Government

Capital City Fire and Rescue is asking for the public’s help in clearing snow from around fire hydrants.

Deputy Fire Marshal Sven Pearson says it’s next to impossible to keep the city’s 2000-plus hydrants accessible year round, especially if firefighters have to do the work themselves.

“When you drive around you’ll notice that often people start putting big snow berms in front of them or, even the big plow trucks when they come by, kind of obscure the hydrant,” says Pearson. “And I know the crews and folks around the city have been working really hard on trying to keep these clear. But there’s always ones that go unnoticed.”

Pearson says residents can help by checking the hydrants in their neighborhood when they’re shoveling driveways or sidewalks. He says it’s a good project for Boy or Girl Scouts, a church group, or even businesses – adding that a three foot area around the hydrant is ideal.

Pearson says fire engines carry enough water for the first couple minutes of firefighting. But if a hydrant is buried by snow, valuable time must be spent digging it out. And when it comes to fighting fires, every second counts.

As school districts across the state brace for budget cuts and layoffs, the Senate Education Committee this morning (Monday) will take up a bill to increase the Base Student Allocation – that’s the amount paid to districts for each student enrolled.

The Senate Majority coalition of Republicans and Democrats considers increased school operating funds a session priority, while Gov. Sean Parnell’s budget proposes flat funding at $5,680 per student. Senate Bill 171 would add $390 in three increments over the next three fiscal years: $125 per student this July, $130 in 2013, and $135 per student in 2014.

The Senate Education Committee held the first hearing on SB 171 on Friday. The Alaska Council of School Administrators said districts actually need a $320 increase in the BSA just to keep pace with current programs, and even then many districts will have to lay off staff.

But Senate President Gary Stevens said the Senate has to be realistic. He said a higher amount would not get past the House and Gov. Parnell.

“I don’t want to hear how this is not enough because I don’t think that takes us forward. I want to hear how this helps and how we can get the support of the other body and the administration to do what this bill says,” Stevens said.

Juneau Harborview Elementary School fourth grader Sierra Wood told the committee she was in a class of 27 students.

“In my classroom I see kids who need lots of help. If my school had more money we could have more classrooms so students could have more time with teachers. The best way to learn is to spend more time with the teacher because then you can feel more confident,” she said.

In the House, a bill just introduced would inflation-proof education funding. HB 143 would require the administration to increase the Base Student Allocation by at least the annual rise in the Anchorage Consumer Price Index. Anchorage Democrat Rep. Pete Peterson’s bill would provide an additional $187.52 for each student.

“And that’s just the minimum that is needed just to keep up with last year’s inflation,” Peterson said.

According to the Senate Education Committee, Alaska ranks 22nd among states in the amount it spends on education.

Senate Education Committee Co-chairman Kevin Meyer hopes SB 171 bill can be through the legislative process by mid-March, when districts must wrap up their budgets. School districts annually complete their spending plans long before they know the amount of state funding, which makes up about 60 percent of local district revenue. This morning’s hearing on SB 171 begins at 8 o’clock in room 105 of the state capitol (Beltz Room).

Meanwhile, the Juneau School Board holds another public hearing Tuesday on next year’s proposed budget. The district is facing a $5.8 million shortfall and could cut 69 positions, with at least 7 percent from the certified teaching staff and 10 percent from support staff.

The board also wants written testimony, which can be emailed to budgetinput@jsd.k12.ak.us.

Tuesday’s school board hearing starts at 6:00 p.m. in the Juneau-Douglas High School library.

Longtime Juneau businessman and Chamber of Commerce luminary Romer Derr passed away yesterday (Thursday) at the age of 75. He’s being remembered not just for his efforts to improve Juneau’s economy, but for his participation in the Capital City’s first ever statehood celebration. Casey Kelly has more.

Romer Derr was 23-years-old when Alaska became a state. President of the Junior Chamber of Commerce at the time, he helped organize a community celebration, where he ended up ringing the statehood bell, even though it wasn’t his job.

“I put together the celebration thing, and I had two girls – one to hold the Alaska flag, one to hold the new US flag. And I had another girl to ring the bell. They got busy at her work and she couldn’t come,” Derr explained in a 2009 KTOO interview. “So they kept saying, ‘Get it done!’ So I kept sending an emissary down there and finally they said, ‘You gotta do it!’ So I did it. So it was strictly an accident that I did it.”

50 years later, Derr rang the bell again at a ceremony marking Alaska’s golden anniversary.

Derr was on the Juneau Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors when Cathie Roemmich was hired as Executive Director. She says the bell story was typical Romer.

“Just get out of the way, this needs to be done,” she says.

Roemmich calls Derr both a colleague and a friend, and says the Chamber wouldn’t be what it is today without him.

“I think his father was one of the founders of our chamber, which is the second oldest in the State of Alaska,” Roemmich says. “There was even a time when the chamber struggled here in Juneau and Romer actually paid the staff out of his own pocket. That’s how important the chamber of commerce and the organization was to Romer.”

Derr owned Harri Plumbing and Heating in Juneau for many years.

Former chamber president Chuck Collins served with him on the chamber board and says it’s impossible to think of Juneau without him.

“I don’t think the Juneau business community would be the Juneau business community that it is without Romer and his dealings here,” says Collins. “You know, Romer was one of those guys, he didn’t mind telling you how he felt, whether you made him happy or not so happy.”

Derr apparently died of a heart attack. He’s survived by his wife Laraine, two daughters, two grandson, and five great grandchildren. He’s preceded in death by a son, and his first wife, Carole. Services will be held Tuesday at Chapel by the Lake.

The City and Borough of Juneau will enter into negotiations with Waste Management for a new recycling facility at the landfill.

The CBJ Assembly this week gave Public Works Director Kirk Duncan the okay to work with the company on the new building. Duncan says the current recycling center is maxed out.

“We have about an 8 percent diversion factor from the landfill,” he says. “We take about 2,400 tons per year in recycling, compared to 31,000 tons going into the landfill.”

Duncan will work with Waste Management to develop a Municipal Recycling Facility – or MRF – that will consolidate three separate city-funded programs. Junk vehicles, hazardous materials, and household products would all be disposed of under the same roof at the landfill.

“We will have a facility, everything will be compacted here, and then it will shipped down to Seattle, where it will be separated at one of three facilities down there and then shipped off to China,” he says.

Right now, Duncan says the city makes a little more than 100-thousand dollars a year off its recycling program. That’s because household materials are separated at the landfill, making them more profitable on the recyclables market.

“Cardboard right now, corrugated cardboard, is about $149 a ton, and we certainly don’t want to mix that in with everything else,” Duncan says. “It’s better economic sense to stay source-separated. But if you want to increase the volume, lengthen the life of the landfill, it makes sense to go co-mingled.”

That’s where Arrow Refuse comes in. The private company holds the Regulatory Commission of Alaska certificate to collect solid waste in Juneau. While recycling is not regulated by the RCA, Arrow’s Managing Partner, Bobby Cox, says the company plans to offer curbside pickup of household recyclables to its customers in the near future. The materials would be dropped off at the recycle center at the landfill.

“We expect that the only cost we’ll have to the consumer will be basically off-setting some of the cost of the container we’ll have to provide,” says Cox. “So we’re looking at a very low rate initially, probably somewhere in the $1.95 range is what we’ve been projecting.”

Arrow and Waste Management recently reached an agreement for a new 10-year tipping fee contract at the landfill that will also cover disposal of recyclables. Cox says the MRF would allow Arrow to collect material from large commercial and government customers.

“The reason we’re not picking up containers of cardboard at the State Office Building or places like that, is because you can’t process that right now with the volumes that we have without changing the facility,” Cox says. “So if you had a different facility, we could go out and effectively start marketing a lot of those source separated materials that we’re not doing right now.”

Duncan says consolidation of recycling services at the MRF shouldn’t increase the city’s costs – about a million dollars a year right now. But income from recyclables could go down. That all depends on the amount of co-mingled material and the price it fetches on the recyclables market.

“A year ago, co-mingled was $110 a ton. Now it’s $49. That’s the volatility in the market,” he says.

In the event of a shortfall, Duncan proposes an increase in the city’s household hazardous waste disposal fee and vehicle registration fee, which pays for junk vehicle disposal. He hopes to have a deal for the MRF negotiated with Waste Management within three months.

Arrow Refuse is waiting for a legal opinion about the type of container it wants to use for its curbside recycling program before releasing details. The city requires garbage containers to be bear proof, but Arrow is hopeful that won’t apply to recycling containers.

Many Juneau residents would like to see the city invest in technology that could turn solid waste into energy.

More than two years ago the assembly began making inquiries about plasma gasification incinerators, which use super-hot gas and electricity to break down matter, releasing energy and synthetic gas that can be converted to fuel and burned for electricity.

Waste Management – the company that owns Juneau’s landfill – is experimenting with a small plasma gasification plant at its Columbia Ridge landfill in Oregon. But company vice president Dean Kattler says it’s still several years away from being viable for a community like Juneau.

“It’s only 25 tons per day. It’s very, very small. It would not handle the volume that currently comes in today, even in Juneau,” says Kattler. “So, it is that first step, we really look at it as a ten year window before something will probably be commercially viable.”

Kattler says Juneau would likely need at least a 125-ton incinerator, which would make cost an issue. Even the small, 25-ton plant in Oregon cost 18-million dollars, and it took the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality a year longer than expected to permit the thing.

That news was met with disappointment by some Juneau Assembly members.

The city stopped incinerating trash at the landfill about 10 years ago when it became too costly to keep up with maintenance and environmental regulations.

Meanwhile, the sludge incinerator at the Juneau Douglas Treatment Plant has been shuttered for nearly two years. Since then, the city has been paying to have biosolids either dumped in the landfill or shipped down south. A plasma incinerator would not solve the city’s sludge problems, because the technology does not work on wet waste.

A long-running lawsuit over rural education has been settled and will provide $18-million for Alaska’s poorest-performing schools.

Filed in 2004, Moore vs. State of Alaska claimed the state failed to meet its constitutional obligation to provide quality education and adequate funding.

The state lost the original case in Superior Court. The settlement, announced Thursday, sets up a method for the Department of Education and local school districts to work together to focus resources on the state’s 40 lowest-performing schools. Education Commissioner Mike Hanley said negotiations have been based on the idea that neither the state nor the plaintiffs should be seen as winners or losers.

“The Moore settlement stated that it will need an $18-million one-time appropriation,” Hanley said. “The design has been that it will provide funding for several years and would lay a foundation that we could look to and a model that we could look to in the future for successful pedagogical strategies that would make a difference for our kids.”

The group Citizens for Educational Advancement of Alaska’s Children took the lead on the case by coordinating the schools, plaintiffs and attorneys. Executive Director Charles Wohlforth signed the settlement documents in the Attorney General’s office Thursday. He said the group continued to push the state for a settlement that would work to erase what he called a “waste of human potential” when children are not given a chance.

“So, have we solved all the problems with rural education in some of our schools in Alaska? Well, I think the answer would be no. Eighteen-million is clearly not going to be enough to solve this broad span of problems,” Wohlforth said. “But I think what we’ll do – and the commissioner alluded to it – we’re going to demonstrate some programs, we’re going to work on them collaboratively, and we’re going to see that they work. We’re going to prove that this is the right way to go – and there’s new hope for kids in rural schools across Alaska.”

The settlement specifically sets up a committee appointed by the citizens group and the Education Department to determine how resources should be shared to meet the court’s decision.