District 2 Assembly: Ridgeway would focus on Mendenhall Valley
The Juneau Assembly needs to pay more attention to Mendenhall Valley residents and projects, according to Stan Ridgeway, a candidate for the District 2 seat.
Stan Ridgeway
• Age: 54
• Lived in Juneau: 12 years
• Immediate family in town: Wife Margie. They have three children in college.
• Occupation: Deputy director of the state Division of Insurance.
• Education: Bachelor's degree in vocational education from Auburn University in Alabama and a master's degree in rehabilitation management from the University of San Francisco.
• Public offices and organizations: Serving second term on Juneau School Board, founder of the Classic, Custom, Antique Auto and Motorcycle Show, which raises money for the high school, Relay for Life, University of Alaska Southeast Juneau campus council, teen health center advisory board.
• Hobbies: Running, motorcycle riding and woodworking. He's a car hobbyist and collector.
"Three years ago we voted to build a new high school in the Valley that has been meeting a lot of opposition from our Assembly," he said. "I think the Assembly has done a good job in a lot of respects improving our community downtown and in Douglas and I think it's time the Valley got a little of that attention."
In addition to a school, the city needs to move forward with a swimming pool in the Valley, Ridgeway said. Traffic problems on Riverside Drive and the location of the Valley library should be other priorities, he said.
Ridgeway, deputy director of the state Division of Insurance, is serving a second term on the Juneau School Board. He was in the middle of a debate last spring about whether the city should have renovated Juneau-Douglas High School when bids came in more than $2 million over budget.
He and other school board members wanted the city to build a new high school in the Valley first. A majority of the Assembly didn't agree and voted to move forward with the JDHS project.
"We wanted to rebid that project and the engineering firm estimated we could have saved at least $500,000 by rebidding it," he said. "It was an education decision based on what the kids would go through during the renovation during the next couple of years and a financial decision."
By moving JDHS students to a new Valley high school during the renovation, he said health and safety risks could have been avoided.
"I think there were a few members of (joint school district-city) planning committee who have been pretty vocal against a second high school," he said. "Once the downtown high school was renovated, understanding that construction costs go up every year, we would have never met the funding level approved for the Valley high school if we kept delaying it."
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The relationship between the School Board and the Assembly broke down over the vote. A meeting between the two bodies was canceled earlier this month because the superintendent of schools and the interim city manager were trying to work out differences between state statute and the city's charter on school construction issues, Ridgeway said.
"It's been somewhat frustrating being a member of an elected body and being involved in the public process and listening to what the public wants and then to see another body not do that," he said. "I want to do things the community wants, not (represent) any particular individual interest."
Ridgeway supports a road out of Juneau and voted for it in a 2000 advisory question. But he wasn't impressed by an unadvertised Assembly vote earlier this month supporting completion of a Juneau Access study and its preferred alternative - a road.
It is an issue of public process, he said.
"It would have only taken one notice and one meeting to get input on this issue and vote for it," he said.
Juneau needs to continue to help the rest of the state access its capital through constituent airfares, "Gavel-to-Gavel" TV coverage and the Internet, Ridgeway said. And it needs to educate the rest of the state about such improvements, he said.
Ridgeway said he'll probably vote for a $15 million city bond package on the October ballot, which would be used for harbor, water and sewer improvements. But with a statewide bond package and a vote on a legislative session move on the ballot in November, the timing is a little off, he added.
"We would have been better off to delay this until the next election, but I do favor all those projects," he said. "Some of those could possibly be funded a different way."
Ridgeway supports a federal fisheries research center at Lena Point. A city-wide smoking ban imposed this year is appropriate and proposed exemptions should be looked at individually, he said.
Ridgeway has raised about $1,000 of a $15,000 goal for his campaign.
Joanna Markell can be reached at joannam@juneauempire.com.