Community

The city plans to make the space more inviting and secure. It’ll also become Juneau’s first official off-leash dog park.

For the past two years the city of Juneau has been asking residents to fill out an online survey about how they use Cope Park and ways it could be improved. Parks and Landscape Superintendent George Schaaf says some common themes emerged from the more than 300 responses: Better lighting, improved tennis courts, and more amenities for dogs.

“One of the things we heard loud and clear is that people didn’t necessarily feel safe here at night,” Schaaf says. “So one of the things we’re trying to do with the project is to brighten up the park, improve the sight lines, and make it more attractive, so more people come here more often.”

Some of that’s already been accomplished. New drainage should improve field conditions, and a new outfield fence will go up sometime in the next two weeks. Gone is a crumbling rock wall, replaced by a gentle sloping hill. The old picnic shelter and some abandoned bathrooms have been torn down as well.

“Those buildings had been out of service for many, many years. We were having a lot of vandalism and a lot of maintenance problems with them,” Schaaf says. “They should have been taken out when the new bathrooms were built about five years ago. But there wasn’t enough money at the time to do that.”

Schaaf says the city did not need a survey to tell it how popular Cope Park is with dogs. Besides some pickup kickball and few Little League games, he says the ball field is almost exclusively used by dog owners looking to exercise their pooches.

“For the most part it’s one dog after another, sometimes many dogs out here,” he says.

Right now Cope Park is leash-only, though it’s a rule many dog owners choose to ignore. Schaaf says the city wants to give people what they want in a park experience. So he plans to write new regulations to make it Juneau’s first official off-leash park.

“A lot of the rules will just be how to be a good dog guardian out here and how to be a good park user,” Schaaf says. “Common courtesy will be a big part of it.”

Tim Spengler and his cocker spaniels Ella and Pippin use Cope Park a couple times a week. The dogs are looking forward to an improved experience, and Spengler is excited about it too.

“Juneau is rich with a lot of good trails and such, but this would be nice to have something that’s particularly dedicated for dogs,” he says. “As long as it’s not exclusively for dogs and dogs weren’t allowed other places.”

The second phase of Cope Park improvements are scheduled to begin in 2016. Schaaf says that project will be more involved than the work done this year, including a new layout, playground equipment, major lighting upgrades, new tennis courts, and two new picnic shelters.

The park is named after Bill Cope, a former captain with Capital City Fire and Rescue. Juneau Fire Chief Rich Etheridge says firefighters are planning a memorial statue in Cope’s honor.

“The one we’re looking at right now is a firefighter wearing bunker gear and he’s with a child, and handing off his fire helmet for the kid to play with,” Etheridge says. “We just felt it was a really good representation for what we felt the park should be about.”

Etheridge says firefighters will start fundraising for the statue soon. Schaaf says part of it could be financed with the city’s 1 percent for art fund.

All of the Cope Park renovations are being funded by the city’s temporary 1 percent sales tax approved by voters in 2012.

Disclosure: George Schaaf is a member of KTOO’s Board of Directors.

Riverbend Elementary School held its morning recess indoors Thursday after hearing reports of a bear sighting along the Mendenhall River.

Administrative assistant Lisa Peters says no one at the school saw the bear firsthand, but that the first recess shift at 9:10 a.m. was held indoors in “an abundance of caution.”

The seven other recess shifts during the day were held outside.

The bear reports followed a backyard YouTube video of a bear crossing the Mendenhall River making its rounds on social media. The videographer could not be reached for comment, but the video description says it was shot on Monday.

A county government building in New Jersey was dedicated Wednesday to the USS Juneau, 71 years to the day the Navy ship was sunk in the Battle of Guadalcanal.

More than 600 men died on Nov. 13, 1942, when two Japanese torpedoes struck the ship.  Among them were 20 Hudson County, New Jersey men.

A number of their family members attended the dedication.  Juneau Assembly member Randy Wanamaker also was there.

They read the names of all the men from New Jersey who perished on the ship.

Wanamaker says a number of World War II veterans were guests of honor at the dedication.

The USS Juneau was built in Hudson County at the Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock’s building 77. The ship was launched in the Hackensack River in October 1941.  At the time, its namesake was the capital of the Territory of Alaska.

Following the war, the U.S. Navy gave building 77 to Hudson County. It now houses several county government departments.

Wanamaker has been fascinated by the ship since he was a kid and heard stories from his mother about Juneau children collecting dimes for the ship’s silverware.

More than 500 people attended the New Jersey dedication, which brought city officials from miles around.  Wanamaker read a proclamation from the City and Borough of Juneau.

He says a model of the USS Juneau is in the Hudson County building, and a small museum includes artifacts, numerous letters from crew members and newspaper stories about the light cruiser.

Last year, Wanamaker organized Juneau’s dedication of a new waterfront memorial to the ship.

Two other Navy ships bore the name USS Juneau. Another light cruiser was commissioned in 1946 and served in the Korean War before being scrapped in 1962.  The third was a transport vessel launched in 1966 and decommissioned in 2008 at a ceremony in San Diego, which Wanamaker also attended.

(This story was updated to clarify the commission and decommission dates for the other vessels named USS Juneau)

Only three people showed up for the first meeting on Sunday of a community task force looking at Juneau middle school travel policies.

Jon Kurland created the task force after the Juneau School Board in September adopted a ban of all out-of-town middle school athletic travel. The ban takes effect next school year.

He said he’s just getting the word out and will be reaching out to the Floyd Dryden and Dzantik’i Heeni middle school communities.

He’s calling the open-to-all body the Stakeholder Committee on Middle School Sports Travel.

Unlike picketers and other community opponents of the school board’s ban, Kurland said this is not a de facto repeal effort.

“I’m not trying to hide the fact that I’m hoping we’re gonna get to a place where the board can say ‘yes’ to middle school travel, I think that’s very much the goal,” Kurland said. “But I don’t think it’s going to be as simple just having the board reverse its September decision. I think we’re probably going to have to come up with a new framework that has different conditions attached to it so the board can feel comfortable that that’s an option that they can get behind.”

Kurland had lobbied the Juneau School Board for official participation in the committee. The board didn’t assign any staff or board members to it, but said it’s “acknowledging” the committee’s creation, and will hear the task force’s recommendations in the spring. The committee aims to have final recommendations ready by the end of February.

Kurland is a parent, though he doesn’t have a personal stake in the travel ban. His youngest child will be in high school when it takes effect.

“I recognize the educational and social value of teen travel opportunities and I think we owe it to these kids to take a harder look at this problem and try to explore solutions to create those opportunities,” Kurland said.

The committee’s next meeting has not been set, but people interested in participating can find updates on the Facebook group Save Our Middle School Sports – Juneau, Alaska or by emailing Kurland directly at JonKurland1@gmail.com.

Juneau teachers and the school district go back to the bargaining table on Monday (Nov. 18).

Teachers are working on a one-year contract that expired in June, but remains in effect until a new agreement is reached.

Teachers have come before the school board at every meeting this fall — with this message:

“Our district has not entered negotiations in good faith,” said Mendenhall River 5th grade teacher Adam Berkey.

Impasse, failed mediation, arbitration;  all mark the history of contract negotiations over the last couple of years between the Juneau School District and Juneau Education Association.

Now the two sides await an arbitrator’s opinion.  It’s only advisory.

They met with an arbitrator in mid-October.  There have been no negotiations since.

The school board allows public comments at the start of every meeting and that time has become the teachers’ platform this fall.

Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School teacher Kathleen Portfield was the first to address the board on Tuesday.

“Please direct the superintendent to come back to the table with no less than the current increase in the cost of living for 2013, currently 2.7 percent for the first six months.”

JEA vice president Dirk Miller has more than 24 years in the district as a parent and physical education teacher.  He said he doesn’t remember a time when there’s been “such a disconnect” between the district and its staff.

He explained why teachers quickly rejected the district’s last offer in early October.

“Almost a year (it) seems like we’ve been stonewalled. The district really didn’t offer us anything. Zero in salary increases; even some safety measures didn’t get addressed. So this year we come back to the table and the best you have to offer is cutting health insurance then rewarding a very few members with a one-time bonus.  That’s not going to heal this division,” Miller said.

The teachers have not minced words.  At each monthly board meeting they’ve described low morale, feeling devalued, even anger toward the administration.

Sixteen-year high school teacher Tonja Moser acknowledged that negotiations seldom go well, but said this year is the worst.

“You haven’t bargained in good faith.  Ten times to the table without a single penny, unless it was a divisive offer, is not a respectful thing to do to us,” she said.           

The district blames flat funding from the Legislature, a problem for schools across Alaska.

Juneau superintendent Glenn Gelbrich said he hopes Monday’s negotiating session will get JEA and the administration closer to a solution, but every dollar requires a tradeoff.

“Reality is that our resources are what our resources are.  And to every additional dollar we spend on the salary side, for whatever employee group, not just teachers, we have to balance that with the interests of the programs we offer to kids,” he said.     

In the meantime, briefs are due to the arbitrator next week. The advisory opinion is expected before the end of the year.

The final enrollment count for the Juneau School District shows 99 fewer students than projected.  It means the district will receive about $700,000 less in revenue for this school year.

The numbers were submitted to the Alaska Department of Education on Friday.  School operating funds come from the state, based on an amount per student. Schools are required to forecast the number of students several months in advance of the school year.

Officials knew earlier this fall that enrollment was lower than projections, but the final count turned out to be better than anticipated. The number of students with intensive needs also was higher than estimated.

The district had expected a loss of more than a million dollars.

Superintendent Glenn Gelbrich told the school board last night (Tuesday) that the shortfall will be offset by a carry-over in funds from last year’s budget.  The approximate $750,000 fund balance resulted from unspent areas of the budget and some unexpected revenue.