2024 Juneau Municipal Election
Do you think the Ship-Free Saturday ballot initiative will benefit Juneau residents? Why or why not? If so, how?
- What makes you a good candidate for the Juneau Assembly?
- The city is asking voters to approve adding nearly $23 million to the city’s debt for public health and safety improvements. What are your thoughts on the two ballot initiatives?
- Do you think the Ship-Free Saturday ballot initiative will benefit Juneau residents? Why or why not? If so, how?
- Juneau has now experienced record-breaking glacial outburst flooding events two years in a row. What role should the city play in mitigating damage to residential property in the future?
- The city is moving forward with a redevelopment plan for the Telephone Hill neighborhood in the coming years. How should the Assembly balance the need for more affordable housing downtown with the costs the city may have to shoulder to get those requirements in place?
- What do you think are the most important issues facing Juneau right now?
- School Board
- What makes you a good candidate for the Juneau school board?
- What do you think is the biggest challenge facing the Juneau School District right now?
- Last year, the district had to solve an abrupt multimillion-dollar deficit in a matter of months. Not all residents were happy with the decisions made and it prompted a recall effort this election for two of its current members. Moving forward, what role does each school board member play in ensuring that the district remains on firm financial footing?
- The school board voted to consolidate Juneau’s high schools and middle schools this past winter. And, with the uncertainty about education funding in the state and the district’s declining enrollment, do you think more school consolidation will be necessary in the future? If so, how will you tackle that situation?
- With hundreds of more students at Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé this year, issues with the lack of parking have been a hot topic. What more could the district be doing to mitigate that?
- Is student achievement where it should be in Juneau? What can the district do to improve reading and math scores as students grapple with major shifts in their school environments?
District 2 Assembly
Dorene Lorenz
Candidate for District 2 Assembly
Tourists are the bane of our existence. Unfortunately, we can’t tell people, ‘I’m sorry, we don’t want you to visit us or not come over for the weekend.’ We need to understand that people are going to come, and what we need to do is be gracious in being their hosts, and figure out ways so that they can get an authentic experience that doesn’t impact us as much as it could.
I think that the Ship-Free Saturday ballot initiative is a bit shortsighted and that we already have seven months that are ship-free, and we have a bunch of people who really rely on that income and can only get it when the ships are here, and we need to allow them to take advantage of the investment they have made in that industry.
Emily Mesch
Candidate for District 2 Assembly
I’ve done a lot of thinking on this one, and I think I’ve come on the side of no, I don’t think it’s going to benefit the people of Juneau. It kind of feels like this is the slogan to get people motivated about this issue, and I think that’s important. We need to be engaging with this issue. But I don’t think a good slogan is enough reason to decide policy.
I think, again, it’s about difficult conversations. It’s about difficult discussions and making sure that all of Juneau is involved in figuring out what our solution for the cruise ships are. If this vote passes by 50% plus one, then that means that nearly 50% of the city doesn’t want it, but because it’s a ballot initiative, it would still pass. And I’m not sure that that’s the best way to go about this particular problem.
Nano Brooks
Candidate for District 2 Assembly
Well, it’s all dependent on whether it passes or not. It’d be a great benefit to some community members, and it would be a detriment to other community members, so you have to look at it in the big picture of things.
My personal opinion is just, we’re at a point right now where we can’t jeopardize foundational revenue sources, and I think that it opens us up to a position to where there could be litigation brought against us by the cruise line agency. So, it’s something that you want to try and keep out of the courts as much as possible, but at the same time, the fact that it made it as a ballot initiative means that there has to be a solid, considerate discussion to do what’s best for the people in the community.
Mary Marks
Candidate for District 2 Assembly
The free-ship Saturday ballot, I believe would be beneficial. And I come from my perspective as a tribal citizen, as a community citizen. I like to hunt and gather my foods. And it would be really nice to be able to have that open freely, whether I’m heading out on Thane Road or out in the Valley gathering or fishing.
It would be nice to go out on the waters free from seeing ships in our way of fishing. So I think it’s important that we would have that. I mean, it’s just one day, you know, and we have the tourist industry here from May, I believe, until October, November. So it’s just one day.
Maureen Hall
Candidate for District 2 Assembly
I’ve talked to many folks in our community regarding this initiative. I think in general, many of our citizens are feeling like, as one woman put it to me, that we’ve been kicked to the curb. I think being ignored on the building a new City Hall, and then now seeing cruise ship traffic rising at such a rate. However, I will be a vote no on this. I feel like this is not quite the right approach. I feel like the partnership between the cruise industry and our city, as well as concerned citizens, is working. I know myself, I live out by West Glacier Trailhead, so I see a lot of impact there and I’m very pleased with the mitigation that has been happening. And I think it would be very detrimental to the economy of our community.
District 1 Assembly
Neil Steininger
Candidate for District 1 Assembly
I do not think it will benefit Juneau residents. Ship-Free Saturday, I see it as kind of a knee-jerk reaction to an issue that all of us feel, and that is the balance between living in Juneau and sharing Juneau with visitors.
I think that cutting Juneau off from visitors one day a week is fairly punitive and won’t really be helpful for a lot of the things that Juneau needs. Moving forward, we need to see jobs that can bring in young people into Juneau and cutting off an industry that employs most young people in town, that’s going to really harm our ability to attract people that will come and build families.
A lot of the problems Juneau’s facing in the future really come from that demographic shift and the lack of families coming into town. And so that’s why I don’t support Ship-Free Saturdays. I think there’s better ways to manage that.
Connor Ulmer
Candidate for District 1 Assembly
I don’t think it will fully benefit Juneau residents completely. The idea of it is great to me. I would love there not being ships in on Saturday. But knowing that without those ships, there is less tax revenue. A lot of businesses won’t be able to stay open on a Saturday. So it would really just can make it hard for any locals to try to be downtown, to go shop everywhere. And then also, without those tax revenues coming in, the city will have to look at another place of making up that money that is being lost.
Mayor
Beth Weldon
Candidate for Mayor
I don’t think the Ship-Free Saturday will benefit Juneau. My main reason for that is we’re looking at building economies in Juneau, and the tourism industry is our only economy that’s growing right now, and I don’t see our other economies growing. Mining is stable, but it’s not growing. Government and state– I should say state and federal government isn’t growing.
Tribal government is growing a little bit, so that’s good news. But otherwise, you look at tourism because we’re kind of a three-legged pool. The other piece of this is it’s an economy that is for our younger generation. So, for those people that are retired, yes, it seems like Ship-Free Saturday would be great, but you’re taking away the ability for young people to make a living and to stay here. And I also think that taking away income is going to make these shops close on Saturday so that you won’t be able to go downtown and shop.
Angela Rodell
Candidate for Mayor
So the Ship-Free Saturday initiative, I think, is unfortunate. We need to balance our visitor industry with the needs of our citizens. But this is the capital city, and we should be a place that’s welcoming people and ideas and creating solutions. I think the Ship-Free initiative will not be a benefit to Juneau. It’ll just continue to close down Juneau to future opportunities and give reasons for people to leave. And it’ll really cause our school system to suffer because we’ll have fewer and fewer kids because their parents won’t have opportunities.