Juneau’s election reflects an unhappy electorate. Will they be happy with what they voted for?
- Mark Sabbatini
- 1 day ago
- 10 min read
Residents upset about living costs, demolition of Telephone Hill, moving City Hall opt for leaner government as state and US leaders are warning of tough times ahead
By Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
The election results won’t stop the redevelopment of Telephone Hill or relocation of City Hall, even though some residents may have such hopes. And the big budget cuts local leaders warned about due to the tax cuts voters approved probably won’t occur until next summer.
That’s a simplified snapshot of the likely road ahead after Juneau voters shook up the status quo in the Oct. 7 municipal election, most notably by approving two ballot measures projected to cut more than $12 million annually from a budget that this year is about $200 million.
Official results are scheduled to be certified Tuesday, but unofficial tallies as of last Tuesday show all races have margins too large to overcome with ballots that may still need to be counted.
"I'm feeling confident that those proposition votes will hold," said Christine Woll, chair of the Juneau Assembly’s Finance Committee. "The scale of the cuts that are going to be required, it’s just starting to sink in for me and so I think people are going to have a strong reaction when we begin that conversation about what's going to be needed because these are not small cuts. These are deep cuts that the city is going to have to make."
Set for passage are Proposition 1 (lowering the property tax cap to nine mills instead of 12) and Proposition 2 (eliminating sales tax on food and utilities). The Assembly-sponsored Propsition 3, which seeks to offset the loss of revenue from the first two measures by implementing a seasonal sales tax, is losing by a large margin. A Juneau Economic Development Council study states the municipal government will lose about $12.44 million a year and households will get an extra $944 a year due to the outcome.
The unofficial results also show two-term conservative incumbent Wade Bryson was ousted by libertarian challenger Nathaniel "Nano" Brooks in the only contested Assembly race. Two of the three open Juneau Board of Education seats will be filled by newcomers who strongly opposed the consolidation of schools and other recent district actions.
Some residents say they’re hoping the results will jolt city leaders into rescinding major actions that have been highly controversial, with the demolition of homes on Telephone Hill starting next month and plans to relocate most City Hall functions to the Michael J. Burns Building among the foremost targets. An Oct. 13 post at the top of the Telephone Hill Juneau public Facebook page by Susan Clark, a page administrator, declares "The election results are in. Everything has now changed."
"It's going to wake everybody up," she while discussing the results with residents on Telephne Hill the Saturday after the election. "There’s got to be a change in priorities."
But Mayor Beth Weldon, in an interview that same day, said talk that the election results mean a "do-over" of decisions involving years of detailed work isn’t realistic.
"That's one of the things that people, I don't think, understand," she said. "Telephone Hill is going to keep going forward. We're still going to look at going to the Burns building…If people think we have a choice they just need to spend any amount of time in City Hall and realize we don't have a choice."
Assembly members supporting the Telephone Hill redevelopment plan, including Weldon and Bryson, say it has been in the works for many years and residents who rent — not own — properties there have long been aware of those plans. Proponents said the apartments also will help resolve an acute shortage of housing, which among other things is a key consideration for ensuring people moving with a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker set to be homeported here during the coming years have a place to live.
Residents opposing such moves say they will keep pushing by demanding action at next Monday’s Assembly meeting (just five days before a Nov. 1 eviction order for Telephone Hill residents take effect), a petition seeking to halt the evictions and demolition — and potentially lawsuits and recall campaigns if elected officials refuse to back down.
"Why on Earth the Assembly will double down on dumb in light of the results of Ballot Measures 1 and 2, and the big rejection of their silly seasonal sales tax, is a question that is probably better answered by a psychiatrist," said Joe Geldhof, an attorney who helped form the Affordable Juneau Coalition, the group that got enough signatures to put the first two propositions on the ballot.
A common agreement among many people is an unusual collection of people who don’t necessarily agree on key issues voted in alignment in this election.
"I think there are several factions in town that are unhappy with several things going on," Weldon said.
Conservatives who led efforts to put the tax-cut measures on the ballot, for instance, found willing allies in downtown residents (one of the most liberal voting areas, according to recent election results) who oppose the planned demolition of Telephone Hill starting next month. Both groups said they opposed the Assembly’s approval earlier this year of spending $9 million on the demolition and site prep in anticipation of finding a developer — hopefully next year — to build four midrise apartments with 150 total units.
For many of the downtown residents, especially those living on Telephone Hill, it’s about preserving the historic neighborhood that has some of Juneau’s oldest homes. For the Affordable Juneau Coalition, it’s about saving $9 million that would largely help make the budget cuts city leaders are warning about unnecessary.
John Ingalls, who’s had a home and flute-making workshop on Telephone Hill for many years, said he isn’t angry with some city leaders so much as feeling they are making poor decisions because they’re focusing on things such as large-scale tourism rather than listening to residents.
"I do worry that what's happening is we're moving into a community that's going to become closed down for winter and worse, just functions in that way and local people aren't listened to very much," he said. "It has a certain charm now and I'm just worried that it's going to change."
Similarily, the Assembly’s approval this year to relocate City Hall to the Burns building, at a projected cost of up to $18 million, is getting widespread ire from a broad coalition of residents.
Brooks, who declined to be interviewed and asked that questions be submitted in writing instead, stated in an email "a lot of the community united on common ideas to an extent that hasn't been observed in some time."
"The message sent by the community appears to be that the citizens initiatives were the better route towards affordability than the path we are on now," he wrote. When asked if the election results reflect a generally unhappy electorate, he stated "if all the tallies hold I know there will be many happy voters and residents."
Making the election about affordability resonated with residents across the voting spectrum was another area of common agreement among people interviewed for this article. Food prices, utility bills, property assessments and other costs have risen sharply in recent years — and officials at the local, state and national levels are widely voicing grim financial outlooks for at least the near-term future.
"I think people were unhappy with, again, affordability and the state of the economy," said Deputy Mayor Greg Smith, who was unopposed in seeking a third Assembly term. "I think that's probably a widespread feeling across the state and nation. And the ballot measures and certain candidates were a reflection of changing the status quo."
Some people may indeed be pleased not paying sales tax on most of their grocery bill and knowing their property taxes won’t go up (at least not without voter approval) if the city has a signficiant cash need, Weldon said. But there is likely to be considerable unhappiness among many residents about the limitations to programs and services that occur due to the city’s new fiscal contraints.
"I'm not sure everybody's going to feel pain with this one," she said. "So hopefully the people that wanted the budget to be lowered are going to be happy, but some of the cuts that we're going to have to make with the community are going to be painful."
Cuts to libraries that might including closing one of Juneau’s three branches, recreational programs including the city-owned Eaglecrest Ski Area, and grant support to a wide range of community organziations were among the impacts city leaders said may result due to the tax-cut measures passing and the seasonal sales tax failing.
Concern that some of the cuts may hit the Juneau School District were expressed by Deedie Sorensen, who will step down as president of the school board next Tuesday when the newly elected challengers are sworn in. She put retirement plans on hold and staged a late write-in campaign due to concerns she said were voiced to her about the challengers, but she fell far short of votes needed to win one of the three seats in the five-candidate race.
The city is providing about $35 million of the nearly $76 million in operating budget revenue for the current year, continuing a longtime practice of providing the maximum contribution allowed by state law, Sorensen said. But she said future funding to that cap, as well as support for non-instructional purposes such as shared recreational facilities, isn’t a certainty.
"The mill levy cap, that could definitely impact the school district," she said, referring to the city’s upcoming budget consideration. "I mean, we're like one of the biggest things that they fund."
Assembly members interviewed after the election said they don’t expect major cuts to occur until the next fiscal year begins July 1, 2026, following the months-long budget process when the impacts of reductions can be fully evaluated.
"That's what we do every year during the budget process anyway, " said Neil Steininger, a former state budget director who was elected to the Assembly last year. "So this will just be a little more challenging one, but it's certainly something that we're here to work towards."
Steininger said it’s understandable everyone wants living in Juneau to be more affordable, but "the flip side of that now is that we're going to have some challenges in figuring out how to provide government services, which are something that also make Juneau very livable. But that's a challenge that we're up for. That's why we all are in the seats that we're in, because we think that we're people that can work towards those goals."
Woll said the city has enough reserve funds to ensure essential services and programs in particular aren’t affected when the sales tax exemption takes effect 30 days after the election results are certified (the mill rate cap won’t have any practical impact until the Assembly votes on it, which is typically an annual process at the end of the budget cycle).
"I think that we are in a place where we will be able to not make immediate cuts for this fiscal year," she said. "We may need to make some adjustments for sure, so that we can really take the months that it's going to take to walk through a larger conversation about what services are most essential that we provide — that will obviously be an Assembly decision. Others may feel differently and they may say ‘we have to make cuts now,’ but because we have been conservative over the years in our budgeting I think that will buy us a little time to make sure we make the right decisions instead of rushing into those weighty, really important decisions."
However, "we'll probably start the budget process earlier than we have in the past," Woll added.
Some residents supporting Brooks’ election as an outsider to the Assembly are talking about him shaking up the process. Brooks, who ran the past two years before his successful campaign this year, has advocated for measures he says can raise revenue without imposing taxes on residents such as offering parcels of city land in lotteries, an idea that has yet to get serious consideration from current Assembly members who’ve expressed a range of doubts about the concept.
Steininger, when asked how much he felt he could shake things up as a new Assembly member a year ago, said there are limits and a learning curve when joining the nine-member governing body.
"It takes five of us to get anything passed so it's kind of hard as a single person to completely change a vote," he said. "You spend most your first year listening and learning to kind of figure out a how the process works — all the little things that you can't necessarily see from the outside that you’ve got to learn how those things work and how people tick — before you can make any significant influence on the process. So it's a big learning curve, for sure, in your first year especially. And I'm definitely not out of that learning curve yet. Every new issue brings up a new thing you got to learn about."
Brooks stated "‘Shaking things up’ is a subjective phrase.’ I don’t want to go in with negativity and make work with potential colleagues not conducive to progress."
"I will go in being kind, and respectful but also with lots of ideas," he wrote. "Big, small, outside of the box, and more that will adhere to the charter and state constitution. I will ask thought provoking questions and create rich informative dialog between colleagues and the community. I will do everything i can to make the process more engaging for everyone."
Brooks also stated he favors "allowing the city to operate and grow as it is currently, without putting more financial burden on the residents. There are multiple ways that this could be achieved."
The Affordable Juneau Coalition plans to provide a list of ways the city can meet its new budget limits, Geldhof said. He said there’s general agreement among members the top item should be rescinding the $9 million for the first stage of redeveloping Telephone Hiil.
Asked about other possible budget adjustments, Geldhof said the city has spent millions of dollars on efforts to assist people experiencing homelessness and the problem today continues to worsen. He also criticized the move to the Burns building since voters twice rejected a new City Hall in two previous elections, noting other options could include school buildings recently vacated by the consolidation. And he targeted the long-discussed Capital Civic Center envisioned as a replacement/expansion of Centennial Hall, for which the Assembly also has approved millions of dollars in funding.
"We'll propose some revenue augmentation measures that have been under consideration and should have taken place years ago in order to make this a more affordable and good community to live in," Geldhof added. "So we're doing the job basically that the Assembly has not done."
Smith said he’s been hoping the Affordable Juneau Coalition will provide specific details of how it thinks the changes its brought to the city’s financial situation should be implemented.
"I very much want to see what they believe those savings are and then have a good public discussion on is that what people want to see?" he said. "From whoever’s plan to make these cuts, I think it's important that we lay those out and that the community gets to see what that looks like."
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
