Monday 8/11 Regular Meeting

At the beginning of each Assembly meeting we have a time called "Public Participation on Non-Agenda Items" when anyone can come and speak their piece about anything. Normally, there are three or four who want to speak- but Monday there were none. It really is an effective way to get heard. Assembly members almost always ask city staff to check out the issue and citizen requests often get met.

Most of the items we addressed were just approved by the Assembly. We "appropriated" millions of dollars - but most of it was "other people's money" -- either state or federal grants. We also introduced a some a bond issue for the October ballot on building a covered play area at DZ middle schools. All the elementary schools have covered play areas, but the middle schools have not - primarily because they have larger indoor gyms. But the DZ gym is occupied much of the time by organized Parks and Recreation activities. For whatever reason, this project never made it high enough on the School Board's wish list to get carried out. We confirmed with the state Education department that this project would qualify for the 70% state reimbursement, so the 1.6 million dollar project will cost Juneau around 500 thousand -- if the Assembly approves the ordinance and the voters vote for it. I support the project and encourage you to vote yes on the bond issue.

Last year there was a proposal from former mayor Bill Overstreet to build a large bronze sculpture of a whale jumping out of the water. Everyone thought it looked great, but wondered about the costs. The Assembly committed to paying 1.3 million for site work to place the sculpture somewhere, but not to fund the sculpture itself. Private donations are being solicited for that. Monday we introduced an ordinance to appropriate 500,000 for that project. I was uncomfortable putting out that money when private donations had been so minimal, but the Mayor and Mr. Bush argued this was needed to jump start the project. The appropriation is up for public hearing at the next regular Assembly meeting August 25th. You can view some information in the agenda of the 2/4/08 Lands Committee meeting. Please let me know what you think.

New taxi fares were approved. The taxi companies asked for implementation of a 75 cents a minute charge for waiting. Previously, that was only charged when a customer left the cab, but now it will be charged any time the cab is stopped or slowed way down in traffic.

You may have read in the July 20th Empire about lots of trash being dumped on Mendenhall Peninsula at a place called Blueberry Trail. That starts from the cutoff road from the end of Engineer's Cutoff over to Fritz Cove -- and is actually a trail to the FAA tower on the top of the ridge. At my urging the city has is working with the FAA to clean up the mess and block the entrance so vehicles cannot drive in.

I made a couple other comments. One was about bus overcrowding. With high gas prices our ridership is up and the busses are so crowded that they sometimes just pass stops where people are waiting. The Assembly needs to act on this and increase the our investment in Capitol Transit. We should be discussing this within the next month.

The other comment I made was a capitol creep issue. The Commissioner of Administration recently stated that jobs in Juneau that are not filled within 90 days will be shipped out to Anchorage or Fairbanks. (KTOO report) This has got to stop. It is slowly draining Juneau of its economic life. After my comment I was asked to draft a letter from the Assembly to the Commissioner. I encourage you to send your comments as well to Commissioner Annette Kreitzer.