Assembly Diary

Today (Saturday 4/3) the Assembly had a five hour meeting on solid waste management. Recall that an ordinance for mandatory universal trash collection had been tabled when many citizens protested. Today we tried to put everything on the table to get a firm idea what is our next step. Recall also that both the Landfill (Waste Management) and trash collection (Arrow Refuse) are currently private operations that the Borough has no control over. There was general agreement that the next action needs to be a negotiation with Arrow Refuse to acquire their Certificate of Convenience and Necessity. That is the state permit to collect garbage. Unless CBJ has that, they can do nothing. A lot will depend on this negotiation and the terms of the agreement. Arrow is a private corporation and their goal is profit. There was no agreement other than proceeding to negotiate to acquire that Certificate.

Next Monday night’s (4/5) Assembly Agenda has a number of items you might want to glance at. First is the introduction of the proposed FY10-11 Budget. [There is a link at the right for Assembly Agendas – click on April 5 – Ordinance 2010-11 is the operating budget]. Second is the proposed school district budget Ordinance 2010-12. Third is the mill rate ordinance 2010-13 which proposes a mill rate essentially the same as last year. [the mill rate is what determines property tax rates] Those three budget ordinances are being introduced and will have future public hearings. Take a look at them. Throughout April the Assembly will be reviewing the proposed budget at Wednesday night Finance Committee meetings.

The Diamond Park pool in the Valley is coming along. An issue before us is how it will be managed. Some want to have a citizen controlled enterprise board, similar to the airport, hospital or Eaglecrest. The argument is that a citizen controlled board will manage more efficiently and effectively than professional staff under the city manager. I think it is a mistake to fragment city government, runs the risk of managing the pool in the interests of one group rather than all citizens and favoring money making practices over access for all citizens. We will discuss this more at our COW meeting April 12.

We recently hired Rich Etheridge as our new Fire Chief after Eric Mohrmann took a job in Kenai

We are moving toward a new election season. [I know—you really didn’t want to hear that]. This year there will be three elections. The state primary election is August 24th. This will be important because citizen initiatives are voted on in the primary rather than the general elections. The general election is November 2nd. The CBJ Municipal election is October 5th. Three Assembly seats will come up. Randy Wanamaker’s District 2 Valley seat is open, as Mr. Wanamaker has served three terms and cannot run again. The other two seats are held by Jeff Bush and Johan Dybdal. Neither have announced whether they will run again. Also every ten years the city asks its citizens whether they want to call a Charter Commission to amend the City Charter – and this will be on the 2010 ballot. Probably the main issue is whether to continue as a Council Manager system or to change to a Executive Mayor system like Anchorage. I strongly favor our current council manager system. There may be other issues on the ballot. The final date for us to decide that is August 23. Make sure you are registered.

You may have seen that the Mental Health Trust is working on a land trade with the US Forest Service. In Juneau, the Trust would trade several parcels of land including a large swath in Douglas uphill from all the condos, in exchange for land on Prince of Wales Island that they could log. Click HERE for more info.

If you haven’t already done it, make sure you fill out your Census form. That will really help us keep our representation.

And finally, if you have stumbled on this blog – you can get notification of any new posts by sending me an email requesting notification. I tend to do a new post every couple of weeks.