Dorene Lorenz

What makes you a good candidate for the Juneau Assembly?

I make a great candidate for the Juneau Assembly because I have experience, not only experience in running a city that’s very similar to Juneau. I was a member of the Seward Assembly, which has very similar services that we offer to our constituency that Juneau does. But, it also gives you a good opportunity to see if you actually have the tenacity that it takes to research the issues and find out good answers and not rely completely on a staff that normally is overtaxed with things to do and enough time to do real research and finding innovative solutions.

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 think it’s interesting that we have — I think it’s about $16 million sitting in the bank that’s specifically undesignated funds, and yet we’re asking our voters to go in their pockets to service this debt. Obviously, public health and safety are important things, just like schools. It’s the kind of thing that cities need to do for us because we can’t do them for ourselves. But I would really like to see us looking a little bit closer at what needs to be funded, when and how we need to fund it, instead of just relying on taxpayers.

Do you think the Ship-Free Saturday ballot initiative will benefit Juneau residents? Why or why not? If so, how?

Tourists are the bane of our existence. Unfortunately, we can’t tell people, ‘I’m sorry, we don’t want you to visit us or not come over for the weekend.’ We need to understand that people are going to come, and what we need to do is be gracious in being their hosts, and figure out ways so that they can get an authentic experience that doesn’t impact us as much as it could.

I think that the Ship-Free Saturday ballot initiative is a bit shortsighted and that we already have seven months that are ship-free, and we have a bunch of people who really rely on that income and can only get it when the ships are here, and we need to allow them to take advantage of the investment they have made in that industry.

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?

When it comes to flooding, if it happens once, it’ll never happen again. If it happens two years in a row, good luck. Next year, it’s only going to get worse. The city obviously needs to be upfront and trying to figure out how to mitigate the damages from this glacial dam outburst. And there are a lot of different ways to do that. We are not the first community having to face this sort of adventure. The city definitely needs to take care of it as quickly and expeditiously as possible, getting federal and state resources to assist us and to ask. So that we don’t end up losing the entire property in the Valley along that river, because as it floods year after year, you’re going to see more and more properties affected as it goes past places that normally have been fortified.

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?

This is a really sad example of where we’re not looking at added value. We’re not appreciating what we have, and we’re not really investing in the assets that the city currently has. If you look at the feasibility study for this, it says the minimum investment is going to be $50,000 per unit to get those Airbnb units put in on Telephone Hill, over 35 of them. That’s the feasibility study telling us that we — that’s the only way we can make it pencil out. If we took, for example, the Gross Building that has, from what I understand, 32 units that have some water damage, and we put $50,000 in per unit as a subsidy on that building, we would have 32 units for $1.6 million that don’t have issues with parking and snow removal, don’t need utilities and streets put in. And then we’re going to more likely to have local workers working on that and those dollars circulated in our economy. Why wouldn’t you support local?

What do you think are the most important issues facing Juneau right now?

Juneau is at a really interesting space where our population is aging and we are losing young families and our young people, and we’re not preparing well for our future. At the same time that we’re looking at a Ship-Free Saturday ballot measure, we have a potential extra million visitors coming to Juneau in 2026 as they celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of our nation.

All of these people are going to be going to all 50 states, all state capitals, all of the national parks. There’s going to be a national campaign by Meta to get those people attracted to Juneau. And we’re telling them, ‘Come visit, but not on Saturdays,’ and we’re not actively preparing for those visitors. It’s just one example of how we really need to look forward instead of spinning our wheels and make really astute decisions.