Mary Marks

What makes you a good candidate for the Juneau Assembly?

I believe that it’s important to listen to the community when they have concerns because every neighborhood has different needs, and they’re seeing things that I don’t get to see as a Juneau assembly member, and I think it’s important that we not hold back and allow them to speak because this is their feelings, and this is what they want to express, and we should be able to listen and be open-minded to their needs and finding a solution.

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?

The public health is, to me, a no-brainer, as well as the safety improvements because, we live here in our community, and the demands and the needs are really high for our public health, our safety improvements. We need to, as citizens, make sure that we’re safe, we’re secured, and if it’s not, then who are we supposed to turn to? Right? So I really believe that this is a good initiative that we should consider.

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

The free-ship Saturday ballot, I believe would be beneficial. And I come from my perspective as a tribal citizen, as a community citizen. I like to hunt and gather my foods. And it would be really nice to be able to have that open freely, whether I’m heading out on Thane Road or out in the Valley gathering or fishing.

It would be nice to go out on the waters free from seeing ships in our way of fishing. So I think it’s important that we would have that. I mean, it’s just one day, you know, and we have the tourist industry here from May, I believe, until October, November. So it’s just one day.

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?

Well, it’s my understanding that the Assembly was informed last year that there was a possibility of this happening again, and what happened? It was very severe, and a lot of our families in our neighborhoods suffered because of that. And we’re not always guaranteed that our home insurance are going to meet those needs, and because of the different guidelines of each home insurance is going to be different. Some get a yahoo, some are like, “Oh my gosh, what am I going to do?” So it’s tight. And I really believe that this should be a lesson to our Assembly, as well as the administration that we need to act here and really pay close attention if we don’t know what we’re up against. It’s important to ask those questions and not be afraid to ask the questions and allow the community to be a part of that solution, working together.

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 was born and raised here and Telephone Hill’s been there for as long as I can remember. Being up there, it doesn’t demonstrate a lot of parking needs. So if we’re going to put affordable housing up there, are we going to meet those needs and those requirements for our people?

And who is that being built for? Is that going to be somebody that’s a family of four, or is this going to be for veterans, or our seniors that are needing more housing? What does that mean? So I think it’s important to really understand where we’re putting up housing because I know we have a severe shortage. We have people that are being hired from out of state for positions, and because of low shortage of housing, they leave the state.

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

I think all of these questions that you had asked me are all the important issues. And I appreciate these questions because it’s from what I’m listening to, that our community is bringing up these same issues. Our education. What’s happening with our housing? What are we doing about the glacier? Who’s collaborating, and who’s not collaborating? And I just think it’s important that we really just take a step back for a minute and then take a deep breath and look at the whole picture, not just have tunnel vision.