Economy

Just off Main Street in Haines, a large field sits in the shadow of Mount Ripinski.

For a few years, the land sat empty. Local Liz Landes would look at it and think: “Why isn’t that full of food?”

Now it is. Or at least, it was in September, during a tour of the property at the tail end of the harvest season.

After pulling on her rubber rain gear in the high tunnel, Landes walked into a downpour and weaved through rows of kale, herbs, pumpkins and sunflowers. She pointed out black and red currants, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, asparagus and fava beans she said were “desperately ready to harvest.”

“We’ve already surpassed 1,000 pounds for the season,” Landes said. “And honestly, we could easily have another 1,000 more with what’s still left to harvest.”

Local farmers rented the site until 2021. But then it sat unused until a new venture, known as Henderson Farm, started up before the 2024 growing season. The effort is funded by a Portland-based nonprofit called Ecotrust and fueled by the work of volunteers and local contractors, including Landes.

The farm is a bright spot for the local food system and southeast Alaska, both of which rely heavily on food that’s shipped in from incredibly far away. That process results in less fresh, less nutritious produce, Landes said, and it leads to extraordinary amounts of waste.

As she sees it, nothing encourages cutting down on waste more than toiling in the soil week after week. She points to some healthy-looking purple cabbages, which she says require a lot of time – and effort – to grow.

“I’m gonna use every freaking leaf of every cabbage that I harvest,” Landes said. “And the pieces that I can’t are gonna go into compost to make my cabbages next year.”

This year was the farm’s first full season. As of early November, seeds planted on about three quarters of an acre had yielded more than 2,800 pounds of food and counting. Landes says there will be greens to glean through the first snowfall.

None of the produce is sold. It’s all shared throughout the community, either in exchange for work or for free.

A significant chunk goes to the farm’s volunteers and contractors. But it also goes to the local senior center, a food pantry in Klukwan, a food hub in Mosquito Lake, and other community groups – like volunteer firefighters.

Helping distribute the food is one of the best parts of the job, Landes said.

“Generally, I get to go around and be the little vegetable fairy and say, ‘Thank you for the time that you give to other people, here’s a bag of peas,'” she said.

The operation is far from easy. But the farm is in somewhat of a sweet spot when compared to other parts of the Chilkat Valley and Southeast more broadly.

Taken together, the property’s workable soil, Alaska’s long summer days, and Haines’ relatively dry and warm climate are a big help.

“It’s not perfect,” she said. But “in many, many ways, the daylight itself here, with the right distribution of rain, does the work for you.”

Looking ahead to next year, Landes said she wants to continue recruiting more volunteers and potentially expand the growing area to a full acre. She also has a more specific, personal goal: making an all-Alaska gumbo.

That will hinge in part on how her okra – which grows well in hot, dry conditions – does next year.

Juneau high school students are getting real-world building experience while creating much-needed affordable homes in the community. That’s thanks to a house build program that’s a partnership between the Juneau Housing Trust and Juneau School District.

On Wednesday, Raegan Adams fed pink fluffy insulation into a machine in the garage of a partially built home in Lemon Creek. The machine pushed the insulation through a long spiraling tube through the house and into its attic. She and her classmates are building the house she’s standing in.

Adams is a junior at Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé and one of the students enrolled in the district’s House Build program.

The district has offered many house building projects to students on and off, dating back to the 1970s. The program has seen multiple iterations over the years. Students who take the semester-long class get to learn hands-on construction skills by building new, energy-efficient homes that then go back into the community. Adams says she was hesitant to take the class at first, but now she’s glad she did. 

“I think it’s a very important class that teaches skills everyone should have. Like, I’ve been telling my mom about stuff we do in the class. And she’s like, ‘Oh, you can do this to our house next,’” she said. 

Students in this class are currently finishing up the sixth house in a small neighborhood of homes constructed by the program in Lemon Creek. Soon, they’ll begin laying the foundation for the seventh. The houses are located just past the Dzantik’i Heeni campus.

The City and Borough of Juneau made the land available for sale to the Juneau Housing Trust in 2017. The trust manages the land through a community land trust and works to ensure the homes can be purchased by low and middle-income community members. 

Tamara Rowcroft is the board vice president of the Juneau Housing Trust. She said housing geared for low and middle-income buyers is unique, but desperately needed. 

“I’ve been working in affordable housing for about 35 years here in Juneau. I lived here as a kid,” she said. “I know how hard it is to get housing that’s affordable.’

For the past two years, Juneau has had the highest average sale price for a single-family home in the state, according to a study by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development. 

Nathan Dutton is the school district’s career and technical education coordinator. He says offering alternative learning opportunities is crucial for students who may be looking for another path to a well-paying job after graduating that isn’t a traditional four-year degree.

“We have seen a drop in tradesmen throughout the nation, so being able to make this skillset available to our students is so important,” he said. 

He said the house build program lets students explore if a trades career is for them.

“They’re getting amazing real-world experience that in other places you typically have to pay for or get accepted into a program,” Dutton said. 

Jace Kihlmire is a senior at JDHS. He took the class to learn more skills to use when working at his dad’s construction company. But, he said, the takeaways from the class go beyond that. It gives him the confidence to take on what used to be difficult tasks.  

“It applies to future careers as well as home life,” he said. “Like ‘oh, I put a hole in my drywall.’ Oh, cool. I know how to patch it up. Or ‘oh, I need to re-shingle my roof.’ Well, I know how to do that.”

And, though he’s learned a lot of skills during the class, he said he definitely has a favorite: 

“Everything is fun about drywall,” he said. “As much as I hate removing it, installing it is the best.”

The class hopes to finish construction by the end of the year. The trust hopes to put the home on the market soon.

More than a dozen people without permanent housing living in Juneau’s largest unhoused encampment will be forced to leave on Friday morning, ahead of the season’s first expected snowfall. 

The City and Borough of Juneau gave notice to the people camping on Teal Street in the Mendenhall Valley earlier this week. The notices says the city is prohibiting camping in the area due to winter maintenance and safety concerns. 

Right now, the street is lined with more than a dozen campsites. Some campers don’t want to leave.

“I assumed that they would let us stay through the winter. I didn’t anticipate them doing this now — it just seemed like the worst timing,” said Darian Bliss, who’s been living in the Teal Street area in a makeshift shelter since about May. 

People without housing in Juneau set up camp here because it’s close to social services and other resources provided by the Glory Hall and St. Vincent de Paul. 

“I think it’s the safest, best place out of everywhere in town, because you’re right across from the homeless shelter anyway, and so I don’t know where a better place could possibly be,” he said. 

Bliss said he’s frustrated with the timing of the city’s eviction. He doesn’t want to have to uproot his life again, even as winter comes. He’s spent the last week or so insulating his campsite, and recently installed a wooden door with a lock. 

Campers like Bliss have few options for where they can stay. One option is the city’s cold weather emergency shelter, which opened for the season in mid-October. It’s located in a warehouse in Thane, about a mile from downtown and about nine miles across town from the services on Teal Street. 

The shelter accepts anyone who comes in search of a place to sleep at night, as long as they aren’t disruptive to other patrons. City officials say it’s a stopgap and meant to be a last resort for unhoused people when the weather gets cold. 

Bliss said he doesn’t plan on going there. He doesn’t like how crowded it is and the distance from resources. 

“I don’t like going out there at all. I just stay perfectly fine here,” he said. 

Logan Henkins works at the Glory Hall shelter. He was playing music and handing out hot chocolate and coffee to people who passed by on Wednesday afternoon.  

“I’m just out here this morning trying to touch base with as many people as I can touch on base with about the extended services that St. Vincent de Paul is offering on Friday to catch the people who are being displaced,” he said. 

St. Vincent de Paul operates the city’s emergency shelter. In light of the clearing, the shelter will open earlier on Friday and offer a meal.

He’s not the only one trying to help out. Claire Richardson stood outside her car next to a campsite on Teal Street, waiting to help a woman she met the day before move her belongings from an encampment and into a family member’s apartment. 

“You start to realize that people (are) living on the margins, and the snow is coming, and really, I don’t know what they’re going to do, and there’s a lot of stuff here,” she said. 

Richardson is with ReSisters, a local group of women who work for social justice and equality. She said when she heard about the encampments being cleared, she felt drawn to help the people who were about to be displaced. 

“It’s going to start snowing here in a few days, and the thought of me being safe in my home, sipping my hot coffee and knowing that people are living like this. Well, it’s just hard to sleep at night,” she said. 

Other groups in town are helping out too, like the Haa Tóoch Lichéesh Coalition, which is asking the community to offer storage space or funds to those being displaced. 

Deputy Police Chief Krag Campbell said the police department plans to have officers arrive at 8 a.m. on Friday to ask people to leave the area. Then at 9 a.m., they’ll start throwing people’s belongings away. He encouraged campers to pack up their belongings beforehand.

“Hopefully, we’ve given them ample time, ample notice, and they can start making those arrangements to go somewhere else,” he said. 

Deputy City Manager Robert Barr said the city will continue to monitor the area after Friday in the event that people set up camp again. 

Commercial fishing jobs in Alaska are down for the fifth year in a row. That’s according to new economic data from the state Department of Labor for the year 2024.

Seafood harvesting jobs — which include commercial fishing but not processing jobs — dropped about 7.5% last year, about the same as the year before. That brings the industry’s harvesting jobs to their lowest count since records began in 2001.

The report’s author, Joshua Warren, says there are many reasons for the drop.

“There’s increased cost, competition in international markets, drop in prices,” he said. “A lot of different things can cause someone to choose to fish or not to fish.”

Warren says climate change is another major factor, bringing unpredictable runs and fishery closures for different species and regions of the state.

The report doesn’t reflect this year’s tariffs, but it does note that the U.S. has been losing ground in global seafood markets for years.

Warren says the numbers fit a decade-long trend: seafood harvesting jobs have fallen by more than a third since 2014. The pandemic caused the biggest losses, but unlike most Alaska industries, the seafood sector hasn’t bounced back.

He says crab was the only bright spot that seems to have rebounded from recent closures, while all other species are still seeing declines.

And while he’s not optimistic that jobs will rebound to previous levels, he says that overall, Alaska’s fishing industry is “pretty resilient.”

“I don’t think I’m terribly worried there won’t be fishing in the future,” he said. “We’re just seeing a lot of negative factors right at the moment.”

The very end of 2024 did see modest job growth, but Warren says it’s too soon to tell if that trend continued into this year.

Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport is among 40 airports across the country forced to slash air traffic by 10% starting Friday as the government shutdown becomes the longest in U.S. history.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Wednesday that traffic would be cut from the country’s busiest airports to maintain travel safety. Some air traffic controllers, who haven’t received a full paycheck in over a month, are calling out of work, he said, exacerbating staffing shortages and causing flight delays.

Airport officials confirmed by email Thursday that Anchorage International is included among the 40 airports where flights will be reduced. The Anchorage airport is one of the busiest cargo airports in the world. It’s unclear if passenger or cargo flights will be impacted, or both. Airport officials could not immediately be reached Thursday for comment.

In a statement, the state entity that manages the airport, the Alaska International Airport System, said its working to minimize impacts.

“ANC remains fully operational, and all safety and security functions continue without interruption. We are working closely with our federal partners and airline representatives to minimize any impacts to passengers and cargo operations,” said Teri Lindseth, development manager for the Alaska International Airport System.

Travel expert Scott McMurren, who writes the Alaska Travelgram newsletter, said he hasn’t seen this much uncertainty for airline passengers since the disruptions that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“When the Secretary of Transportation says he predicts ‘mass chaos,’ well, I have to plan for mass chaos,” he said. “That means a lot of flights may get through unscathed, but just because the flight gets through doesn’t mean the travelers themselves aren’t affected.”

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where many flights to and from the state connect through, is also on the list of airports forced to cut flights.

Alaska Airlines said that it canceled a limited number of flights in response to the Federal Aviation Administration directive, but international flights are not expected to be impacted. The airline said guests whose flights are canceled will be rebooked or get a refund.

Delta said it expects to operate the majority of flights as scheduled. The company is providing extra flexibility for impacted travelers to cancel their flights without penalty. In a statement, United said long-haul international and hub-to-hub flights wouldn’t be impacted by the reduction, but that reductions would impact regional and domestic flights.

Passengers with questions about specific flights should contact their airline.

The municipal tax cuts approved by Juneau voters in this fall’s election are expected to create a $6.4 million hole in the city’s budget this fiscal year. But that’s only scraping the surface. 

Next year — and every year moving forward — the city will face an estimated $12 million revenue loss. That’s due to the tax exemption on food and utilities and cap on the city’s property tax rate that voters passed.

This year, the funding gap is smaller because the city is already partially through this fiscal year. The new food and utility tax exemptions take effect starting Nov. 20 and the property tax rate cap will begin next year.

During a finance committee meeting on Wednesday night, Assembly members began to discuss how to move forward. Assembly member Alicia Hughes-Skandijs said the decisions ahead won’t be easy. 

“I think that when people understand the magnitude of the decisions made in the last election, there is going to be a little bit of whiplash,” she said. 

For the immediate $6.4 million hole this fiscal year, Assembly members agreed on Wednesday to absorb the revenue shortfall using interest earnings from last fiscal year that came in higher than expected. They opted against implementing any broad service reductions — for now. 

Angie Flick, the city’s finance director, said it gives the Assembly more time to figure out how to address the recurring shortfall beginning next fiscal year.   

“We have the opportunity to take some time to make thoughtful decisions about reductions,” she said. 

Flick and city staff floated a few directions the Assembly could take to fill the recurring gap — though no major decisions were made. She offered options like implementing a blanket reduction in funding across all city departments, hiring freezes, cutting services and major line-item expenses, or increasing revenue. 

The Assembly also agreed to distribute the remainder of the grant funding that the city withheld from local organizations before the election. The city originally withheld the funds out of concerns about the revenue loss if the ballot propositions passed. 

Assembly member and finance committee chair Christine Woll advocated for providing the full funding promised. 

“I think it plays into this idea that our community grants are philanthropy, that we’re doing this to be nice,” she said. “We’re doing this because these are needed services in our communities that others can do more efficiently and better than we can.” 

City staff and the Assembly plan to evaluate the city’s finances in the coming months and develop a plan to engage the public as it moves forward with any potential reductions to services. 

Disclosure: KTOO is one of the organizations that will receive previously withheld grant funding from the City and Borough of Juneau.