By JOE GELDHOF
If you pay attention to the workings of the City and Borough of Juneau, one hears a great deal about sustainability and diversity. This is especially true with the Assembly and its senior management.
I’m a big fan of listening to diverse viewpoints. And sustainability is a worthy goal, one I try to follow in my personal life.
The trouble with all the chatter about diversity and sustainability by our local politicians and senior management is that it often rings hollow.
The current Assembly is oddly imbalanced and lacks diversity. Our assembly is “majority millennial,” while the fastest growing segment of our population is seniors. How is that “diverse?”
Our current Assembly is also composed mostly of members who are employed or were employed by government or by non-governmental organizations that are closely aligned with or dependent on funding from government or grants for their existence. The experience and aptitude gained from participation in the oft-discussed but infrequently reached private sector is lacking among this Assembly. The level of participation by the senior management staff at the city and borough in actual enterprises that are needed to efficiently deliver goods or services is miniscule.
Lacking in genuine diversity, this group of elected officials and senior bureaucrats does not reflect the world in which most individuals live. Yet they have advanced a number of ideas and concepts related to “sustainability,” none of which are linked to the idea of a sustainable economic future for Juneau or a genuinely sustainable budget.
The truth is, the current Assembly and senior management team are in love with spending.
Think I’m wrong?
Reflect a bit on the manner by which property taxes have been assessed and handled the last few years. Our population remains stagnant, but tax increases have shot up dramatically and the municipal budget continues to spiral upward.
Do you believe we have a lean operating budget at the CBJ? The total, all-in budget is around $450 million dollars a year. More importantly, the General Government budget was stable for a long period at around $100 million for years but has jumped up to $133 million.
Not only that, twice in the last couple of years the CBJ has discovered over-spending errors exceeding $2 million. A couple of million here, a few million there; pretty soon you’re looking at real money being squandered without apparent accountability.
The recent decision by the voters declining to fund a new city hall, complete with expensive underground parking, obviously had no impact and apparently counts for nothing among the Assembly. The election results have been ignored in the pursuit of a personality driven agenda to build a new facility instead of focusing on the public interest as expressed by the electorate.
Juneau is a great place in most regards. But our local Assembly is ignoring the electorate and instead acting to rubber-stamp decisions cooked up by the City Manager and the City Finance Director, both of whom and heading out the door. This pattern of electorate abuse needs to stop.
We need to adopt a genuinely sustainable budget that will help the hard-working individuals and families who live in this community, most of whom don’t have time to spend hours trying to rein in an out-of-control Assembly. Juneau needs a more diverse Assembly that reflects actual experience with finance, budgeting and the efficient administration of services.
A lot of the virtue signaling and talk about diversity or sustainability emanating from City Hall might make many of the current Assembly members feel good about themselves. That would be really swell if we were operating a support group down at City Hall for politicians and government managers. We’re not.
It’s time to focus attention on basic services and getting our local government finances and budget under control. Until we accomplish this essential task, Juneau will slowly and steadily stagnate and become a less desirable place for many individuals and families to live.
Joe Geldhof is a lawyer in Juneau. He has held a number of positions requiring administrative and financial skills. Joe still plays ice hockey at the Treadwell Arena, albeit very slowly.
We’re driving people out. By some sort of weird design.
The Assembly seems to have illusions of turning us into a company town of the state. Only hallowed state employees and the trifling peasants necessary to run basic services allowed.
It’s not at all surprising we have the same issues as Anchorage on a smaller scale. Repeatedly vote in state workers/leftists, this is what you get.
One look at the Assembly is telling. Count the number of black, brown, or native faces. Doesn’t take long. Same for miners or fishermen.
We are on a course for cultural and economic destruction and they don’t care. Their charge card hasn’t been declined. Yet.
Until those of us with common sense start working as a unit and challenging them, seat by seat, this doesn’t end until it crashes.
I love Juneau. Damn near everything about it. Especially in winter. On the whole we’re good people, even for a liberal town. But more and more I ask myself a hard question: how long before the Assembly prices me out of my ability to stay?
And I’m not the only one.
This commentary is spot on. Unfortunately, Juneau’s mail-in voting has likely ruined any chance of replacing the folks in power. I’m 100% certain that multiple mail-in ballots are being filled out and submitted by folks. Last election, I found numerous unopened ballots in the recycle bins at the Federal Building PO. ANYONE can fish those out, fill them out, and drop them back in the mail. Also, households with adult children off at school or just not currently present can vote all of the ballots they receive in the mail. There are plenty of unscrupulous folks who will stop at nothing to further their agenda, with no regard for integrity. Juneau is broken. We need to return to traditional precinct voting where election volunteers reconcile IDs with voter rolls before a ballot is handed to an individual. Absentee can continue as it always did – request your ballot and vote. But this mail-in nonsense must stop now.
There’s a reason they want the capitol to stay in Juneau.
Mr. Geldhof, you know your piece resonates when one can replace the subject of your editorial (Juneau) with any one of a number of cities and municipalities in Alaska and beyond. Try it with your hometown and see if it mostly rings true. I’ll start with the Sitka Assembly. Yep, my theory works….
Mail in only voting, a secret ballot counting facility on the outskirts of town, meetings by zoom only. If there are open meetings i’ts very limited capacity. The assembly is locked in and I see no way for change. There are huge construction projects all over Juneau, funded by the Biden inflation expansion act I imagine. No private enterprises, just more government with an emphasis on healthcare.
Well joe, I was born here in Juneau in 1959 and they drove me out.
Well the people are getting what they wanted. Why complain as you have the same non voters as every city. Until their bank account is gone to taxes they don’t care.
Joe, thanks for another well reasoned article. As a Juneau Expat I fully comprehend the points made. Trouble is, its going to take an enormous effort to turn that ship’s nose back into the wind!
I’ve got an idea, why don’t you and Wayne Coogan and I dunno, Tom Williams all run on a slate together for Assembly. Hell, I’ll even come down and knock on doors for you guys, maybe even form a Geezer Coalition and demand diversity!
Fantastic commentary… lines it all out perfectly. Please run for assembly. We need change.
Thank you JoAnn for running for CBJ Assembly. Voting for JoAnn is a step towards common sense decsion-making for Juneau’s local government.
I see that today the USPS will deliver property tax bills in Juneau, at least ours will arrive. That will show that our house, on a lot considerably smaller than 1/4 acre, will have to pay $7,0000 come Sept. 30. We also pay a sales tax on all we buy, including mail-order, and we pay about $100 to the city each month for water and sewer. So a family of two retired people pay the City and Borough of Juneau about $11,000 a year. Most of the roads are maintained by the state, and the state pays for a large share of local education costs. City government here pays $300,000 plus per apartment for the homeless, paid $17 million for a brass whale (and then spent $900,000 defending that expenditure) only to lose on summary judgement) that downtown merchants said they did not want, and gave a grant to “teach drag queen lessons.” The Assembly hates mining, logging, etc. but the two mines are the largest two taxpayers. But we all pay even more to support city government through the hospital, the airport, etc. and via even more surreptitious ways: For example, the electric company is one of the largest property tax payers and so our monthly light bill includes a portion of that property tax.
By the way, taking the full faith and credit debt measure to the voters a second time, and paying $50,000 in taxpayer money to ensure it’s not again defeated is entirely dishonest. Dishonestly is what we have come to expect from this city government. Is this the city government that all Alaskans want representing them as the state capital? Are these Assembly members real Alaskans, honestly?
Well,Kayak, at least you’ll have a nice place to move to when you become homeless, ryeeet?
Kayak, Very Commendable work above. In answering your question of whether the Borough Assembly of Juneau is comprised of Alaskans isn’t really applicable since it appears that they may all be sociopaths first and foremost.
The people of Juneau must not have any problems with this since they can vote them out of office if they so desire.
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