Assembly Diary

Happy May Day! What a beautiful Spring we are having. I went down to the Fisherman’s Memorial to watch the Blessing of the Fleet this morning and that was really nice.

The Assembly Finance Committee continues to receive presentations on the proposed biennial budget. Last night we heard from the Enterprise Boards and reviewed the Capital Improvement Projects. You can view the power point presentations HERE
and the full budget HERE

This budget presentation stuff is mostly ritual. Yes, we technically have the right to change anything we want, but it rarely happens. We ask lots of questions of each presenter, but nothing is normally changed. The Manager has submitted a balanced budget. Each Enterprise Board must submit a balanced budget. They have already been reviewed closely and are difficult to change.

The one place where we always have deliberations is for the extra things that did NOT make it into the Manager’s budget that are requested by various citizen and non profit groups. This year we spent a million from the budget reserve to cover expenses – so I think it will be really hard to fund anything extra. The one area where we do have some projected dollars is in the social service/substance abuse area because of the additional revenue anticipated as a result of higher tobacco taxes. That will be discussed over the next few weeks.

The Juneau School Board has asked the Assembly to put two school Bond Issues on the October ballot—Auke Bay Elementary and Marie Drake. The Assembly has asked our Finance people to show us how these would affect the debt service mill rate over the next ten years. Every bond issue we take on increases property taxes unless other projects drop off.

There are a lot of other things going on right now, many of which I have mentioned previously. I thought I would summarize them with links to more detailed information for those who are interested.

We continue to consider how to deal with solid waste. Here are the detailed minutes of our April 3 meeting where we hashed a lot of this out. Currently we await an update on negotiations with Arrow Refuse to acquire their permits. What Arrow Refuse asks for will be crucial. If they want multiple millions for their permits, then we really have to think about whether we want them – but without them we can’t do anything about the waste stream.

Docks and Harbors is soliciting public comment for a major Statter Harbor (Auke Bay) project. The Assembly will not usually change what a Board decides to do as long as they have a plan to pay for it. What we ARE concerned about is that they get public input and listen to it. That is what we will be watching.

We are moving forward with a downtown parking management plan that will likely include high tech parking meters on the streets. This will allow us to “incentivize” where people park – and the payment through license plate numbers will prevent people from just moving from one spot to another. Please pass on your comments.

Public Comment is also being solicited for use of the area under the downtown bridge being vacated by the Streets Department. I think this should be a park as envisioned in the Long Range Waterfront Plan – but things are always “in play” until there is money appropriated. Please put your two cents in.

This summer we will have a Round 2 of Lena Point land sales. HERE is information on the first round from 2007 The city has really worked hard to increase the amount of land available – hopefully impacting housing prices. In the next few years we also envision making available land on Pederson Hill – to the North just across Brotherhood Bridge and in North/West Douglas as the road extension gets built.

On April 14 the Assembly met with the Hospital Board to discuss some of the labor relations problems they have been having. HERE are the minutes of that meeting where you can get an idea of what was said to us. I think it is extremely important that we have a good organizational climate for our Hospital. I will do whatever I can to promote that.

The United Way has completed their “Compass II indicators” about the state of social services in Juneau. There are some good and less good results. Check it out.

Finally, we are doing our annual solicitation of Board members for Docks and Harbors, the Airport and Eaglecrest. If you are interested, I encourage you to contact me and to attend some of the current board meetings. Eaglecrest applications are due May 26. Airport and Docks and Harbors are due by June 16.


And we’re all waiting to see how much of the state capital budget expenditures for Juneau will pass the Governor’s veto pen.