The value of regret

Downtown Juneau on Oct. 22, 2025. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Independent)

By Joshua Adams

In retrospect, it is common to muse on the things we would change if we could. Some see revisiting past losses and mistakes as time spent idle, but there is value in regret. If you regret nothing you have done, it may simply mean you failed to learn from the mistakes of the past. The value of regret is in not repeating them.

Three ballot initiatives have been brought to voters in response to policies advanced by fiscal conservatives. Ballot Initiative B would raise the mill-rate cap by three mills. If it passes, the Assembly could raise property taxes by nearly a third over their present level.

There is a myth that this would affect only wealthy property owners. I should remind folks that many rental properties in Juneau are owned by government entities or institutional investors. Those investors see rental units on a spreadsheet and vote on price setting. If you think those investors won’t raise your rent when their property taxes go up, I have a gondola I’ll sell ya.

We already pay very high taxes in Juneau. So where did the money go?

Instead of addressing the strategic mistakes inherent in a funding rubric driven by idealistic thinking, the Juneau Assembly recently voted to give CBJ staff a raise, even though the city manager was already paid more than the governor of the State of Alaska. The richest people in Juneau aren’t land barons — they’re contractors on the government dole and CBJ employees.

Giving tax abatements and no-interest loans to large developers brought us regrettable projects like the disastrous Ridgeview Apartments fiasco, a blight behind Fred Meyer that produced barely a handful of overpriced condos. Telephone Hill is another example, where tax funding has literally been weaponized against the public. It has cost taxpayers more than $600,000 in consultancy before we even get into staff time and lawsuits, and yet regret is a word I seldom hear on the lips of the Assembly.

Strong leaders harbor deep regrets. The value of regret is not in punishing ourselves for poor decisions, but in demanding accountability so we can learn from our mistakes. To regret is to vow to do better. There is no use raising taxes until we fix our government, because otherwise we are simply giving more money to an Assembly that is still hallucinating about bulldozers and gondolas.

Ballot Initiative B should be seen for what it is: a way for CBJ to subsidize its own pay increases with your rent.

Joshua Adams is a local author and member of Friends of Telephone Hill.