Candidate filing begins for Juneau Assembly, school board races; all five seats have contenders

Incumbent Paul Kelly being challenged for Areawide Assembly; newcomers seek open District 1 and District 2 seats; both school board incumbents say they’re running again

Juneau Areawide Assembly Member Paul Kelly, left, waits to file his reelection paperwork as Joyce Niven, right, files as an Assembly District 2 candidate at City Hall on Friday, July 17, 2026. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Independent)

By Mark Sabbatini

Juneau Independent

This story will be updated with other opening-day candidate filings if they occur.

Newcomer Joyce Niven beat incumbent Paul Kelly in the race to City Hall, but it won’t matter in the race for City Hall since they’re seeking different Assembly seats.

Niven, who said she arrived at 7:34 a.m. and Kelly, who arrived at about 7:50 a.m., were the first two candidates showing up in person at the city clerk’s office to file for races in Juneau’s Oct. 6 municipal election. Niven is seeking the open District 2 Assembly seat and Kelly is running for a second term as an Areawide Assembly member.

"I'm here at 8 a.m. because I wanted to be here right when the doors open," she said after filing her paperwork. "Paul and I also had a friendly little challenge to who was going to be first to file, so I won."

Also registered as a District 1 Assembly candidate within minutes of the clerk’s office opening was former Deputy City Manager Mila Cosgrove, with the paperwork filed on her behalf by campaign treasurer Jetta Whittaker. Registering by midday was Brad Sapp, office manager for the Federal Aviation Administration’s Flight Standards District Office in Juneau.

This year’s election ballot includes the three Assembly seats and two Juneau Board of Education seats, all for three-year terms. The deadline for candidates to file is 4:30 p.m. Monday, July 27.

The incumbents for Assembly District 1 and District 2 — Alicia Hughes-Skandijs and Christine Woll, respectively — have said they are not running for reelection.

In the school board race, incumbents Britteny Cioni-Haywood and David Noon both filed for reelection to a second term Friday afternoon.

Juneau residents will also almost certainly be voting on at least three tax-related ballot propositions: imposing a 1% seasonal sales tax between April and September, raising the property tax cap to 12 mills, and a temporary 3% sales tax that voters have renewed every five years for decades. The Assembly is also debating whether to put bonds for school and utility projects on the ballot.

The status of the five candidate races as of 4:30 p.m. Friday, based on filings with the city clerk's office and Alaska Public Offices Commission (candidates in each race are listed in the order they filed, where applicable):

Areawide Assembly: Paul Kelly (incumbent); Brad Sapp (challenger)

Kelly, an analyst/programmer for the state since 2017, said one notable difference compared to his first campaign three years ago is as an incumbent he’s in a lot of committee and other meetings, so he won’t have time to knock on as many doors.

Another big difference is glacial flooding is likely to be a much bigger issue, said Kelly, who lives in the Twin Lakes area with his wife and two children.

"It was present last time, but it wasn't nearly to the degree that it has been since," he said. "I've heard people talking about our waste stream and how the dump is soon to expire, so I think that's going to be an issue for some people. Tourism was an issue then. I expect it's going to continue to be an issue this time around."

Being an incumbent means having a record of actions that he can claim credit for — and other candidates can attack. Kelly said "I think I can expect people to look at my record and see that I'm an independent thinker."

"I don't always vote along with everybody else on the Assembly," he said. "I vote my mind. I speak my mind…People know that they can trust me; before I was more of an unknown quantity."

Sapp said he’s running as a first-time challenger for the seat because the city is facing numerous matters of consequence and "the main thing is I hear a lot of talk out of the Assembly, but not much action. I'm an action person. I like to get things done and I want to bring that to the Assembly."

While he said a long-term solution to glacial flooding is the top immediate concern, economic growth and affordable living are longer-term priorities.

"I think we've been stagnant a long time, since about the mid '80s," he said. "(There was) large growth between the mid '70s and the mid '80s, and we've kind of plateaued out. And it's time that we take a look instead of just living the same, take a look at what we need to do to really stimulate real economic growth in Juneau."

Among the actions Sapp said he’d like to see is releasing more land owned by the city so it can be developed.

Sapp said he originally moved to Juneau with his family in 1974 and remained here most of the time until joining the U.S. Army in 1986, which resulted in deployments worldwide, including serving in the first Gulf War. He moved back to Juneau in 2000 and has been working for the FAA here since then. He’s also formed and been involved with groups working on local transportation issues, including an air tour operators group focusing on issues such as glacier flightseeing safety.

Assembly District 1: Mila Cosgrove (challenger)

Cosgrove has lots of experience with Juneau’s municipal government, having served as its human resources and risk management director from 2006 to 2016, and as deputy city manager from 2016 to 2021. But as a resident of Juneau for 36 years who’s now a private consultant, she’s never run as a candidate until this year.

Some of that is due to wanting to take a break after the deputy manager’s job — plus "COVID was a pretty intense time," she said. But the decision to run this year was motivated in part because of a proliferation of anti-government sentiments being expressed locally and nationally.

"I feel like there needs to be a voice in that mix that says, ‘Hey, we've created things that are good and valuable for the community," she said. "That doesn't mean that we don't need to continue to look at them and make sure they still fit the needs of the community, because I think that's an important conversation. But I felt like I could add to the conversation, and that my experience and the way that I look at things could be a valuable asset as the community navigates the next few years."

Budget cuts and tax revenue, which both have been major topics of debate the past year, are likely to remain tough issues during the coming few years, Cosgrove said.

Cosgrove, who lives downtown, said she chose to run for the District 1 seat because "I knew Alicia was stepping down, so I knew there would be a vacancy that needed to be filled. And it made sense to me to file for a seat that was unopposed."

Assembly District 2: Joyce Niven (challenger)

Niven knows plenty about Juneau’s housing situation and finances, having worked for nearly 25 years for the Tlingit Haida Regional Housing Authority as its fiscal manager and then vice president of administration until retiring last year. She’s also been a board member of the Juneau Housing First Collaborative, which operates the Glory Hall and other programs for people in need, for more than a decade.

She said those skills will be helpful as an Assembly member at a time when Juneau is facing numerous livability and financial challenges. "Of course the flood is a priority," she said. "Finding a timely solution and mitigating damages for the flood. Affordable housing opportunities for the whole community. A balanced and transparent budget that reflects the values and needs of our community is important to me. And of course, just increasing quality of life so people want to stay here."

Niven, who now works as a private consultant, said she’s lived in Juneau for nearly 35 years, after growing up in Tacoma, Washington, and moving to Anchorage for a couple of years. She lives near the Mendenhall Glacier, said she considered running for the Areawide and District 2 seats before opting for the latter.

(Disclosure: Niven is the Juneau Independent’s business manager. She is a part-time contractor responsible for accounting and other financial responsibilities, with no involvement in newsroom operations. The Independent learned about her candidacy when she publicly announced her intention to run.)

Juneau Board of Education: Britteny Cioni-Haywood, David Noon (incumbents)

Unlike the Assembly races, each of which is a winner-take-all contest, the school board is an open race where all candidates compete in a single pool and the top two finishers claim the seats.

Cioni-Haywood said that when she first ran for school board three years ago she didn’t envision being its president before the end of her first term. She was elevated to that position after former president Deedie Sorensen, who initially decided not to run and then filed late as a write-in candidate a year ago, lost her reelection bid.

The Juneau School District has seen lots of dramatic changes during that time, most notably a consolidation of schools as a partial response to the worst financial crisis in the district’s history. The upcoming school year will also feature a new superintendent and many other top administrative officials.

"One of the reasons I am rerunning is because of all of these changes and transitions that I feel like I should help see some of that through," Cioni-Haywood said.

She is the administrative operations manager for the state Division of Commercial Fisheries and a former instructor at the University of Alaska Southeast. She said she expects many of the issues the district faces during the next three years will remain the same despite the changes the past few years.

"Funding from the state — trying to figure out what we keep, what we lose with the funding that we have, making those hard decisions," she said. "I don't think any of that has changed, and we have a lot of uncertainty to come this fall and winter with the change of (governor). We know that's going to happen, but who it'll be is anyone's guess at this point."

The consolidation, as well as contentious matters such as recently resolved teacher contract negotiations, resulted in many people expressing frustration with district officials. Cioni-Haywood said "I do still think that there is work in rebuilding trust and cleaning up those pieces from the consolidation."

Noon, a history and social sciences instructor at UAS since 2003, said he expects to spend some of the campaign talking about lessons he’s learned during his first term on the school board.

"I expect to be talking probably with a lot more clarity than I would have running as a first-time candidate about what might be coming down the pike for the district in the next couple of years," he said.

Noon said the amount of campaigning he’ll do will likely depend in part on whether he and Cioni-Haywood face challengers for the two available seats. He said it’s possible the struggles the district went through the past three years might lure challengers, but he also is ready to defend how the board addressed those issues and is looking ahead to future matters.

"I feel a lot more confident about being able to speak to my time on the school board," he said. "If that means I'm defending decisions that I made or that we made collectively, I can do that. So I'm not really worried. I mean I know that, yeah, we had a lot of bitter stuff going on and I'm not particularly nervous about having to address any of it."

• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.