2021 Juneau Municipal Elections
Serving Juneau
Which parts of Juneau do you think are underserved by the city administration and what will you do about it?
Which parts of Juneau do you think are underserved by the city administration and what will you do about it?
District 1 Assembly
Troy Wuyts-Smith
Candidate for District 1 Assembly
Well I currently serve on the Douglas Advisory Board and I do know that there is a lot of concern with the upkeep of the cemeteries that we have in Douglas. I think that there’s not a lot of funding there and, yeah, I think that that’s an issue that a lot of the community members in Douglas have talked about as well. And the reason I’m giving that as an example is because I don’t think it’s been discussed in any of the forums or brought up, so, as opposed to repeating myself, I’d say that the upkeep of the cemeteries over in Douglas to get adequate funding and, you know, more support from the Assembly.
Barbara 'Wáahlaal Gíidaak Blake
Candidate for District 1 Assembly
I think we’ve had a lack of communication between our Native community, our BIPOC community and our Assembly. And also just a lack of folks who are engaged in that space. I think it’s worth digging a little deeper, you know, we have a systemic racism review committee. And as I see it, it should be thinking more about the system as a whole and thinking about the way that our government functions and is preventing folks from being at the table.
Paul Kelly
Candidate for District 1 Assembly
I believe the city has already done a lot to invest in our school facilities, but a lot of the burden that was carried by the state has been pushed back to the city. So I think we have a growing list of deferred maintenance for our schools. I think we need to invest in our aging infrastructure, including our roads and our sewers. We’ve made a lot of progress towards going 80% renewable by 2045. I’d like to use federal funds to help build our electric vehicle infrastructure.
District 2 Assembly
Kelly Fishler
Candidate for District 2 Assembly
The most underserved are probably our kids. There’s been some studies coming out that talk about the lack of socialization and development through socialization, because these little kids, they don’t see the bottom half of somebody’s face. And the study reported that there is an average of 20 IQ point deficit with these little kids, that are all COVID babies, if you will. We want to make sure that our kids have opportunities here in Juneau so that when they get out of high school, they don’t have to move away.
Michelle Bonnet Hale
Candidate for District 2 Assembly
I think, despite many efforts, the Lemon Creek area is still underserved. I think it’s often the the forgotten child in Juneau. There’s a lot that we can do, a lot that has been done. There’s a new park going in that area. I think the systemic racism review committee is going to help as we go through the budget and help us shine a light on the areas that we’re not paying enough attention to. I think that’s a good approach.
Mayor
Beth Weldon
Candidate for Mayor
I think one of the areas that we have recently discovered that we think is underserved is the Lemon Creek area, which is one of the reasons that we put in money for a Lemon Creek bike path. So we’ll continue to look at that area. We had promised them a park so we need to work on a park and some other projects that we could probably do there.