Lots of stuff going on. Of course the Legislature is on their home stretch, and everyone is running around in a dither and millions are being thrown here and there and NOT thrown there and here. It looks like Juneau will get a significant chunk of change thrown into various projects as well as supporting schools.

The Juneau schools have caused me some concern as an Assembly person. In the past I have not been convinced that their money was managed well. We now have a new Superintendent (Glen Gelbrich) who I am impressed with and who I believe is committed to good financial management. And the current School Board President Mark Choate is similarly committed. I like that. However, their budget comes to us for approval and in a year when the city operating budget is cutting millions, accessing reserves, and not filling positions, I don’t see similar cutbacks by the School District. In FY 10 the school district added 22 positions and in FY11 they propose 11 more. This at a time of declining enrollment. But the schools get funding from a formula—the state gives a bunch and the municipality also gives a formula driven amount. Neither one has declined. And they continue to ask the city for more than their formula amount. We really do want to give our kids the best education possible and I support that. I just want to know that money is being managed efficiently. The Superintendent and Board President told us last Wednesday that they would probably come to us for permission to put one or two school bond issues on the fall ballot. That translates to a higher rate for property taxes. Normally, I would say that if the citizens vote to approve something, then that is the way it should be. But I am not always sure citizens connect the dots between “support for schools” and higher property taxes.

The full proposed budget is now online I encourage you to at least read the City Manager’s Budget Message and Executive Summary in the Overview section. The Assembly will be meeting as the Finance Committee every Wednesday evening for the next six weeks to work through this.

Tonight the Committee of the Whole meets to talk about whether to establish an Empowered Board to manage the swimming pools similarly to Eaglecrest’s management (I mentioned this last post). I still think this is a bad idea. Fragmenting administration is not the path to government efficiency.

Immediately following that meeting we convene the Assembly for a Special Joint Meeting with the Planning Commission to talk about their recommendations to us on Downtown Parking, Wireless Communication facilities, land use regulations and capital improvement projects. If you are interested in the Wireless tower issue, you should read the proposed ordinance.

During this month of many meetings and budget considerations, I will try and post a bit more frequently. At this Wednesday’s Finance meeting (5pm) we will look at the general departmental budgets with special presentations by the Fire Department, the Law Department.

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.

Each year the Assembly approves a Capital Improvement Project (CIP) plan that lists the capital projects we will undertake during the year. This is what we propose to “build” in the next year. One file shows Projects, Costs and Funding Sources. The second file shows Project Descriptions. The funding is either from sales taxes or from grants from the State or Feds or from user fees (Airport, Hospital, Water/Sewer fees). These are fairly easy to read files

Another area we have been moving forward on is to establish a downtown parking management plan that will try to maximize our facilities by adjusting the cost of parking. The proposed Parking Management Plan suggests a return to parking meters for on-street parking. I tend to think this is a good plan, but there will be lots of screams from people who don’t like parking meters.

I mentioned previously about our tabling the mandatory universal trash collection ordinance. On Saturday April 3 the Assembly will have a day long meeting to try to reach consensus on how we want to move forward on this issue that everyone is concerned with. The way it appears now—the choices are - do we move towards an emphasis on collection and recycling or on some kind of incinerator. The session is open to the public, but no testimony will be taken.

Next Tuesday March 23 the Planning Commission takes up the draft Wireless Communication Facility Ordinance which has been debated in several previous meetings. Assuming it is passed in some form, it will then go to the Assembly for public hearing. You can also testify on it in the Planning Commission meeting. This is the ordinance that was generated after citizen efforts to stop building more towers in the Valley.

As the legislative session enters its final month (adjournment scheduled for mid-April) things are starting to heat up. Odds are that little will get done besides the budgets. Currently there is a big focus on the capital budget that will determine what “projects” the state will fund. Juneau has a number of possible projects, including the proposed Mental Health Trust state office building, the new Libraries/Archives/Museum (SLAM), building, revamping the Johnson Youth Center, some road work and several others. We won’t know the final outcome until the bill passes both houses and Governor wields his veto pen. Currently oil is around $81 a barrel, which makes it likely that we will have available dollars.

If you are really a state government junkie, I encourage you to follow the blog “What do I know” by retired UAA Public Administration professor Steve Aufrecht. He moved down here for the session (along with his much better half, Joan) and has been hanging out in the capital taking videos and typing away. I think you’ll enjoy it.

If you have any interest in serving your community through a city Board or Commission, there are a number that have openings. Take a look at the Board Vacancy List and consider.

The big issue recently has been the proposed Mandatory Refuse Collection ordinance.
About 17% of Juneau residents take care of their own trash rather than having Arrow Refuse pick it up. This ordinance would have required everyone to have commercial pickup and that drew down the wrath of many citizens who responsibly take care of their own and want to keep it that way. In our 2/22 Assembly Meeting and again in the 3/1 COW meeting we discussed the ordinance and have backed off imposing it. My issue was that it was not clearly articulated why we had to do this. Some said to discourage illegal dumping. The testifying citizens responded that we should enforce the laws against illegal dumping rather than passing new laws that punish responsible citizens. Another argument that was not made clearly was that we needed total participation to make curbside recycling work. Yet, we are still far from having such a program. And if we go to an incinerator everything changes. So the Assembly basically said we (the Assembly) need to clearly articulate our direction on the whole issue of solid waste management. We know citizens want this resolved one way or another.

The Planning Commission has been discussing revising the Table of Permissible Uses
This table identifies just what is allowed and not allowed in each zoning district. This is an important issue and worth keeping our eye on. The Planning Commission is also working on a Wireless Communications Ordinance which would regulate towers (among other things)


Docks and Harbors is struggling with what to do in Douglas Harbor. In my 12/21 post I noted that the Harbor floor is rising and unless it is dredged it will slowly become unusable. The problem is that dredging stirs up the bottom and that results in mercury levels mixed into the water that are considered unsafe. The EPA says they oppose the open dump and recommend a more technologically sophisticated (and expensive) containment of the dredged material. One solution is to dig a hole in the channel bottom and put clean fill on top of the dredged material to slow leakage to acceptable levels. Complicated stuff.

I mentioned in my 2/11 post that the proposed use of Juneau cruise ship head tax dollars was out for comment. This is the final list that will be presented to the Assembly

There is a fascinating little effort going on to bring super high speed broadband to Juneau. Google has recently announced a competition for a limited number of communities across the United States to participate. Applications are due by March 26.
Google’s announcement gives us until March 26th. JEDC is coordinating Juneau’s application. We would love to have lots of people weigh in.

Finally, Parks and Rec is having a contest to create a graphic logo for the Diamond Park Pool currently being constructed. Applications due by the end of May.