmann Hotel has until midday Friday to address various code violations dealing with health and safety issues — or else the city is ordering its tenants out.

City Manager Rorie Watt said in a written statement that the order was issued Thursday afternoon. He said it came after months of inspections, walkthroughs, and communication with the owner, including fire and building code violation notices dating back to October.

He said the owner was given “ample time to become compliant to little effect.”

Problems highlighted by the city include an inoperable sprinkler system, inadequate heating, no hot water, sewage issues and improper roofing.

The Bergmann Hotel was built in 1913 as housing for miners. It’s been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1977.

If the building must be cleared, Watt said the city is working with The Salvation Army and social service agencies to connect displaced tenants with housing and other assistance.

The building is controlled by Camilla Barrett who owns it through Breffni Place Properties LLC. State corporate records indicate Barrett lives in Edmonds, Washington, and that the limited liability corporation was incorporated in September.

Barrett is also a defendant named in a lawsuit brought by the city  in its attempt to recover the cost of demolishing the Gastineau Apartments, another derelict downtown property owned by an LLC controlled by the Barrett family.

Those apartments became uninhabitable after a fire in 2012. They deteriorated for years until the city demolished them in 2016.

Camilla Barrett – whose legal name is listed as Kathleen Barrett — could not be immediately reached for comment.