Enterprise Board Appointments and Docks and Harbors Issues

Monday 12/6 the Assembly appointed new members of the Planning Commission and Hospital Board. The Hospital Board appointments were significant because the Assembly did not re-appoint one incumbent, and another did not re-apply. A message was sent that we are concerned about management and look to the Board to make whatever hard decisions need to be made to improve the employee relations issue.

Wednesday 12/8 the Assembly had a joint meeting with the Docks and Harbors Board (because I kept pestering the Mayor to set one up). Docks and Harbors has a number of important projects going on. Statter Harbor (Auke Bay) is going to be totally restructured. The Assembly communicated how important we believe it is to get and listen to citizen input. On December 16, 7:00pm at City Hall, Docks and Harbors will host a public meeting to take citizen input on the Statter Harbor plans. If you are interested, PLEASE attend.

Douglas Harbor still needs to be dredged and the mercury laden remains need to be disposed of. It will cost money. Aurora Harbor needs to be reconstructed. And the cruise ship docks are proceeding (paid for by cruise ship passenger fees). I have been pushing for the new docks to have facilities for discharging wastewater and for electrical shorepower connections with the cruise ships. Currently, only the Princess dock does that. While nothing is certain, it seems like they are moving in that direction. Finally, the owners of Fisherman’s Bend told the city they are interested in selling. I think the Assembly communicated to the Docks and Harbors Board that with all the other spending needs, this has the lowest priority.

In other issues -- I mentioned previously that Juneau has an issue with what to do with snow that is cleared from the streets. Here is a just-off-the-press Snow Disposal study that addresses these issues. There are no easy solutions, but this lays out the problem fairly well.

The State Archives, Museum and State Library were funded last legislative session to start planning for a new joint building. Originally the acronym was SLAM – but now it is LAMP :). The Museum recently received a historical designation. The project has a website – and on it is a Historical Significance survey. Please weigh in on your thoughts.


One of the big issues last year was a potential Mental Health Trust Office Building to be built on the subport land in front of the Coast Guard Building. The state allocated several million dollars for a site survey and my understanding is that the subport site is “off the table.” I could be wrong (I certainly have been before), but this is what I have heard.

As mentioned last post --on December 13 the Assembly Committee of the Whole will receive a report on plans for the area underneath the downtown bridge. I am a big fan of establishing a Bridge Park as the terminus of the Seawalk.

Thank you all for reading this stuff and paying attention. Please encourage others to do the same.