Business

Sealaska Corporation shareholders have voted down a term-limits measure.

It called for limiting board of directors members to four, three-year terms, for a total of 12 years. It only attracted a little more than a quarter of the voting shares required to win.

Sealaska Corporate Secretary Nicole Hallingstad says shareholders also returned five incumbents.

“The Sealaska board slate was re-elected. Directors Albert Kookesh, Barbara Cadiente-Nelson, Bill Thomas, Joe Nelson and Tate London,” she says.

Three independent board candidates lost: William Micklin, Raymond Austin and Edward Sarabia Jr.

Sealaska is the regional Native corporation for Southeast Alaska. It has more than 21,000 shareholders, with fewer than half living in the region.

Election results were announced at Saturday’s annual meeting, which was held in Juneau.

“Approximately 350 of our shareholders joined us at Thunder Mountain High School for our annual meeting. And 417 of our shareholder households viewed the webcast of our annual meeting,” she says.

Last year’s meeting, in Haines, attracted about a third as many people, but twice this year’s webcast count.

Those attending Saturday’s meeting heard from Hawaiian Native leader Nainoa Thompson, of the Polynesian Voyaging Society.

Hallingstad says he spoke about Alaska Natives as cultural leaders. He also talked about a major expedition he’s planning to several Polynesian Islands.

“It designed for those paddlers to navigate the way the old Hawaiians did merely by geography and the stars along the paths that their ancestors used to paddle. And he indicated it would be wonderful if some Alaska Natives could join those Hawaiians on the voyage,” she says.

The board also voted to retain Sealaska’s management team.

2012 Annual Meeting Election Results
Numbers indicate shares voted. Most shareholders have 100 shares.

CANDIDATE VOTES
Albert Kookesh – 1,004,184
Barbara Cadiente-Nelson – 901,138
Bill Thomas – 845,123
Joe Nelson – 802,338
Tate London – 778,126
William Micklin – 337,159
Raymond Austin – 294,618
Edward Sarabia, Jr. – 213,754

Term Limits resolution
Shall Sealaska Corporation amend Bylaw Section 3.1 to establish term limits for directors of four complete three-year terms, with permanent ineligibility thereafter?
Threshold to pass: 983,621 shares (50 percent of shares that could be voted, plus one.)
Shares voted in favor of the resolution: 499,147 or 25.37 percent of all possible shares.
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The regional Native corporation for Southeast Alaska holds its annual shareholders’ meeting Saturday, June 23.

Sealaska Corporation has about 21,000 shareholders, many living outside the state.

Saturday’s meeting is at Juneau’s Thunder Mountain High School. It begins at 10 a.m. with a shareholder’s fair and comments from board of directors’ candidates and both sides of a term-limits resolution.

The meeting also includes a business report and election results. It ends at about 5 p.m. with a question-and-answer session for shareholders.

Critics say the hour planned for that session is too short, and is an attempt to muzzle opponents. Corporate officials say it was just an estimate and will run longer if needed.

Sealaska’s annual meeting will be webcast live through the corporation’s website. Only shareholders can attend the meeting in person or on the internet.

Click on this link for the full meeting schedule.

See a slideshow of the 2011 annual meeting in Haines.

One of the two finalists to be the next CEO of Juneau’s Bartlett Regional Hospital could get a job offer as soon as tonight (Monday).

Christine Harff of Thief River Falls, Minnesota and Liz Woodyard of Petersburg, Alaska went through a rigorous three-day assessment center last week. It involved interviews with city and hospital staff, “real-life” exercises, and meetings with the general public.

The city-owned hospital’s board of directors meets at 5:15 p.m. to talk about the candidates, and possibly offer one the job.

KTOO’s Casey Kelly has more.

Liz Woodyard has been CEO of Petersburg Medical Center for almost a year. It’s her second stint as a CEO and her second tour in Alaska. She spent about 10 years as an administrator and nursing officer at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital before being hired as CEO of Northern California’s Banner Lassen Medical Center in 2008.

Woodyard says she’s happy in Petersburg, but the opportunity to lead Bartlett is too good to pass up.

“Because it’s a regional hospital, and I feel really strongly that Bartlett has a lot to offer Southeast Alaska,” says Woodyard. “I feel we can partner very well with the other hospitals in Southeast.”

Woodyard says being familiar with the hospital and Juneau would help her hit the ground running. She says she learned of some opportunities for growth at Bartlett during her initial interview and the assessment center. One she’d be interested in exploring if she gets the job is an oncology center, where Southeast residents could receive cancer treatment.

“Just based on the fact that people leave and they go to Seattle or Anchorage, it’d be really nice to allow people to stay closer to home,” she says. “To avoid the stress of having to leave their family and their jobs, if services were offered locally, I think it would be great.”

Woodyard has a Master’s degree in Education from William Woods University in Fulton, Missouri and a nursing degree from the University of Phoenix.

Like Woodyard, Christine Harff got her start in nursing. She also has an MBA from the University of Minnesota and a law degree from William Mitchell College.

She currently serves as CEO of Sanford Medical Center in Thief River Falls, Minnesota – an 8,500 person town in the northwest corner of the state. She says the hospital is similar in size to Bartlett. But instead of being community-owned, it’s part of the Sanford Health system.

“Same challenges, though, we need to work at driving costs down,” Harff says. “But that’s a national problem for every hospital, and we kind of owe it that to our country to do a better job.”

Harff says she’d need to become more familiar with Bartlett before making any specific recommendations. She says it helps that the hospital is doing well financially, but like hospitals everywhere it can’t continue to raise prices for patients. She says there are ways to be more efficient, and often it’s as simple as listening to your doctors and nurses.

“Sometimes your front line staff know more ways than not,” says Harff. “But again, like I said, after one or two days I would not make any recommendations until I really did a full assessment and learning plan. And there’s a lot of people here I bet with a lot of great ideas. I’ve only met a few of them.”

The Bartlett board late last year decided to hire its own leadership team. After more than 20 years of an outside management company bringing in its own chief executive and chief financial officers, the board wanted the hospital’s top officials to be more responsive to the local community.

Board member Kristen Bomengen says the assessment center provided a glimpse of each candidate’s leadership style.

“We’ve got some good, solid information now as to how they think on their feet, and are able to pull the information together that we’ve provided them about our community and our hospital to come up with a vision for our future,” Bomengen says.

Harff and Woodyard were selected as finalists after a six-month search that started with a list of more than 500 candidates compiled by recruitment firm Quick Leonard Kieffer. A third finalist, William Comer, took his name out of consideration before the assessment center began.

One of the finalists to be Bartlett Regional Hospital’s next CEO has withdrawn his name from consideration.

Hospital spokesman Jim Strader says William Comer of Kansas City, Kansas took himself out of the running on the eve of the final assessment center interview process. Strader says Comer cited personal reasons, but declined to be more specific.

The hospital board of directors will move forward with the assessment center interviews for the two remaining finalists: Christine Harff, CEO at Sanford Medical Center in Thief River Falls, Minnesota; and in-state candidate Elizabeth Woodyard of the Petersburg Medical Center.

For a schedule of schedule of public events with the CEO candidates, read our story from Morning Edition.

Juneau’s Bartlett Regional Hospital today (Thursday) begins a rigorous three-day assessment center interview process to hire a new CEO.

The city-owned hospital’s board of directors conducted a nearly six-month search, before settling on three finalists. They are: Christine Harff, CEO at Sanford Medical Center in Thief River Falls, Minnesota; William Comer, Senior Vice President of Hospital Operations at Nueterra Health Care in Kansas City; and the only Alaska candidate, Petersburg Medical Center CEO Elizabeth Woodyard.

Hospital board member Kristen Bomengen led a committee in charge of the search. She says the board had a long list of qualifications it wanted candidates to have, including previous CEO experience, communications skills, and some understanding of running a hospital in Juneau.

“We wanted familiarity with the public process, being a public facility. We would like to see some clinical experience. We’d like to have people familiar with rural, small, community hospitals,” Bomengen says.

The board has been working with executive search firm Quick Leonard Kieffer since March. Bomengen says the firm looked at more than 500 hospital executives from across the country, before narrowing it down to nine candidates. The board brought six to Juneau for interviews in late May, and the finalists were announced on June 1st.

During the assessment center, each candidate will be interviewed again by a panel of board members, medical staff and community leaders, including City Manager Kim Kiefer. Bomengen says they’ll also be asked to perform “real-life” exercises, which won’t be revealed until Friday morning.

“As one might be presented a dilemma when you walk in Monday morning,” says Bomengen.

Members of the public are invited to watch the exercises tomorrow morning (Friday), as well as presentations by each candidate tomorrow afternoon. That’s followed by a “Meet the Candidates” reception. All events are at the Bartlett administration building.

Bomengen says public input will be part of the board’s decision process.

“Anyone who has an interest in the future health care process in our community would possibly like to take part in this,” she says. “There will be an opportunity for feedback to be provided by anyone who attends the full sessions.”

The assessment center will be run by the city’s Human Resources department. The process was recently used in hiring the city manager and Eaglecrest Ski Area general manager.

Assessment Center Public Schedule:

All events at the Bob Valliant Administrative Building, Bartlett Regional Hospital, Friday June 15, 2012:

• 8:45 a.m. – 11:00 a.m., and 11:45 a.m. – 2:00 p.m., Assessment Center Exercises, BRH Board Room
• 3:15 p.m. – 5:30 p.m., Candidate Public Presentations, First Floor Training Room
• 5:45 p.m. – 7:00 p.m., Meet the Candidates, First Floor Training Room

Juneau’s garbage collection and recycling landscape is about to change.

Arrow Refuse – the state regulated garbage hauling company – will roll out a new automated trash pickup service for residential customers in June. At the same time the company plans to start offering curbside recycling for an additional fee.

The changes are confusing some Arrow customers, who just received notice in the mail last week. Casey Kelly has more.

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Longtime Juneau resident Nancy Waterman returned from an out of state trip this week to find a pile of mail, including an April 20th letter from Arrow Refuse.

“Telling me that I needed to make a decision by April 30th about the new service, picking up both trash and also the opportunity to pick up recyclables every other week,” Waterman says.

If she takes no action, the letter says Arrow will automatically transition Waterman to something comparable to her current service. The alternatives include 48-gallon or 96-gallon roll cart service, with different prices for the Standard or Blue Zone, as well as the new recycling program.

A longtime recycling proponent, Waterman had some questions.

“What’s their definition of the ‘Blue Zone?’ In the letter there was no definition and there was no map,” says Waterman. “And also, what would be the change in my monthly fee? Do I have the option of signing up for curbside recyclables, or is it required?”

Some of the questions are answered by calling Arrow Refuse or visiting its website. For instance, recycling is optional, and the Blue Zone encompasses downtown Juneau.

“But still that was a little bit incomplete,” says Waterman. “So for example, if I decided to buy my own can, what are the dimensions of the can so that it perfectly fits with the Arrow Refuse truck? And where are the suppliers that provide this can?”

Arrow to charge roll cart rental fee

About 9,000 brand new roll carts sit in neatly stacked rows outside the Arrow Refuse office in Lemon Creek, waiting to be distributed to residential customers later this month. General Manager Jeff Riley demonstrates the gravity-lock lid, which he says conforms to the City and Borough of Juneau’s bear-resistant garbage ordinance.

“It’s got a turnkey so the customer can get in it and put in their garbage – automatically relocks,” Riley says, opening and shutting the can. “When we come to service it, as this thing tips over and inverts – automatically releases. Then when it comes back to rest, it’s already locked again.”

The roll carts are designed to be compatible with Arrow’s new fleet of garbage trucks, which use a mechanical arm to pick up and dump containers of trash.

Starting in June, Riley says Arrow will no longer collect refuse from traditional garbage cans. Customers can rent a roll cart from the company for a monthly fee of $2.75 or $2.95, depending on the size of can. You can buy your own, but the exact model isn’t sold in Juneau. The company will charge $2.35 if the driver has to get out of the truck to dump the can himself.

Riley says the move to automated service is a nationwide trend.

“This is really the standard in the industry,” he says. “This has been happening in most communities over the last twenty years.”

He says the service is more efficient, and allows Arrow to lower its rate for curbside garbage pickup. Customers outside downtown – in what’s called the Standard Zone – may pay less than their current rate, even with the monthly container rental fee. Charges for the Blue Zone are about the same. Riley says two different rates are needed, because the service can’t be fully automated downtown, due to the hills and narrow streets.

The optional recycling service will cost $3.11 a month and be available city-wide. A separate 96-gallon roll cart comes with the service, to be picked up every two weeks as opposed to once a week for trash. All types of paper, cardboard, metal cans and plastic containers will be accepted, but not glass or hardbound books.

Riley says Arrow Refuse sees a need for curbside recycling in Juneau.

“We won’t make money off it,” he says. “It’s the right thing to do, though. It’s absolutely the right thing to do for this community. Not until that landfill was full would people completely appreciate how much the cost would increase to getting rid of their garbage.”

City fielding calls about service change

The city has been trying to increase recycling in order extend the life of the landfill, currently estimated at about 23 years.

But Arrow’s decision to offer curbside recycling has led to some confusion, according to CBJ Public Works Director Kirk Duncan. He says the city has received dozens of calls since customers got Arrow’s letter in the mail.

“The confusion just is, is CBJ’s source-separated program going away? And the answer is, no it is not,” says Duncan.

In fact, Duncan says the recycling center at the landfill will expand as soon as the city works out a deal with operator Waste Management.

Downtown resident Nancy Waterman says many recycling advocates would prefer to have all materials separated, because they’re worth more on the recyclables market. But she understands that Arrow’s comingled curbside program is easier and could lead more people to recycle. Waterman hasn’t decided whether she’ll take the service.

“I think a consumer can make a big difference, and so taking a little time to make a decision is a good idea,” she says.

Arrow Refuse has extended the deadline for customers to choose a service level until May 18th. The company’s Jeff Riley says he’s confident that once the programs get up and running, it will appear mostly seamless to customers.

“It’s going to be like a duck,” Riley says. “We’re just going to be smooth on top, and we’re going to be paddling like heck underneath.”

The Regulatory Commission of Alaska decides how much Arrow can charge for its services. It’s temporarily allowed the company to move ahead with the rate changes for automated garbage collection. Arrow must do a cost of service study in 2013 then file for a permanent rate in 2014. The RCA does not oversee collection of recyclables, so Arrow could choose to change that rate whenever it wants.