Candidate profile: Karla Hart, Juneau Assembly District 2 challenger

Juneau Assembly District 2 challenger Karla Hart. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Independent)

By Mark Sabbatini

Juneau Independent

Karla Hart: Juneau Assembly District 2 candidate

Age: Not specified

Occupation: Former state fish and game employee, legislative staff member and tourism business operator

Length of residency in Juneau: More than 60 years

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

Q: You’re known as a citizen activist who has challenged city leaders rather than trying to become one of them. Why are you now seeking to become one person on a nine-member Assembly?

A: "I had a lot of thought on that for a lot of years before I decided that this is really the time. And here's the scoop: I'm not going to be running for re-election. I'm planning to do this as a three-year stint and I'm going to get as much done as I can in that three years. I'll still do my normal Assembly things of figuring out budgets and doing that. But what we see with the candidates for Assembly now and candidates for Assembly in perpetuity — ‘What are you going to do? Oh, we need to address housing and homelessness in the budget, and we need to diversify our economy, and blah blah blah blah blah.’ And then what do they really do?…I mean, Paul Kelly did something on homeless folks that was really good, but mostly they just wait for the city staff to bring things forward and then they respond to it. There's very little proactive leadership or vision amongst the Assemblys that I have observed for decades."

Q: Some members newly elected to the Assembly the past few years have said there’s a significant learning curve, and it can be some time before a newcomer is fully effective and understands the process. If you only plan to serve one term is that going to give you a very small time window to pursue your goals?

A: "I would argue that I'm coming into it from a position that most candidates have not come into it. I am running as an activist for Assembly and I'm not going to stop being an activist because I'm on the Assembly. I consider the almost 40% of Juneau who voted for Ship-Free Saturday as my constituency. I have lots of people who reach out to me all the time about all different things. I think I'm in a different position than somebody who is a private citizen who just decided to run for Assembly. I have been following the meetings. I've been going to Assembly retreats for years."

"I’m not going to say I know it all and I certainly don't know what it's like to be on the inside. But I know what it's like to be on the outside and I know that right now I'm shut out from a lot of information…Everything that I ask for, I'm told I need to file a public records request. I have huge appreciation for the city clerk's office and every time I file a public records request, it's more work for them…If I'm on the Assembly, presumably if I ask for some information I can get it without a public records request."

Q: You say your constituency is the people who voted to ban cruise ships on Saturdays. What would you tell voters who say their biggest concerns involve other issues?

A: "I would say that cruise ships are one of our big problems right now…I think that the flood is a huge problem. I think the budget is a huge problem. We have nine members on the Assembly. If eight members on the Assembly are really focused on the flood…and one member of the Assembly is taking on this problem that has been an issue of the city for more than 20 years, that the community has consistently said you're not doing enough about, I can still have the capacity to respond and to address things, but bring my expertise to the table on the other issue. So it's not as if I wouldn't bring experience and brainpower and lived experience and the ability to analyze on any of the myriad of issues."

"I would bring the energy and the passion that my years of activism have brought to me to try to address a problem that has been kicked down the road forever, and lacked the ability or the willingness to speak out. It's not an and or. It's probably that, given that all the effort that I've put into cruise tourism, it just means that I would probably spend a lot more time (on it) as an Assembly member. But the cruise part would be activism/Assembly member. I would have access to information. I would have access, perhaps, to get in the door of a port community of Alaska meeting, I would have the capacity to have a voice to ask the questions that I sit there in the audience and I'm like, ‘God, you don't understand that at all,’ and the questions that go unasked because the Assembly members that are there now are not focused on the cruise issue, and are educated and informed by probably a lot of industry folks. (Cruise Lines International Association Alaska) gets paid a lot to keep people informed and educated, so I think I would just provide another voice."

"I don't have the answer to the flood. I'm not an engineer. I can say ‘I advocate for this.’"

Q: The city manager at a meeting earlier this month asked Assembly members for their input on how the city should fund its share of a long-term flood solution. If you had been on the Assembly during that meeting what would have told her?

A: "I think I would have specifically addressed the question that she asked and it seemed that most of them didn't. She asked about timing: ‘When do you want to figure out timing on bond issues and what do you want to do?’ And I didn't hear any response back from any of them that gave her any guidance at all. I don't have the specific answer on what I would have said because I'm not in the chair and I didn't prepare for that for there, but I think that I think that giving real direction instead of acceding or ceding everything to the staff. Basically on all three of the questions I didn't hear anybody give her any real substantive direction in any way."

Q: Based on what you know, what do you think of the prototype approach the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is pursuing as a long-term flood solution?

A: "I do think that for all that I'm a process person and an environmentalist. I, for myself personally, have already come to accept that there will probably be a road that goes along out to the (Nugget Falls). I think that we need to do this. We've got a crisis and we need to do it. I have been fairly strongly in the lake tap camp. It seems to make the most sense."

"However, I was recently talking with some guys who have some background in construction and different things, and they're like, ‘How are you going to keep the icebergs from blocking the tunnel?’ And I'm like, ‘Good question.’ What if we built that whole tunnel and nobody thought that through, and the force of the ice and sort of the draining and the flow, and it's like, ‘Whoa, that's outside of my capacity.’ But I think that needs to be answered before we build a tunnel and discover that the ice clogs it."

"As a sitting Assembly member you're never going to have the full expertise. Even the best engineers aren't going to know exactly how anything is going to go down, so you have to make the best choice that you can with what you have, and I think that if I were picking today I would probably say ‘Yes. I think we need a lake tap solution. We need to absolutely make sure that we understand how we're going to deal with the ice and not having the ice plug the whole thing.’"

"In terms of the funding of it, that's big. I think that the entire community is going to have to help pay for it. I don't see any way that just that neighborhood can. Part of the pragmatic part of me says, ‘Well, maybe we should be doing a cost-benefit analysis and look at what it would cost for us to purchase all of the homes that are in that flood-impacted zone and re-engineer the river so that it can drain.’ (But) at some level, people aren't able to and/or don't want to."

"If (residents in) the zone of the flooding voted to not have some special assessment placed onto them, it would be really hard to say everyone in the community should increase their cost of living enough to pay for all of this that is impacting this part of the community."

Q: You’re saying both the entire community should help pay for it — since just that neighborhood can’t — while also saying communitywide support would be difficult without a special assessment on residents there. Are those contradictory?

A: "I believe that that neighborhood has to have a willingness to pay a bit more than the whole community. So I think that overall trusting that community will agree to a special assessment because they receive greater benefit for the service than the overall community. Then I think that the overall community could should step in and help to bear the costs of this for everyone. But if that part of the community says ‘No, we want everybody else,’ then I think that that's a more difficult sell to the community."

Q: What are your thoughts about the city’s year-to-year flood management?

A: "I think we dodged the bullet this year because everything lined up and the level of the flood was lower than it had been. I think that I would go into next year just as concerned that there could be a catastrophic failure…I don't necessarily think that much more should be done. I think that maintaining what we have, and being as prepared and ready as we were this year should be the standard. The forces of nature are such that I can't imagine that you could create anything that wouldn't still leave you with significant (worst-case) risk."

"My brother's a contractor. He does marine construction. He has been going on since this whole thing started. ‘They just need to straighten and dredge the river,’ and I'm like, ‘Well, then you put the proposal in. I'm not the proponent of this.’…But there is some level of is there a solution that involves buying out an eminent domain of some properties in order to get enough width to create a situation where instead of tapping the basin…would it make sense to try to expand the capacity of the river and to engineer the river so that it can accommodate these massive outbursts?"

Q: What do you think about a recent proposal to have third-party management of city recreation facilities as a budget-saving measure?

A: "I really strongly think that the city recreation facilities should be managed by city, and that that's in the best interests of the community…I think that all of the parks and recreation are really mental and physical health and wellness for the community, and that they're essential services. And I think that we need to stop building more stuff and take care of what we have."

Q: The city has a budget gap that this year is being plugged with reserves, but officials said that can’t continue every year. What steps do you favor to close that gap?

A: "There is a possibility that the citizens are going to be passing the 1% (seasonal sales tax)."

Q: Voters rejected a different seasonal sales tax last year. Why do you think they would support one this year? A: "I think the context last year was a pretty anti-local government vote and the seasonal sales tax that the city put onto the ballot was a Hail Mary against ’What if the sales tax gets taken off of the food?’ It was reactive instead of proactive — and you could say that this 1% for recreation is also reactive, but it's reactive coming from the community as opposed to coming from the Assembly."

"I'm (also) proposing that we do commercial tour permitting for Juneau and part of commercial tour permitting could be implementing a specific commercial tour tax, and that commercial tour tax would be paid only by people who were buying completely discretionary purchases, and it's in essence a bed tax or a sin tax."

"One of the (other) things is looking at where there are opportunities for us to restructure the money that we're getting from the cruise ship that could be used to go into our general fund. And so I might even be in favor — if we could come up with something creative — of getting rid of the $4 or $5 head tax and switching over to a significant commercial tour tax, so the commercial tour tax doesn't have to be tied to the ships, it goes into the general fund, and the city can use it however they want."

Q: Any final thoughts? A: "I just encourage people to see what having an activist on the Assembly could do for the community. I will only have one vote, but I will have a voice at the table that can ask hard questions and that isn't afraid to suggest we change our course."

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