- School Board
- Amber Frommherz
- Jenny Thomas
- Michele Stuart Morgan
- Will Muldoon
- Jeff Redmond
- Elizabeth (Ebett) Siddon
- District 2 Assembly
- Dorene Lorenz
- Emily Mesch
- Nano Brooks
- Mary Marks
- Maureen Hall
- District 1 Assembly
- Neil Steininger
- Connor Ulmer
- Mayor
- Beth Weldon
- Angela Rodell
Age on Oct. 1, 2024
26
Family (immediate/those you live with)
Annette & Gary UlmerOccupation
Executive Assistant – Tlingit & Haida Office of the PresidentPrevious government experience or community involvement
Tlingit & Haida employee, Juneau Tlingit & Haida Community Council – Council Member, Goldbelt Ancestral Trust – Trustee, Sealaska Board of Directors – Board Youth AdvisorHighest level of education
Bachelor’s degree
Do you support ballot proposition 1? ($12.7M public safety bond)
Yes
Do you support ballot proposition 2? (Ship-Free Saturdays)
No
Do you support ballot proposition 3? ($10M Juneau Douglas Wastewater Treatment Plant bond)
Yes
Do you support the recall petitions for School Board President Deedie Sorensen and Vice President Emil Mackey?
No
What's your favorite restaurant in Juneau?
Island Pub
What makes you a good candidate for the Juneau Assembly?
I believe my experience working at Tlingit and Haida with our executive council, which is our governing body outside of our tribal assembly, and my time at Sealaska as the board youth advisor and on the Tlingit and Haida Juneau Community Council has all kind of helped push me forward to run and bring in another Native voice to the Assembly and also just a younger perspective to everything.
The city is asking voters to approve adding nearly $23 million to the city’s debt for public health and safety improvements. What are your thoughts on the two ballot initiatives?
I support both of them. I think it’s really important to make sure that the water that is going to be drunk, or people who are going to drink throughout Southeast and especially in Juneau, is healthy and good. As well as just making sure that we have everything in place to be able to respond for any emergencies that take place in Juneau. I know in our rural communities, it’s such a hard thing, but making sure that we can have proper response here in Juneau is really important.
Do you think the Ship-Free Saturday ballot initiative will benefit Juneau residents? Why or why not? If so, how?
I don’t think it will fully benefit Juneau residents completely. The idea of it is great to me. I would love there not being ships in on Saturday. But knowing that without those ships, there is less tax revenue. A lot of businesses won’t be able to stay open on a Saturday. So it would really just can make it hard for any locals to try to be downtown, to go shop everywhere. And then also, without those tax revenues coming in, the city will have to look at another place of making up that money that is being lost.
Juneau has now experienced record-breaking glacial outburst flooding events two years in a row. What role should the city play in mitigating damage to residential property in the future?
I think one of the main things that the city should look at is developing more of their emergency response to natural disasters. I believe there’s mainly just kind of one guy who’s there doing it, but it’s kind of like it’s not his full-time job, so it’s a little funky. So I think it would be really important to make sure that there’s somebody who’s at least one person’s full-time job of making sure that the city is ready to respond to any of those disasters, like the flooding and more of the landslides that we’ve been seeing in our community. And I also think just making sure that the city stays up to date on the potential maps of where there could be landslides, the potential of flooding in the future, and how large of floods it could be.
The city is moving forward with a redevelopment plan for the Telephone Hill neighborhood in the coming years. How should the Assembly balance the need for more affordable housing downtown with the costs the city may have to shoulder to get those requirements in place?
I think one of the things the city should look at is more of how different ways of developing Telephone Hill for it. I know affordable housing is a big issue, so my thought would be, I would love to maybe see the city get into developing housing for that more mid-tier range, but also bringing in other partners who would want to develop up there. So there’s kind of like a mixed use of Telephone Hill – some low income, maybe some of the higher income for those more desirable lots that are kind of on the front overlooking town. So, kind of making sure you get everybody involved in the development of Telephone Hill.
What do you think are the most important issues facing Juneau right now?
I think one of the biggest things is housing. I know for myself, it has been a challenge to find any sort of affordable housing. I don’t make a large amount of money, but I don’t make a small amount. So I’m in that weird little gap of “OK, I don’t qualify for low income, but I can’t afford any of these housing, apartments, or places to buy.” So I think that is kind of the biggest thing that the city needs to look at, is how we can open up additional land and make sure that it is affordable – not just for a small group of people, but for everybody across all different lines of work and everything.