Government

School board president Sally Saddler is a shoe-in for re-election. Saddler is the only candidate for two school board seats.

Randy Wanamaker is also unopposed for the District Two Assembly seat.

The filing period for municipal office has closed with few candidates. Both the school board and three Assembly seats are for three-year terms. Only two of the four races in the October 4th election are contested.

Three candidates are running for the Areawide Assembly seat: Loren Jones, Geny Del Rosario, and Carlton Smith.

Bradley Fluetsch and Jesse Kiehl will vie for the District One Assembly seat.

Wanamaker served on the Assembly for three terms ending in 2010, also representing District Two. Under city law, a candidate must sit out just one year before running again for municipal office.

With only one candidate for two school board seats, the board will have to appoint someone to fill the other seat. State law requires the board make the appointment within 30 days of the vacancy, which would be the October 4th election. The person selected will serve until next year’s regular election.

City Clerk Laurie Sica says it’s unusual to have so few school board candidates. A search of election records since the year 2000 shows at least one candidate running for each vacant seat.

The public can weigh in on a possible move of the Alaska Commercial Fishermen’s Memorial to Marine Park at a meeting of Juneau’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee tomorrow night (Tuesday).

The memorial’s board of directors has asked the city’s Docks and Harbors Department to leave the monument where it is near Taku Smokeries, and not to build a planned cruise ship dock in front of it. But if the dock project goes forward, the memorial board says its preferred location is Marine Park.

Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee Chair Jeff Wilson says Marine Park is “the people’s park” and he wants to hear from the public about the proposed move.

“I just want to get some input from the users of that park of what they want to see in that park and whether the fishermen’s memorial really is the best place to be in Marine Park,” Wilson says.

He says the PRAC will likely make a recommendation to the Docks and Harbors Board at the end of the meeting. Docks and Harbors will use the input to decide whether the memorial should move, and take it to the CBJ Assembly for approval.

At last week’s assembly meeting, Assemblyman Johan Dybdahl expressed frustration at the assembly’s lack of involvement to this point.

“You know, I would have like to hear from all those people who have people on that memorial, and I don’t believe most of them support moving it at all,” Dybdahl said. “So, I was hoping that there would be sometime that the assembly would be able to weigh in and become a part of the decision process.”

The assembly approved the dock expansion project without considering its impact on the memorial or the annual Blessing of the Fleet held there. The project budget includes up to 2-million dollars for the potential move. The actual cost isn’t known until a site is chosen.

Tomorrow night’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee meeting starts at 6 p.m. in City Hall Assembly Chambers.

The Juneau Chamber of Commerce and 13 other Southeast businesses and organizations will join in the state’s lawsuit against a federal rule that prevents road construction in certain areas of the Tongass National Forest.

The Parnell administration in June appealed a federal district court decision setting aside an eight-year-old policy that exempted the Tongass from the so-called Roadless Rule. The organizations plan to file as interveners in the case next week in federal district court in Washington, D.C.

The conservation policy was implemented in 2001, as President Clinton was leaving office. Then Gov. Tony Knowles sued the federal government. The state argued that the 1980 Alaska National Interest Land Conservation Act – which preserved 115-million acres – also decreed that no more land could be protected in the state.

Two years later, the Murkowski administration negotiated an out-of-court settlement.

Jim Clark was Gov. Frank Murkowski’s chief of staff. He says under the settlement the Tongass was exempt from application of the roadless policy via a 2003 interim rule, with a final rule to come at some point after that.

Clark is now the attorney for the group that will file as interveners in the Parnell lawsuit.

He told the Juneau Chamber of Commerce yesterday (Thursday) the rule could prevent development of hydroelectric and other renewable energy projects, as well as mining and timber in Southeast Alaska, and even the proposed Lynn Canal Highway out of Juneau.

A number of utility companies have joined the case, including Alaska Electric Light and Power, Alaska Power and Telephone and Inside Passage Electric Cooperative.

“There’s no mention in the Tongass portion of the Roadless Rule about the impact that prohibiting road or reconstruction in the inventoried roadless areas would have on hydro power construction, transmission line construction from hydro sites to communities, or the maintenance of either one,” Clark says.  “All that’s said is existing authorized uses would be allowed to maintain and operate within the parameters of their current authorization, including any provisions regarding access.”

Federal District Court Judge John Sedwick in May approved a list of energy and mining projects already underway as not subject to the Roadless Rule. Clark says all the projects are important, but he can find no authority in the rule that exempts them.

Environmental attorneys read the law differently. Buck Lindekugel of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council says the rule does not prevent other projects from going forward. SEACC and the U.S. Forest Service helped negotiate the list with the Justice Department. Lindekugel says it doesn’t need to be comprehensive.

“If you read the rule, the rule does not prohibit mining in roadless areas,” Lindekugel says. “It does not prohibit renewable energy development. And the court made that very clear when it issued its proposed order. And the reason we listed the projects in that proposed order was to clarify the flexibility of the rule.

Lindekugel calls the interveners’ argument “a lot of scare tactics.”

But First Things First Alaska Foundation President Neil MacKinnon says organizations that join the lawsuit are “trying to right the roadless wrong.”

“We see this Roadless Rule as probably the biggest economic impediment to the future of Southeast and it’s got to change or we don’t have a future,” MacKinnon says.

The foundation donated $5,000 to the litigation fund and is asking for other contributions. First Things First is a non-profit formed in 2009 to support resource development in Alaska.

Other companies joining the state’s case include Alaska Marine Lines, Southeast Stevedoring, Alaska Miners and Northwest Miners associations.

Clark, the interveners’ attorney, expects it will take 12 to 18 months before a decision comes from the federal court.

Two more candidates say they’ll run for Juneau Assembly.

Financial Investment Advisor Bradley Fluetsch says he’s running for the District One seat being vacated by Merrill Sanford. Realtor Carlton Smith plans to run for the Areawide seat held until recently by Bob Doll.

Fluetsch ran for mayor and lost to Bruce Botelho.  He says he’s been eyeing an Assembly race since then.

Fluetsch says his main concern is diversifying Juneau.  He calls the Capital City a one-horse town.

“We have one water system, we have one power company with one power line, we have one airline, we have one marine transportation system, we have no road option. We have one basic employer, government. You lose a horse, Juneau loses bad,”  Fluetsch says.  “You know, just working with the community trying to find that modest growth.  How are  we going to do it, where are we going to put the people, what are they going to do for work? Those are the issues the Assembly can address.”

Fleutsch says extending water and sewer throughout the borough, affordable housing, and job creation are all major issues.

Most of the candidates this year cite similar issues as reasons to run for the Assembly.

Carlton Smith says he’s filing his candidate application on Friday morning.  He says his record as a business owner as well as his long involvement with private, non-profit, and charitable organizations are good training for the Assembly.

He says the Assembly has a full plate of issues right now.

“For starters, the issue of the mine since we’re part owner of the AJ,” Smith says.  “The harbor improvements, water and sewer improvements are right there in front of us, coupled with the sales tax issue; the question of recycling, how we can get going on that.

“Probably most of all is how we can secure the employment levels we have right now.  And quite frankly we have to have a new focused effort on creating jobs,” Smith says.

He is a former chief executive officer of Kootznoowoo and a Sealaska officer.

Fluetsch is a former president of Juneau’s Alaska Native Brotherhood Grand Camp.

The municipal filing deadline is August 15.  Others running for Assembly are Jesse Kiehl, Loren Jones, Randy Wanamaker and Geny DelRosario.

So far, only Sally Saddler has filed to run for School Board.

CBJ Assembly Meeting
August 8, 2011
Agenda
KTOO News Report

Juneau Deputy Mayor Merrill Sanford wants the city to pull its support for the Tongass Futures Roundtable.

Sanford believes the roundtable has changed direction since the assembly passed a resolution backing its work in 2007. Most logging advocates left the group earlier this year, and Sanford says he’s no longer comfortable giving it the city’s blanket support.

“If they wish to come before us and ask for approval on some topic, that’s fine with me. But I can’t sit here as an assembly member any longer and let this move forward in a different direction than what we thought it was going to be,” said Sanford.

The Tongass roundtable is a group of stakeholders that came together five years ago in an attempt to find consensus in the often contentious public policy debates surrounding the nation’s largest national forest. It includes the US Forest Service, conservation groups, and Native organizations, including regional Native Corporation Sealaska. Juneau Mayor Bruce Botelho is the group’s facilitator.

At this week’s assembly meeting Sanford made a motion directing the city attorney to draft a resolution rescinding the assembly’s earlier declaration of support. Botelho recused himself from discussion, because he felt his role as facilitator presented a conflict of interest. Reached by telephone Tuesday while out of town on business, Botelho declined to comment.

Sanford’s motion passed unanimously. But Assembly member Karen Crane expressed concern that the city not ditch its support for the roundtable without a thorough review.

“I don’t know enough about it to say yay or nay at this point,” Crane said.

The assembly’s 2007 resolution supporting the roundtable was approved unanimously, and signed by Sanford, who was deputy mayor at the time. The largely symbolic declaration talks about the effort to create a “steady, reliable, and predictable” timber supply to “support an integrated manufacturing industry.” It also discusses protecting “watersheds with important values” and “maintaining the natural values and ecological integrity of the forest.”

Earlier this year the State of Alaska and timber industry representatives quit the roundtable, citing its inability to increase logging in Southeast Alaska. Representatives of Petersburg, Wrangell, Craig and Coffman Cove also pulled out of the organization. In its place the Parnell administration formed a state Timber Jobs Task Force that includes no representatives from the conservation community.