Local Government

Monday is Beth McEwen’s last day as Juneau’s municipal clerk. She’s retiring from the city clerk’s office after 25 years.

In that role, she’s overseen Juneau’s local elections, the workings of the Juneau Assembly and – occasionally – even performed marriages. She was also named Alaska’s municipal clerk of the year in 2023. 

KTOO sat down with her in the Assembly chambers at City Hall to talk about what she’s learned over the years.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. 

Beth McEwen: I’m excited, nervous. Pinch me, I don’t know what’s really happening. 

Yvonne Krumrey: Yeah. I mean, you’ve been here for a while. 

Beth McEwen: Yeah, I started in the clerk’s office in 2000 – January of 2000 – so it’s been a minute. 

Yvonne Krumrey: How did you come into the clerk’s office? Was that something you always wanted to do?

Beth McEwen: When I was going to school and I was studying, I wanted to be somehow in public service. I knew that I always wanted to work with people, and that was my passion from the time I was a kid, you know. Never even heard of a municipal clerk before. 

I was a government geek from the time I was a kid. My very first time I ever appeared in the newspaper was as a two year old waving the American flag in a fourth of July parade. So I kind of came at it from a young age that I was always patriotic. 

I loved government and all things related to government. I’m sure that’s because my parents, you know, at an early age, indoctrinated me into everything about democracy and how it’s for the people, by the people and of the people. 

And when the clerk and the deputy clerk both resigned at the end of 1999 we were without a clerk and without a deputy clerk. And I had been working in the law department for a couple of years by then, and I thought, you know, I don’t know exactly what all the job duties are of a clerk, but it couldn’t be all that different from a legal secretary, so I applied, and rather than having a real job interview, the manager said, “When are you starting now?”

Yvonne Krumrey: I’m curious, what lessons have you learned in your time at the clerk? 

Beth McEwen: Oh, lots of lessons. When we first started in 2000—there’s a notice of public hearing requirement that the charter requires that neither one of us were fully aware of the requirement and how that played out. 

For the first three months of our tenure in the clerk’s office, we didn’t do it properly. So after three months, every single piece of legislation that the assembly had adopted, we had to readopt and go through kind of an omnibus meeting. I never forgot that lesson learned.

Just emphasized, if there is a notice of public hearing that needs to go out, we’re doing it. And those are just, you know, those are the kind of oops lessons that, once they’re learned the hard way, they stay learned. 

And then you pass those on to your successors and everyone else.

Yvonne Krumrey: Is there anything that you’ve seen change in Juneau that you’re especially like, proud of, or that you’re happy to have seen change or grow? 

Beth McEwen: I have seen a lot of change, but the one thing that I really am encouraged by is people in this community care about this community, and they care enough to run for office and serve in public, either elected or appointed office. We have over 230 board, commission, committee, volunteer members who serve in some way in our community, 

And those caring community members keep coming, you know, and we’re very fortunate that all.

Although I’ve seen lots of change in my tenure, I have seen the dedication of our fellow citizens, be part of the community and care enough to give back to our community as a whole. 

Yvonne Krumrey: My last question is, what do you plan to do next? 

Beth McEwen: I hop a plane and go to Europe for almost three months, four months, something like that. One of the first things I get to do is a five day immersion French cooking school. 

Oh, I guess the other thing that I am doing on that trip to Europe is I’ve always wanted to go to the International Institute, municipal clerks, International Symposium. And it happens to be in England in September, and I was already going to be there, so I’m going to go to a week long symposium as a retired clerk, because it was always during our election season. So it wasn’t like I was ever going to be able to go until I was retired.

Juneau has a new emergency manager. Ryan O’Shaughnessy took over the role earlier this year.

He first stepped in to help the City and Borough of Juneau’s emergency management department after the 2024 glacial outburst flood. 

“I was, you know, watching the special assembly meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 6,” O’Shaughnessy said. “And heard that there was some concern about who would be managing long-term recovery, volunteer management, donation management and all of those things.”

So he called and said he wanted to volunteer to help coordinate community efforts. Then in February, he was hired to lead the city’s emergency management team.

He said he’s spent the last few months getting up to speed on the city’s capacity for emergency management and building relationships with other organizations who help in emergencies, like the Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska’s public safety team.

For O’Shaughnessy, the work is personal. 

“I have been on both sides of emergency management,” he said.

In 2022, a landslide hit O’Shaughnessy’s house in downtown Juneau. He said seeing the community response to that disaster planted a seed for his work today. 

“I wouldn’t say that at that moment it was like … ‘I need to be involved in this,’” he said. “But long term, it definitely had a pretty profound impact.”

Right now, the city is preparing for Juneau’s annual glacial outburst flood, which has happened at the beginning of August the past two years. Floods in the Mendenhall Valley have reached record-breaking levels for two years in a row. 

O’Shaughnessy said the city continues to improve its response and communication with residents during the annual event. He strongly encourages Juneau residents to sign up for emergency alerts.

Former Emergency Planning Manager Tom Mattice remains with the department in a specialized role focused on avalanche forecasting.

The city’s emergency team is also currently updating its hazard mitigation plans. Residents can comment on the risk assessment portion of that plan at a public meeting on Monday at 5:30 p.m. 

This story has been updated to clarify what the city is updating currently. 

Juneteenth will now be an observed holiday for most City and Borough of Juneau employees, starting next week. 

Juneteenth is already a national holiday and, for the first time this year, an Alaska state holiday. It commemorates the day when enslaved people in Galveston learned from a Union soldier that they were free — more than two months after the end of the Civil War. The holiday is recognized on June 19.

The change for most city staff comes after negotiations with a union representing some city employees resulted in the addition of the holiday and wage increases over the next few years. 

The city then passed a resolution granting the holiday and wage increases to non-union represented city employees in order to maintain equity across departments and to be a more competitive employer. Employees represented by two other unions won’t see the additional holiday or wage increase this year. Juneau’s city manager says the city is still in negotiations with those unions.  

The union that negotiated the change is the Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association (MEBA).

Most city employees will also see a 3% wage increase this year and next, and a 5% increase in fiscal year 2028. They will also get two lump sum payments of $2,750 and $2,000 the next two years respectively. 

The addition of the Juneteenth holiday is effective immediately, and will be observed next Thursday.

The Juneau Assembly voted to wait on a second extension of Juneau’s Mendenhall River levee until after this flood season. 

Assembly Member Greg Smith said the project to protect additional homes from annual flooding faces engineering and funding obstacles that can’t be solved before the flood expected later this summer.

“We don’t seem to have a way to fund this fairly this year, “ Smith said. “We don’t have a way to armor the bank and ensure the barriers are going to be properly installed this year… We want to do as much as we can, but this one just doesn’t seem to make sense to me.”

The city’s lawyer said there isn’t enough time to permit reinforcements for another section of the riverbank this summer. Without boulders to armor the bank from erosion, city officials said they aren’t confident that a second levee extension would hold up against a flood.

City officials also said the affected property owners would also need to vote on whether to create another local improvement district to divide the cost — estimated at more than $2 million. 

The levee extension, called phase 1B, would go from Kax̱dig̱oowu Héen Elementary School to Brotherhood Bridge on Glacier Highway. City Manager Katie Koester said the intention would be to protect 96 homes and commercial properties from an 18-foot flood. 

The likelihood of such a catastrophic flood is unknown, but the volume of water would have to be 50% higher than last year’s record-breaking 16-foot flood. 

“There would be 96 parcels if we did not do 1B that would flood in a 18-foot event. We would attempt to mitigate the impact on 30 of those parcels,” she said. 

Koester said this year the city will use large sandbags called supersacks to protect 30 properties on Meadow Lane that could see more water due to an initial levee extension that the Assembly approved last month.

The Assembly will consider the extension again next season, once city staff draft a plan to pay for it.  

The Juneau Assembly is mulling over a plan to implement a ranked choice voting system for local elections beginning next year.

At a Monday Committee of the Whole meeting, members unanimously forwarded an ordinance for public testimony and a vote on whether to implement the system. 

Assembly member Ella Adkison proposed the ordinance. During a previous meeting, she said she thinks voters will support the change. 

“I think that ranked choice voting, in this case, makes it a lot easier to build consensus in our community to fully express the nuances of every Juneauite’s vote,” she said. 

Alaska uses a ranked choice voting system for statewide elections. It allows voters to rank candidates by preference in open primaries rather than partisan primaries. Proponents say the system helps tame hyperpolarized politics and promote a more inclusive election process. Pushback comes primarily from Alaska conservatives. 

Voters approved the system in 2020 and used it for the first time in 2022. Alaska is one of only two states that use ranked choice voting. Meanwhile, 10 Republican-led states have banned it.

Juneau wouldn’t be the first municipality to adopt the system. Cities across the U.S., including New York, San Francisco and Minneapolis, already use ranked choice voting in local elections.

Assembly member Alicia Hughes-Skandijs said during Monday’s meeting that she supports the change, but wants to make sure there is enough opportunity for the public to weigh in. The city plans to do more public outreach before the Assembly’s final vote in late July. 

“I love that we do ranked choice voting at the state. I love that we voted to keep it,” she said. “I don’t have a problem saying, ‘Yep, and this is how the state of Alaska votes, and this is how we vote locally, too.’”

According to data from the state’s Division of Elections, Juneau voters appear to favor ranked choice voting. Juneau overwhelmingly voted against a repeal effort on the ballot last election, which only very narrowly failed statewide. Advocates have already filed two new initiatives in an attempt to repeal it in the 2026 state election.

The next municipal election will not use a ranked choice voting system, even if members adopt the ordinance before then.

Local advocates have failed to gather enough signatures before the initial deadline for three ballot petitions that seek to lower the cost of living in Juneau. But there’s still a chance they could secure a spot on the local ballot this October.

The three petitions seek to cap the local property tax rate, remove sales tax on food and utilities, and make in-person voting the default again in Juneau’s local elections.

Advocates had until last Friday to meet the city’s initial 30-day deadline to gather just over 2,700 signatures for each petition. The city clerk’s office is currently reviewing the signatures collected during that time. Once that’s done, advocates will be given another 10 days to try to get the remaining signatures. 

A Juneau advocacy group called the Affordable Juneau Coalition is leading the effort for all three petitions. 

Angela Rodell is a member of the group and unsuccessfully ran for mayor last fall’s election. She estimates each petition needs at least a few hundred more signatures to meet the threshold. She said she’s confident there is community support for the petitions, but said signature gathering is difficult work.

A separate group of advocates withdrew a ballot petition two weeks ago. It sought to put harder limits on cruise ship tourism. That group says it wasn’t able to gather the minimum signatures required. 

The clerk’s office has until Monday, June 9, to review signatures and issue supplemental books for the additional 10-day period. The final certification or denial of the petitions will be made at the end of June. 

The Juneau Assembly is currently considering a separate proposal that would exempt food and utilities from sales tax by implementing a new seasonal sales tax system. The Assembly has until late July to take public testimony and decide whether to put the question on the ballot for voters.