On Assembly’s possible cuts list: city pool, museum and field house; grants to economic and cultural entities
- Mark Sabbatini
- 20 hours ago
- 5 min read
Finance Committee set on Wednesday to consider service reductions, along with revenue measures such as sale of land and buildings to help narrow deficit in next year’s budget
By Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
It’s an eye-opening list of possible closures: either of the city’s two public pools, the Dimond Park Field House, the Juneau-Douglas City Museum and the Mount Jumbo building.
Those are items mentioned by at least five of the nine Juneau Assembly members on a 34-item list of "service or expense reductions" to consider for next year’s municipal budget. All nine members stated they also favor reducing community grants, with the Juneau Economic Development Council and Travel Juneau the recipients most frequently mentioned.
That doesn’t mean those top items are destined for closure — or even cost cuts — but merely that they will likely be prominent when city leaders continue their budget discussions during a Finance Committee meeting Wednesday.
There are six committee members suggesting reducing pool services, for instance, including four members proposing to "mothball" the Augustus Brown Swimming Pool downtown and two targeting the Dimond Park Aquatic Center in the Mendenhall Valley. But Christine Woll, chair of the Finance Committee, said Tuesday that doesn’t mean the closure of both is a possibility.
"No member is suggesting shutting both pools, but multiple members are looking at shutting down one pool, and different people have different ideas about which pool that would be," she said.
The list also contains some drastic measures — such as a four-day, 36-hour workweek and 4% wage cut for most municipal employees — that are only supported by a single Assembly member. The list does not specify which members are supporting specific items.
Assembly members have said for months that spending reductions are probable — with non-essential services targeted first — due to tax-cut measures passed by voters last fall that are projected to cost the city about $12 million in revenue, according to the City and Borough of Juneau’s finance division.
The city’s total proposed budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 is about $500 million, of which about $150 million is for municipal government functions (much of the rest is for entities such as Bartlett Regional Hospital and the Juneau School District, plus capital improvement projects).
The initial draft budget released by the city manager’s office on April 1 has a deficit of $10.4 million, but the document notes the Assembly expected to make modifications that include spending cuts and possible new revenue measures.
The Assembly is required to adopt a final budget by June 15.
The 34-item list, in a simplified form, contains more than $16 million in proposed cuts. However, that includes a middle range for items with varying amounts, such as a $471,000 reduction in a Travel Juneau grant after seven Assembly members suggested amounts ranging from $50,000 to $700,000.
Also, more than $6 million of listed items are one-time savings — such as $2.5 million by selling the Mt. Jumbo building — meaning they wouldn’t help balance the budget in years beyond the next one.
City Manager Katie Koester, in a memo to Assembly members Monday, stated some items on the list are more practical in their feasibility and immediate savings potential than others.
"There are three true City-based service reductions included near the top of the agreements surrounding Juneau Pools, the Dimond Park Field House and the Juneau-Douglas City Museum," she wrote. "The city museum is the only facility where we could easily divest the property (transferring it to the state capital complex). The pools would be much more difficult to do anything but keep mothballed and the Field House would likely sit vacant unless a community group organizes to take it over."
The Assembly’s list offers the following specifics for those three service areas:
• Save $600,000 by mothballing the Augustus Brown pool and about $1 million by mothballing the Dimond Park pool.
• At the Dimond Park Field House, four members suggest saving $242,000 by mothballing the facility, one suggests saving $300,000 by halting improvement projects there, and one suggests saving $60,025 via "non-specific" cuts.
• At the museum, two members suggest saving $479,284 by closing it, two suggest an average savings of $261,492 by program reductions and one suggests $50,000 in non-specific cuts.
Some of those facilities, including the Augustus Brown pool and Dimond Park Field House, have received notable city-funded upgrades during the past couple of years.
"What my personal response to that would be is we made those investments before voters voted to reduce city revenue by quite a lot of money," Woll said. "So that’s why that change would have to be made if we were to make it."
The cut with the most support, with eight Assembly members backing it, is selling the Mt. Jumbo building and transferring the facility's maintenance operations to the Marie Drake building. The ninth member suggests delaying maintenance work on the building and using those funds for other projects.
Of the ideas supported by one Assembly member, Koester stated the four-day workweek would involve resolving practical details and assessing the impacts on employee morale, so being able to implement a changeover on July 1 is unlikely.
However, another proposal suggested by one member — transferring prosecution of criminal cases by the city back to the state — got a more favorable assessment from Koester.
We are seeing a decrease of cases, as well as steeply increasing cost for public defender services," she wrote. "It is a policy call as we know that prosecution handled at the local level will get the attention CBJ desires; however it is also an expense that can be shifted back to the State. At a savings of $935,000 annually, this option deserves a close look."
New revenue suggestions
Also on the consideration list for the Finance Committee during Wednesday’s meeting are seven revenue-generating measures, but there’s scant Assembly support for any individual item.
Four members support land or building sales — but each cast one vote for four different items, including the former Mayflower School building, the Eagle Valley Center, the Dimond Park Landscaping Building, and a parking lot at Gold and 8th streets. Two members supported a utility rate increase, one leasing the Douglas Fire Station and one creating a cat licensing program to offset animal control costs.
However, a separate agenda item for Wednesday’s meeting focuses on "foregone revenue" — or money the city could begin collecting by altering some of the more than 50 tax exemptions and credits currently in effect.
Among recommendations to Assembly members are altering or removing a cap that applies sales tax to the first $15,000 of a single purchase or service, expanding the waterways within city jurisdiction where purchases on cruise ships are subject to local sales taxes, and altering property tax policies for aircraft and commercial vessels.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
