2024 Juneau Municipal Election
What do you think are the most important issues facing Juneau right now?
- 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
Juneau is at a really interesting space where our population is aging and we are losing young families and our young people, and we’re not preparing well for our future. At the same time that we’re looking at a Ship-Free Saturday ballot measure, we have a potential extra million visitors coming to Juneau in 2026 as they celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of our nation.
All of these people are going to be going to all 50 states, all state capitals, all of the national parks. There’s going to be a national campaign by Meta to get those people attracted to Juneau. And we’re telling them, ‘Come visit, but not on Saturdays,’ and we’re not actively preparing for those visitors. It’s just one example of how we really need to look forward instead of spinning our wheels and make really astute decisions.
Emily Mesch
Candidate for District 2 Assembly
So, I have three plus an extra one. The bonus one is flooding. I think that’s immediately we need to be addressing that in every way possible, from every direction possible. Setting that aside, the three most important issues are figuring out education funding. Kids are just going back to school, and it’s been a bit of an adjustment. I think there are ways that we can fix it. I think there are things we can do there.
Number two is affordable housing. Like we just spoke about, if you can’t afford to live in Juneau, you’re not going to live in Juneau, or you’re going to end up in a crisis situation, and that’s not OK. And, the third issue is cruise ships. It affects everybody, whether you’re in the industry or not, and we need to have a solution that fits for everybody.
Nano Brooks
Candidate for District 2 Assembly
Well, it’s a couple of things that kind of cover a wide basis. But the most pressing issue for me is the glacial outburst and the hundreds of families and homes that are getting impacted on an annual basis now. That needs to be addressed like yesterday or more, so like last year, is when the planning should have started for mitigation factors.
But also we’re still in a financial pinch. Bartlett [Regional Hospital] and the school district have a lot of shortcomings when it comes to the finances, and we really need to diversify our revenue streams, and that’s why I’m still pushing hard for the land lottery and land raffle. And, that would bolster our general funds so much that we could really tackle these issues that the community are facing, and then also put programs in place that’ll make it to where future generations can thrive.
Mary Marks
Candidate for District 2 Assembly
I think all of these questions that you had asked me are all the important issues. And I appreciate these questions because it’s from what I’m listening to, that our community is bringing up these same issues. Our education. What’s happening with our housing? What are we doing about the glacier? Who’s collaborating, and who’s not collaborating? And I just think it’s important that we really just take a step back for a minute and then take a deep breath and look at the whole picture, not just have tunnel vision.
Maureen Hall
Candidate for District 2 Assembly
I’d say the number one issue facing Juneau right now is our workforce. I see the baby boomers leaving the workforce in mass needing ever-increasing amounts of care and services. You know, we are missing so many of our medical specialists that would enable them to remain in our community. We have wings of Wildflower Court that aren’t fully opened, as well as Riverview [Senior Living] is having trouble staffing. We have 60 vacancies at the Juneau School District. Our hospital has vacancies, our police force. So I would say, anything we can do to make our community affordable and for young families to come back here, and also the absolute necessity of preparing for the Coast Guard. So housing and workforce development would be my two biggies.
District 1 Assembly
Neil Steininger
Candidate for District 1 Assembly
To me, it’s really the kind of demographic issues that we’re facing. We have a really strong senior population, and it’s awesome that folks like my parents can spend their retirements in Juneau. But we really need to be thinking about how can we attract young families to town. And I think that really comes down to things like figuring out our housing issue, figuring out our child care issue, and also protecting the jobs that bring in young families, like tourism, like government jobs, things of that nature, that are bringing in families and have supported them in the past. We need to figure out how to enhance that and really try to make sure that 20 years from now, Juneau doesn’t continue to have these demographic issues.
Connor Ulmer
Candidate for District 1 Assembly
I think one of the biggest things is housing. I know for myself, it has been a challenge to find any sort of affordable housing. I don’t make a large amount of money, but I don’t make a small amount. So I’m in that weird little gap of “OK, I don’t qualify for low income, but I can’t afford any of these housing, apartments, or places to buy.” So I think that is kind of the biggest thing that the city needs to look at, is how we can open up additional land and make sure that it is affordable – not just for a small group of people, but for everybody across all different lines of work and everything.
Mayor
Beth Weldon
Candidate for Mayor
Well, the first one I think is flood mitigation. If we don’t figure out something or if we can’t get the federal government involved or figure out something local, our next year – could the flood be even worse? And that’s where our housing stock is in Juneau, is in the Valley. So that’s probably one of the biggest things.
The second thing is we just continue working on housing, but we’ve done pretty well, and there’s quite a bit being built this last couple of years. We have a lot of units available, so we also have to watch what that does to the market.
Child care seems to remain an issue. The Icebreaker, we’ll be looking at working with the [U.S] Coast Guard on that. They had asked us to hold off on forming a group, a citizen group on them coming in, but now that seems to be getting closer. We’ll be looking at that. North Douglas crossing is a concern trying to get to develop the area and potentially an economic area, also.
Angela Rodell
Candidate for Mayor
Juneau has a lot of issues facing it right now, and we need to get back to our basics, and that means making Juneau affordable and livable. Families, senior citizens, young people need to feel safe in our community. They need to know that their kids are going to have a good education and they need to know that they’re going to have opportunity.
And so, we need to focus our resources on repairing the flood, whatever form that takes. We need to get our hospital back in shape. We need to start moving transportation projects forward so that we can increase our network, our road networks, if we want to put bicycle lanes, whatever the transportation network looks like — second crossing, docks — in order to open up additional lands for development and that affordability piece, and that’s what we need to get back to.