Arctic Winter Games and Prop 1

This afternoon was painful. I voted against Juneau applying for the Arctic Winter Games because of the cost and the uncertainty of where the money will come from. It was a very difficult decision. I don’t even know if it was the right one. Those are the kind of votes that you can lose sleep over.

Well, the election season is heating up. The Juneau Borough election is in 2 ½ weeks (Tuesday October 5th). I will not be commenting on the Assembly and School Board races, but I will give you my take on the three Propositions. Here is a sample of the ballot you will see.

You can actually vote on all of this beginning next Monday (September 20th)


Today I want to explain my position on Proposition 1 “Shall the City and Borough of Juneau, Alaska, issue and sell its general obligation bonds, maturing within 10 years
of their date of issue, in the aggregate principal amount of not to exceed $18,700,000?”

So the question is whether we should borrow 18.7 million to renovate Auke Bay Elementary – and are you, the taxpayer willing to pay for this through your property taxes.

The complicated part of this is that the state of Alaska is pretty much saying they will pay for 70% of that. I say “pretty much” because they have to appropriate the money each year. They have always done it for those they initially approve – so we tend to count on it – but they don’t have to. If we assume the state pays 70% Juneau taxpayers will be responsible for 30% of the costs which is estimated to be $651,000 a year, for ten years. That’s about $50 more of property tax annually for a $300,000 home.

Even more complicated is the fact that we continually borrow money to renovate schools and do other capital projects. Bond issues are like mortgages and every time we need to do a long term infrastructure project we take out a new mortgage. Over time some projects are fully paid for and we take on new ones. On page 3 of this pdf you can see the debt service mill rate over the past 15 years has ranged from a high of 1.43 in 1996 to a low of .91 in 2007 depending on how many projects we were paying for.

It is the Assembly’s job to try and keep that debt service mill levy relatively stable. We don’t want to take on more debt than we pay off. The School District also wants to renovate Marie Drake, but the Assembly was clear that was too much this year. But it will come back in the next year or two.

Now as for this project – Auke Bay Elementary is truly in desperate need of renovation. There are many problems with the building. Given the state commitment to pay 70%, I support a YES vote on Proposition 1. But I also make a commitment to carefully evaluate the projects we take on to ensure our debt service mill levy does not just increase over time.

Make sure to VOTE!!!