Candidate profile: James McCants, Juneau Assembly Areawide challenger

Juneau Areawide Assembly candidate James McCants. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Independent)

By Mark Sabbatini

Juneau Independent

James McCants: Juneau Assembly Areawide candidate

Age: 40

Occupation: Commercial driver/small business owner

Length of residency in Juneau: Three years (former resident of Douglas Harbor and currently a resident of

Statter Harbor)

The following questions and responses have been lightly edited for clarity.

Q: The Assembly by a 5-4 vote recently rejected making the limit of five cruise ships a day mandatory rather than voluntary. How would you have voted and why?

A: "I would have went with the ‘no’ crowd, with the mayor. What happened is there were two amendments…,(my choice) would have been to vote with Mayor Weldon, which was her amendment of essentially tabling it until after the (Visitor Industry Task Force report) came out, which I believe Katie Koester said is going to be in November, December, or possibly in the spring."

"What really bugs me, though, is how the framing of the question is. Most people I talk to, they're not into the whole politics of it, they just hear five cruise ships in Juneau. Not everybody's understanding what Goldbelt's going to do, or even that whole project. So when they hear five ships they're thinking downtown. And if you ask the average person, if you look at it from a different perspective, would I be pro six or seven ships? I don't know if I'd be pro seven downtown ships if you come in from that different angle."

"Let's just say hypothetically there was that vote — it was five ships and it did include Douglas like it does today. Does that take away that economic incentive for that private business to even go down that journey to get their financing and everything to build the docks because now you’re in a situation where it’s a legal limit of five ships? But let's say they do have all the construction, plus Huna Totem — you have seven physical docks, but only five (ships) can be here, and it could go both ways. It'd be a situation where the city (dock) gets business and the other three downtown docks get business as well, but a private entity would be illegal (if it’s) engaging in business for the day."

Q: City leaders say there is a structural budget deficit of several million dollars that needs to be fixed with cuts and/or additional revenue. How would you fix it?

A: "Let's go back to kind of a similar issue in the history of CBJ and taking care of the assets that they have. One of the things that went involved with was ’Hey, we need a new City Hall, as the current City Hall has $13 million worth of deferred maintenance, whatever the number is. Same thing with the bonds they want to issue for city water as well as the schools. My question — and it goes to the residents as well — is who wasn’t paying attention? Was it us as a citizenry, when they told us at whatever Committee of the Whole meetings or public works meetings that ‘Hey we need this stuff done’ and we just weren't paying attention or pushing it. Or did the city manager say ‘Hey you guys should spend X amount of dollars this year,’ and it was an ongoing year after year city Assembly saying ‘You know we heard what you said, but for whatever political reasons we're going to defer that maintenance,’ or was it at a higher level? And I don't want to say anything was nefarious, but somebody dropped the ball."

"So the fix is where do you get the pot of money? Part of this is on my end. There could be some sort of low-interest loans — federal, whatever, that I'm not aware of — So what I would say is the information gap would be where could you get loans if that's an option, and that's just working with a professional staff."

"The option I like a whole heck of a lot better…what are some CBJ assets that we could get rid of that would bring in money to the city, put more property on the tax rolls, and kind of get us out of this rut that we're in?…Some of the proposals that I have brought up is (there’s) roughly 37,000ish acres of CBJ land adjacent to the Goldbelt property there on North Douglas. Wouldn't be great if we got ‘X’ amount of dollars for the sale plus the sales tax?"

Q: How long do you think it would take for that amount of development in North Douglas to occur and how would the city balance its budget in the meantime?

A: "Goldbelt has a 2028 opening date for the docks. I think that's reasonable. If you look at when they expanded the docks here, that was done over a wintertime to put in the new facilities…I think the true large-scale, however you want to word that, we're probably going to take at bare minimum a three- to five-year goal, and if we're talking about a North Douglas crossing I agree that's probably a 10-year down the road (project). "From my campaign perspective, the baseline end state, we’ve got to have that target of where we're going to. I just put a target year 2030."

Q: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is pursuing an approach for a long-term glacial flooding solution it hopes will be faster and cheaper than the traditional process, but also includes unknown risks. Is that an acceptable tradeoff if the traditional process is indeed longer and costlier?

A: "Depending on who you're asking, if you're the homeowner out there your risk level is going to be a lot higher than maybe someone that's uninvolved. From the uninvolved perspective, why not wait a couple years? If this is my house involved. I'm willing to take a lot more risk…I'm going to go towards I have a little bit higher risk tolerance based on the risk of what they project could actually happen."

"My understanding with the quicker action, what the Juneau Flood Solution Advocates have pushed, was the lake tap method. They had the mining folks out here. So to me it seems like people have done this — ‘Hey, we have a plan, we have experience at it and here's a price tag.’"

Q: The Assembly is considering how to pay the city’s share of a long-term flood mitigation project. What burden should residents in the affected area share and what burden should residents citywide share?

A: To me, everything should be on the table…So the things I put on the table is we have a very valuable asset in our two cruise city cruise ship docks as well as the property that's over there on West Douglas. So to me, second- and third-order effects of working with West Douglas is not just unlocking the money that we're going to get for the land sales just for the sake of putting money in the city's bank account. (Also) if if it came down to getting the city staff to work out what those (downtown) docks are worth, is Holland America or Carnival — the parent corporation — are they willing to give us a $100 million concession for exclusive use of those two docks for 20 years, 10 years, whatever?"

Q: Have you thought out the practical implications of that proposal for the downtown docks, and how it might affect overall tourism traffic and cruise companies that aren’t part of that deal?

A: "You're right. It would disrupt by giving it to Carnival, whomever, is that going to screw over MSC, who's trying to get in the business here? Is that going to screw over Virgin, or whatever? It absolutely would. The question I ask is I'm here for business, but I'm not necessarily here for Holland America. I'm not here for Carnival. I'm not here for any of these people specifically. Business is business. Government's here to set the standards and allow people to operate. So I'm asking myself hypothetically if in those talks — and let's get through them as soon as possible — if that came out to $100 million, $50 million, whatever, at what price point am I more concerned with we need to fix the housing because of this flooding, as opposed to such and such company gets pushed out of here because these docks aren't available for them because we gave exclusive access? That doesn't hurt my feelings in the absolute least bit if it comes down to taking care of the city, taking care of the people, taking care of flood mitigation, expanding West Douglas, and the people that get hurt is some future company."

"(Also) the cruise lines have no problem making money. Just because hypothetically, you gave it to Carnival they’ve got no problem (saying) ‘Hey, if our ship can't come here today, we are not losing money. Our competitor, Norwegian, would you like to dock here today?’"

Q: And what if it comes to taxing residents in flood areas and/or residents citywide for a long-term solution?

A: "I'm willing to do citywide. And here's why I say that. My issue with the LID, where I believe it's 431 homes, politically and personally what kind of hurt my feelings about it was your home flooding is a personal problem. This is a personal problem, we're going to make the LID. You specifically, who may or may not be affected based on the flood maps, your problem. I give them that much. They did say we’ll upfront the cost, but you owe us back, hence the LID…On the flip side of that — at the same time and even today — something like the whole Eaglecrest fiasco, that gets supported by general funds. That's an everybody problem.…If we're going to say as a city Eaglecrest is going to be an everybody problem it would seem to me protecting your home against a flood would be everybody's problem."

Q: What do you think about a recent proposal to have third parties manage city-owned recreation facilities?

A: "I don't think I'm an ideologue on this thing. If you can show me that the numbers pencil and we can put something in there that keeps it to the same level and it's open, you know, that doesn't hurt my feelings necessarily. "

Q: During public forums and other occasions you’ve repeatedly said "CBJ sucks" and used profane language to frame your arguments. Do you feel residents, and city administrations and other Juneau Assembly members if you are elected, consider that acceptable in a city leader?

A: "I think the idea when I said that CBJ sucks — some people did come back to me later and kind of saying ‘What are you saying?’ — in my mind I'm saying our government's ineffective.…What I'm hearing me say is this has been ineffective. We're in a bad situation. I think we can do better."

Q: If you get elected to a nine-member Assembly you’ll need at least four other people to agree with you to pass things you propose and favor? Do you believe the approach you’re taking can be effective?

A: "I do not want to make this an us-versus-them or anything like that argument. Talking to the people I talk to, going back to the rent situation, I don't know any nicer way to shake you and say ‘I'm tired of hearing about your Eaglecrest situation when I'm worried about the (expletive) rent, that is the core of it. I'm trying to shake you — whiskey, tango. foxtrot. Poverty sucks. I think government policies that lock up land and all the things you heard me talk about really, really suck, and there's nothing nice about it. It's not pretty, so I'm going to be not pretty in the language to get your attention. That doesn't mean I'm a dumb redneck from Georgia. It doesn't mean I need to drop f-bombs in every single situation that we get into. But if my initial point is to get your attention, to make it very clear to you this is the issue and this is what we're talking about, whether you feel it's effective or not I don't mind going there."

Q: Any other final issues you want to discuss or comments?

A: "An issue or an angle to this whole West Douglas and all this other development…is I don't think we really fully get in our heads that there's only one bridge over there. It's not about a second crossing. I think what you fail to realize — like we said in the army — two is one, one is none. When you’ve got one bridge, you have no bridge. I don't want to be the fear-mongering politician, but if anything ever happened to that bridge for any stretch of time…if that bridge is out for five days what am I going to do? How am I going to supply you? There's no grocery stores. There's no cold storage facility. There's no prepositioned ambulance…If that bridge goes out in the middle of snowmageddon, you are screwed, really screwed…I think it's a good question to ask and think about at the city level."

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