An argument for raising the mill rate cap

Signs at City Hall as in-person early voting begins on Monday, Sept. 22, 2025, for the Oct. 7 municipal election. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Independent)

By Pat Race

I love living here. We’ve got top-notch curmudgeons, brilliant recluses and legendary old-timers. We’ve got theater kids and musicians and ski bums galore. We’ve got infuriating do-gooders and likeable ne'er-do-wells and plenty who wear more than one hat.

I can’t do the math, but there are some complex celestial mechanics at work keeping us all together in orbit as a city. The decisions we make together shape the place we live.

Last year we got together and voted to poke a $10 million to $12 million annual hole in the CBJ bucket. That’s $100-plus million over the next 10 years. A pretty significant chunk of change to take off the table without any real plan for what to do next. So now we’re having hard conversations about which services to cut. Should we mothball the field house? Close the downtown pool?

In last year’s election guide, Angela Rodell of Affordable Juneau argued that these are exactly the conversations we should be having:

“The Assembly should be talking now about (how) we have three libraries. We're going to close the downtown library, and we'll only operate Douglas and in the Valley. Go use one of those. I don't know what that generates. I don't know if that's a legitimate idea. Do I think people would be upset by that? No question, people will be upset that one of the three libraries closed, but you have to put this stuff out there."

My mom was a storytime librarian here in Juneau for 33 years so I’m a little partial to libraries. I learned to swim at Augustus Brown. Dad worked at Eaglecrest and I grew up tearing around on those hills. I like living in a city with pools and museums and ice rinks and skiing and an arts council.

And the thing is, we don’t really need to have these conversations about what to cut. We can just put the money back on the table. I’d much rather have city leaders working on summer flood plans than listening to hours of public testimony on swimming pools.

There are two efforts that grew from similar concerns and resulted in a pair of ballot propositions. One is a 1% seasonal sales tax to capture more revenue during the summer months. The other reverses the lower property tax cap that passed last year and restores the longtime cap of 12 mills. I hope you’ll sign both petitions and give us a chance to vote on them in October.

Now, I’m hesitant to get into too much more detail. Explaining mill rates is a surefire way to put people to sleep, but this is a digital paper with an endless scroll and it seems important to make the case for a complex issue so read on if you’re fully caffeinated… 

Mill rates

Basically, this is how we determine property taxes, the mill rate is multiplied by the assessed value of the property and the owner pays the city.

What’s a mill? It’s one-thousandth. Like a millimeter is one-thousandth of a meter, a mill is one-thousandth of your property value.

In the old days before sales taxes began to shoulder the load, Juneau’s mill rate was routinely as high as 18-22 mills. In 1995, Juneau voters established a cap of 12 mills. John MacKinnon, a conservative assembly member who opposed the 12 mill cap in 1995, had a prescient quote in the Juneau Empire: "In order to get voters to raise the cap, they're going to have to feel the hurt of cutting city services, I pity the assembly that's going to have to face that pain."

Well. Here we are.

The lower mill rate cap of nine mills that narrowly passed last year is a gift for the out-of-state corporations who own many of the largest parcels in town. Juneau doesn’t even have a comparatively high mill rate. Fairbanks hovers around 14-15 mills while Anchorage pays about 14 mills.

So if you see a bunch of folks out gathering signatures, they’re largely motivated by trying to keep Juneau facilities open. They’re moms and dads and curmudgeons and ski bums and brilliant recluses and they deeply care about this place. Seek them out. Sign a petition book. Let’s move past these cuts.

Thanks. It’s nice to be a city with you.

• Pat Race is a local business owner and one of the petitioners on the ballot measure to raise the property tax cap to 12 mills.