Dorene Lorenz

What makes you a good candidate for the Juneau Assembly?

I have common sense. I have a lot of experience, actually, in public policy, and I’m an easy person to get along with. I don’t just listen, I actually hear what people are saying. I try to find a creative solution to problems instead of going, I just don’t know what to do. And I think that’s an important thing for an Assembly person to have, are those characteristics. I’m also a fiscal conservative, which helps, too. If you know how to add up the numbers and do the math, it makes life a lot easier for a lot of people.

The city is asking voters to fund a new city hall through a $27 million bond. What are your thoughts?

This is one where I kind of wonder about the math. Because if you go with the square footage of what they’re asking for for the total amount, it ends up being over $900 per square foot and we already own the land. In comparison, if you go to Manhattan and you’re making a high-rise, it’s about $675 a square foot. So I’m wondering where those extra dollars are going. I’m not saying this is a horrible project, I’m not saying it’s a project I don’t like. I just don’t understand the mathematics to it. 

I also don’t appreciate the way it’s been sold to the city. I don’t think the voters have really gotten behind the idea of this particular building at this price point in this particular space, and I think you need to have that consensus before you start moving forward and actually setting aside money for a project. I completely agree that we need to get out of the situation we’re currently in. It’s untenable. But I don’t know that this is necessarily the best way to go, and I really don’t like that they’re spending $50,000 to convince voters to do something instead of just educate them on what the facts are.

Do you think the city should limit cruise ship tourism? Why or why not? If so, how?

I don’t think it’s fair for us to try and limit tourism. If people want to visit Juneau, we need to greet them with open arms. But when it comes to where the cruise ships actually dock and what services we give them so that they have the lowest impact, not only on our environment but also on the everyday flow of traffic and congestion and people enjoying Juneau who live in Juneau, those are things that we can regulate by making strong choices in how we’re going to direct that kind of traffic. 

There’s also an underlying problem of we need more excursions, but we can’t have more excursions unless we have people to work to make those excursions go. Once we get over that hurdle, I think that things are going to be a lot smoother, and we’re not going to be so cranky that we have all these people coming to visit us.

What do you intend to do about Juneau’s housing crisis?

I think affordable housing is a self-made crisis. I think that if the city were more diligent in opening up land so that housing could be developed, if we were more supportive in streamlining the permitting process, if we made it more easy for housing to be created for people who are either just starting in the world or just ending in the world – so you’re new to the marketplace, you have an entry level position, you just got out of college, or you just retired and you’re looking for something smaller – that’s the segment that affordable housing is really made for. Unfortunately, we have a huge bunch of that housing market being taken up by folks who are using it for VRBO or AirBnb, for folks who are settled in their careers and have families and are established. And those people really need to be on different tracks. We need to be segmenting our housing situation more and then focusing on building to what the community actually needs, and making sure people are being paid an amount that they can afford the homes they really should be in.

City-hired experts produced hazard maps for avalanches and landslides — how should the city balance responsible development with the needs of community members already living here?

That’s really an easy question, and I don’t understand why people are having such a hard time answering it. If you have awareness of a risk, you let people know. You send them a notice once a year with their property taxes saying, ‘Hey, so you’re aware, you’re living in an area or you own property in an area that’s high risk, and here are some resources that you might be able to use to mitigate that risk.’ You don’t just let it go loosey goosey. And I appreciate that people have invested, and they have their livelihoods and their life’s fortune in these areas that are high-risk areas. But we have to do due diligence, and we have to let them know as well as anyone who’s going to be purchasing that property, have the opportunity to go up on a website and look at a map and say, ‘Oh, yeah, this is at a bottom of a chute, and easily anyone can see a rock slide or an avalanche or something’s going to be coming down there or the potential is there,’ so that when I’m buying that property, I am aware of the risk. The last thing you want is someone coming from flat land, coming here, buying at the end of the chute, getting wiped out and being totally oblivious that there was even a risk. I think that that’s really poor on our part and we’re not taking care of our citizens.

What do you think is the most important issue facing Juneau right now?

Responsibility and transparency in our government. I think a lot of things are done behind the scenes. A lot of deals are made that the public is unaware of. I think a lot of discussion that should be going on in public isn’t. It’s behind closed doors, and that’s not cool for anyone. It makes the actual agreements shady, so people don’t have faith and confidence in them. When you see the rules apply to some groups of people but not all groups of people, there’s this sense that there’s no fairness. And if you don’t have faith and confidence in the process, you’re not going to have faith and confidence in your government, and that’s a fundamental thing. That, to me, is something that definitely needs to be changed.