Local Government

After multiple meetings and extended debate, the school board has agreed to fund more of a Lingít language immersion program in the upcoming school year – even amid statewide school budgeting concerns. 

The program in question is Át Koowaháa: Expanding the Tlingit Culture, Language, and Literacy Program — or TCLL. The school district and the nonprofit arm of a regional Native corporation have historically roughly split the cost. 

The school board signed a memorandum of agreement Wednesday with Sealaska Heritage Institute to increase its investment in the TCLL.

But school board members brought up questions about whether the district should pay for more of the TCLL program amidst widespread concerns about funding. 

Board member Elizabeth Siddon said the school board supports TCLL, but it has to balance that with the needs of the entire district. 

“But we support it amongst how we support all of our 4,000 students,” she said. “So I’m trying to keep in mind that these 119 are not the only students we’re responsible for.”

The school board initially approved the change during its budget process. They were then under the impression that the grant SHI used for the program was ending, according to the school board president. But SHI was later approved for an extension of the grant. 

The program isn’t growing, but now JSD will fund eight of its 11 positions. The change requires an additional $233,802 from the school district’s budget. 

SHI Education Director Kristy Ford said the program is intended to increase the number of Lingít language speakers. 

“We have less than 10 fluent speakers left,” she said. “So the need and the urgency to put an intensive amount of support and instruction into the TCLL program was asked of us.”

Some school board members raised the concern that the program only serves a small percentage of Juneau students, but Ford said the scope is intentional. It is intense and immersive so that there is a group of dedicated speakers to make sure the Lingít language doesn’t go extinct.

Correction: This story has been updated to include a more accurate cost estimate for the two teaching positions. 

At a recent Juneau Assembly meeting, Juneau property and business owners testified that interactions with unhoused people camping near the airport have been escalating. 

“We get attacked,” said Tiffany Koeneman, an employee at Alaska Glacier Seafoods. She told Assembly members that she and her coworkers were recently threatened by a man with a knife.

“So we had to call JPD,” she said. “We have people out there loading vans, but that’s not the worst of it. I mean, the safety part of it, somebody’s going to get hurt.”

Scott Jenkins owns property near Teal Street Center, which is home to many services for Juneau’s vulnerable communities. He told the Assembly he worries about safety and public health and listed some hazards. 

“Blocking the sideways leaving trash everywhere, shooting up drugs outside people’s windows, needles in the ditches and in our vehicles, piles of human crap in and around the creek area on our property,” he said.

He said the encampments have begun to affect the way he views the neighborhood. 

“People camping is one thing, but should they be able to claim ground anywhere they wish, as long as it’s not private property?” Jenkins said.

The answer to his question is “not really.” Juneau city policy allows for dispersed camping only on unimproved public land. A 2024 Supreme Court decision gave cities even more latitude to suppress homeless encampments when it said cities may ban people from camping in public places. 

Now some Juneau residents are asking that the city crack down on encampments. But city officials say increased policing won’t necessarily help. 

Instead, the city has given guidelines to the police for how and when law enforcement should intervene — like after an encampment has caused problems for the surrounding community. 

“The police isn’t going to solve homelessness,” said Juneau Police Deputy Chief Krag Campbell. “But if we can help them, you know, do some basic needs that might help out other members in the community.”

Campbell said JPD offers help with disposing of trash at the encampments—but he said it’s hard for police to respond to calls where a resident reports illegal activity at an encampment. Often the only evidence is what that caller said.

“Those are really hard ones to handle as police because by the time you get there, they’re probably still not engaged in that behavior,” he said.

And he said that when people call in, they have to testify and sometimes press charges in order for a case to be prosecuted. He said sometimes, callers don’t want to get involved beyond the initial call. 

“They want that person gone,” Campbell said. “They want that person arrested, but they don’t want to be the mechanism to make it happen”

Deputy City Manager Robert Barr said the Supreme Court case means Juneau police can enforce city limitations on camping that have been in CBJ code for years. 

“We utilize that carefully, and I would say both compassionately and firmly, when we need to utilize it,” he said.

Barr said JPD generally begins to get involved when an encampment continually creates problems, whether that be trash build up or open drug use. He said the city focuses on individual people or camps that repeatedly impact other people using the area, instead of widespread clearing of encampments.

“The code says what it says,” Barr said. “And at the same time, people have to be somewhere.”

Juneau used to have a city-run campground near downtown that unhoused people could live in in the summer months. Last spring, after considering moving the campground, the city closed it, and instructed people to dispersed camp — to sleep on public land. 

Barr said data on the number of unhoused people living in Juneau is very limited, but it shows there are more people living outside now than in the past. And he said that’s true nationwide, as affordable housing becomes more scarce.

“Which is unfortunate,” he said. “And of course, something we don’t control at the local level, but that is a reality that we have to deal with at the local level.”

Kaia Quinto directs the Glory Hall homeless shelter in Juneau. City officials say encampments tend to cluster around the shelter because it offers services and Quinto agrees.

“I think the Glory Hall staff as a whole, you know, we’re feeling very uncomfortable,” she said.

Quinto said just last week, two staff members were assaulted. She said JPD has been stepping in to help police the area around the shelter, and it’s helped her and her staff feel safer. But she said the calls for increased policing of the area don’t really make sense to her.

“JPD is doing all they can, so I think, like, I really don’t know what else they could do,” Quinto said. “It’s very clear to me, at least, that they’re doing everything they can.”

Quinto said some unhoused people using the Glory Hall’s services have told her that they feel like they have nowhere to go. They’ve been asked to move over and over again. 

“It’s very obvious that we have more people who are unhoused than we have shelter beds,” she said.

And until that changes, she said she doesn’t know of any realistic solutions to the increased encampments and threats her staff face. 

 

Juneau voters may be asked whether to implement a new seasonal sales tax system next year to take advantage of the roughly 1.7 million summer cruise ship tourism visitors that come to town annually. The proposal would raise sales taxes in the summer months and lower them in the winter. 

Some Assembly members say the change would allow residents to exempt food and utilities from local taxes while keeping the city’s overall sales tax revenue mostly intact.

Juneau currently charges 5% in local sales taxes. That’s made up of both permanent and temporary taxes that help pay for general government costs, some specific voter-approved projects and community priorities. 

But, if voters pass the proposed seasonal sales tax system, consumers would instead pay a 7.5% tax in the summer from April through September and a 3.5% tax in the winter from October through March. 

Neil Steininger proposed the new system alongside two other Assembly members. At an Assembly finance committee on Wednesday, he said it will help lower the cost of living for Juneauites, while also taking greater advantage of the number of tourists who come to town. 

“That just makes the most sense, setting the seasons as winter and summer as the most kind of logical for what we’re trying to accomplish here, which is shifting tax burden between year-round residents and summer visitors,” he said. 

Steininger said boosting the amount consumers pay in taxes during the summer means the city would take in more money during that period. Then, that extra money could be used to offset the cost of exempting food and utilities from taxes. 

Other Southeast Alaska towns like Ketchikan, Sitka and Skagway have similar seasonal sales tax structures in place already.

The proposal comes as the Assembly also looks to increase residential water and sewer rates by 5% annually over the next five years to fund critical repairs to the city’s water and sewer systems.

The proposed food tax exemption would be applied to items under the same definition as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as SNAP or food stamps. But, unlike SNAP, anyone would be eligible for the tax exemption — regardless of income. The Assembly considered removing sales tax on food in 2022, but ultimately decided against it.

Many economists say that taxes on food hit low-income people the hardest. Assembly member Alicia Hughes-Skandijs agreed.

“At the end of the day, when someone’s paying their grocery bill and their utility bills, those are just the real cost of living expenses — that’s what it costs to exist in the community,” she said. 

But not everyone is on board with the idea. Assembly member Wade Bryson was concerned it would negatively impact local business owners like himself. 

“One business has many things that service it, and if you raise the cost of every single one of those services, you get a greater increase in cost on that business,” he said. 

He found a particular issue with how large the tax jump between the seasons would be. 

“We’re going to mess up the tax rate. We’re going to make it complicated. We’re going to make a burden on the local businesses,” he said. “I don’t see how raising the cost for 99% of our businesses in our community doesn’t have a negative consequence for the cost of living.”

Even if the Assembly doesn’t move forward with bringing the seasonal sales tax question to voters, a new Juneau advocacy group called the Affordable Juneau Coalition is currently collecting signatures to exempt essential food and residential utilities from sales tax, among other measures to lower the cost of living. 

But that proposal doesn’t have a mechanism for recouping that loss in sales tax revenue to the city’s budget, meaning the city would likely have to cut back on spending to make up for the lost revenue. 

The proposed seasonal rates aren’t final, the Assembly has until late July to take public testimony and decide whether to put the question on the ballot for voters.

Property taxes could go up for most Juneau residents. That’s if the Juneau Assembly moves forward with a plan to increase the rate it uses to calculate them in the next fiscal year. 

That’s as the city’s budgeting season is wrapping up. Over the last few months, Assembly members have been deliberating how the city should best use the money it takes in from its residents. 

At a finance committee meeting Wednesday night, Assembly member Wade Bryson said he thinks some residents aren’t exactly pleased with how it’s going. 

“I don’t know if anybody’s paid attention, but the community is not at the happiest with us right now,” he said.

That’s at least in part because of the proposal to increase the property tax rate by quite a bit. The current rate is at a historic low of 10.04. 

Property taxes help pay for a lot of bread-and-butter services and make up roughly 40% of the city’s general fund revenue. Property tax bills are calculated by multiplying the mill rate by a property’s value. This year, the average residential property assessments rose by less than 1%.

Essentially, if the mill rate goes up and property value does too, you’re most likely going to see a higher property tax bill. In contrast, even if the mill rate goes up, but your property value goes down enough, you may not see much of a difference. 

But lower property taxes mean the city has less money to work with and the Assembly has to decide whether to cut certain services or dip into savings to keep the city government running over the next year. 

That’s what the Assembly is facing right now. Throughout the budget cycle, they chose to tack on extra costs to the budget. As City Finance Director Angie Flick explained at the meeting, that means the budget is no longer balanced. 

“We just do the math on the items that the Assembly has added that are recurring to the budget already, that would require a mill rate of 10.44,” she said. 

Some Assembly members, like Bryson, argued that bumping it up that high would make people even more upset with the Assembly than he thinks they already are. 

He pointed to a new Juneau advocacy group called the Affordable Juneau Coalition, which is currently collecting signatures to cap the property tax rate at 9 mills. If approved, that would cut a sizable chunk of the city’s annual revenue. 

“We raise it tonight, while they’re gathering signatures to lower our tax rate, we absolutely will be looking at those guys being victorious. They’ll get their signatures,” he said. “I don’t think that we should do anything more to enrage the community.”

However, other Assembly members like Ella Adkison advocated for a higher rate because she wants to see the city’s budget balanced amid federal uncertainty. 

“I think that having a budget that we are safe in is most important right now, because we really can’t predict the future, and so I think this is the most responsible move we can have,” she said. 

After a bit of back and forth, members landed on a mill rate of 10.24, which would split the difference between last year’s rate and the rate they need to balance the budget. So, for a typical $500,000 home in Juneau, the annual property tax bill works out to about $5,120.

But that rate would mean they’ll need to dip into the city’s savings. Assembly member Alicia Hughes-Skandijs did not like that idea, but reluctantly agreed to move forward with it for now. 

“That just can’t be our budgetary process to hope that we’re going to be saved by our historically large reserve fund and hoping things go our way,” she said. 

The Assembly will still need to take public testimony on the rate and finalize the budget. That’s expected to happen on Monday, June 9, before the fiscal year begins on July 1. 

The Juneau Assembly unanimously passed a resolution on Monday in support of keeping Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area federally owned. It also urges the U.S. Forest Service to rehire recently fired workers there. 

City officials said earlier this month that Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski specifically requested the resolution after hearing that private entities were interested in taking it over. 

Kelby Randall, a glacier guide and student at the University of Alaska Southeast, testified in support of the resolution at the meeting. Randall referenced the photo of the Mendenhall Glacier that adorns the wall of the Assembly chambers. 

“When considering a non-public glacier recreation area, I feel the weight of the mural behind you. It is more than just the landscape. It is a defining feature of the land and the people who reside on and around it,” Randall said. “For these reasons, I support this resolution.”

The Mendenhall Glacier is one of Alaska’s most-visited tourist attractions, with more than 1 million visitors last year. It’s managed by the U.S. Forest Service and co-stewarded with the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.

Assembly member Christine Woll asked to amend some of the language in the proposed resolution to better acknowledge the tribe’s role with the Forest Service.

The Assembly’s resolution comes as some congressional Republicans in other states consider selling off federal lands to pay for President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda. Earlier this month, U.S. House Republicans approved an amendment authorizing the sale of federal public land in Nevada and Utah.

Randall, while testifying, pointed the Assembly to the Matanuska Glacier northeast of Anchorage. While the glacier itself is public, most visitors can only reach it through private land or tours. 

“Private stewardship would put this area at the same risk that has been seen at the Matanuska,” they said. “It would paywall this uniquely accessible glacier, and hearing that it was even an option, shocked and appalled me.”

The Trump Administration’s mass federal firings caused the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center to lose most of its staff. Forest Service staff from other departments are maintaining summer operations, along with partner organizations. The Assembly approved a separate ordinance at the same meeting to set aside $200,000 to support staffing at the glacier if needed.

The Juneau Assembly passed an ordinance on Monday mandating that the Juneau Police Department release body-worn camera footage no more than 30 days after a city police officer shoots someone.

It’s a policy that’s been nearly a year in the making. Juneau Police Chief Derek Bos said its approval by the Assembly on Monday is a step toward more transparency between the department and the community. 

“I think this opens up the door for us to be transparent at a faster pace with the community, to be open with the community,” he said. “If we make a mistake, we still want to be transparent. We don’t want to hide behind something. If we do make a mistake, we want to be open and honest with our community and build that public trust.”

Juneau officers have been wearing body-worn cameras since 2017, but there’s nothing on the books that dictates when the footage must be released to the public. Juneau residents advocated for that to change after two fatal shootings last year. No one from the public testified at Monday’s meeting. 

Last year, it took the department about 60 days to release the body-worn camera footage after both shootings. The department did not release the footage until after the state’s Office of Special Prosecutions investigated the shootings. Both times, the state ruled that the officers involved were justified in their use of lethal force and declined to press charges. 

Bos said he’s confident that the department will be able to meet the new policy’s deadline if a shooting occurs in the future. 

“Ninety-five percent of the time, maybe even higher than that, the 30 days is going to be a non-issue, and there won’t be concerns,” he said. 

Juneau’s new timeline is much more rigid than what the state’s Office of Special Prosecutions requests, which is at least 60 days. According to Angie Kemp, the director of the Criminal Division of the Alaska Department of Law, releasing footage prematurely could taint ongoing investigations. 

“From my standpoint and the way that this is currently drafted, I do believe that it’s going to affect criminal prosecution in the community of Juneau — and I don’t say that lightly,” she said at an Assembly committee meeting in March. “I don’t say it because I have some interest in keeping body-worn cameras from being released, other than the effect that it might have on our ability to do our jobs.”

The Anchorage Police Department’s policy mandates that footage be released within 45 days of the incident. But they’ve only met that deadline about a quarter of the time since it went into place. According to a spokesperson for the department, for at least the past two shootings, the delays came at the request of the Office of Special Prosecutions. 

Juneau’s policy only allows the state to request up to a 10-day delay for releasing footage and only for a narrow set of circumstances, like if someone’s safety could be at risk by releasing it. 

The city manager and the police chief can also request a 10-day delay in certain circumstances and they would be required to provide a reason to the public. The new policy will go into effect in 30 days.