Garrett Schoenberger

Why are you running?

To make a difference, and to help build for Juneau’s future. I feel like I have a unique skill set and can add value to the Assembly.

Child care

What's the city's role in child care accessibility?

I think child care and early childhood development is the foundation for successful education and developing our youth to become good, productive citizens in this city and I think it’s a great investment that we can make.

Public safety

How can the city better address public safety concerns, and how would you pay for it?

I look at public safety as an absolute core service, and something that should come first and foremost. So, I’m fully supportive of backing our police and fire and making sure that they have every available resource for staffing, for recruitment, for retaining. And it’s an ongoing issue that – it’s challenging, but ultimately I think it needs to be our core focus, number one, in this city when looking at priorities is to back public safety.

Affordable housing

Do you have any specific policy ideas for addressing affordable housing in Juneau?

As far as affordable housing goes, there’s many different ways you can go about it. One of them is incentivizing developers to build. If you’re looking to add affordable housing in a specific area, I think it needs to be defined.

But there’s several ways to go about this. One of them is potentially property tax abatement, which I know the city has looked at recently on the Assembly. But that, along with just smarter regulation. … I see it as a supply and demand issue. If you want more affordable housing you need to encourage more supply. You can encourage more supply by making it easier for developers to build product, not harder. And I think you can do that through less duplication, whether it’s conditional use permits and building permits, and then ultimately incentivizing developers.