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Emily Mesch: Juneau Assembly District 2 candidate
Age: 38
Occupation: Rideshare driver
You ran for Assembly last year and were unsuccessful. Why are you running again and what makes you believe the outcome can be different?
My motivations are the same. I have a vision for a prosperous Juneau, and I want to pursue it and I believe in it. But I also think that on top of the experience of a campaign underneath me I’m better equipped to run this time. I think I’ve already run a much better campaign than I ran last year. It took me a while to figure out how to get organized last year. I didn’t get to the point where, for example, I could print lawn signs. I’ve got lawn signs now. I’m going door-to-door and talking to people.
One of my hurdles last year was that I was working in the kitchen at the tram, so my hours were really tight, so I couldn’t really go door-knocking, I couldn’t really go to events and there were a lot of scheduling issues.
What actions do the Assembly and local government need to take to address the short- and long-term issues involving flooding from Suicide Basin?
I think the quote of the night (from an Aug. 19 Assembly meeting) was from City Manager Katie Koester who said it’s going to take a lot of effort, it’s going to take every possible idea being on the table and every possible person involved contributing. I don’t think anybody knows what the answer is going to be, but we need to talk to every involved party, whether it’s somebody who knows about construction, whether it’s the people who were living in that neighborhood and saw firsthand what happened, whether it’s the federal government because they’re going to have to be working with us on whatever the solution is. Just pushing and pushing and pushing and attacking from all angles, whether it’s prevention of another flood event, whether it is restitution for the folks who are currently hurting, whether it is something if the solution ends up being we need to build a 10-foot wall around the Mendenhall River.
A concern of people affected by the flood is there aren’t enough construction workers or supplies to repair damaged homes by winter, and not enough housing vacancies — especially affordable ones — to either move into or use to lure people to move here. How do you respond to those concerns?
I think we learned a very expensive lesson with the apartments next to Fred Meyer. The lesson is that a private developer will prioritize profits. That’s what private industry does. Obviously we don’t want to stifle private industry, but we can’t rely on private industry for our basic needs. This is something that I had said on a certain level last year. I think this year it’s even more, so I want CBJ to get directly involved in providing housing. It might mean partnering with a nonprofit instead of a private organization. It might mean wholly owned CBJ housing that we can provide at cost, but I think housing is a need, and if the private industry isn’t sufficiently providing that need, that’s when the government has to step in.
I’m not saying that the CBJ just takes over all housing. But this is a model that occurs throughout the world at different levels. In Vancouver I think about 5% of the housing is not dictated by the market, it’s a partnership between the government and nonprofits. In some cities in Europe about half of the housing is constructed in this way. And there are different models we can look at, we can look at other cities — what’s working, what hasn’t — and find the model that works best for Juneau.
How do you feel Juneau is handling its homeless situation?
I think that we could be doing a lot better. One of my rallying cries has been we need to support social services. Consistently for decades around the country, it doesn’t matter where you are, social services are overburdened and undersupported. I talked a little while ago to the executive director of Juneau Family Promise and one of the points of emphasis is increasing cooperation. There was apparently some friction between some of the nonprofits previously and I think CBJ has a role in making sure our nonprofits can work together well, each of them fills a different role in serving our underserved communities. CBJ has a role too. We have the youth shelter on Hurlock Avenue that works with these nonprofits directly and provides a role in helping kids who are in crisis.
You’ve said you oppose the Ship-Free Saturday ballot measure. What are your thoughts about how Juneau municipal government is managing tourism?
I can absolutely empathize with the intention behind Ship-Free Saturday. The more I’ve talked to people, and in particular the people who are proponents of Ship-Free Saturday, it feels like it is a good slogan, but not necessarily a good policy. I think that that’s why it’s being proposed — that people really haven’t been thinking about what are the side effects of what happens. It’s just Ship-Free Saturday. It’s an easy thing to get behind. I do believe we need more limits on cruise ships and on tourism, but it is a complicated issue and it’s a delicate issue, and I think it needs to be dealt with in an almost frustratingly delicate manner. It’s not going to be an easy process for anybody.
But we have right now the five-ship limit. We have 16,000-passenger limit. I think those should be negotiated down. I think the CBJ should find points of leverage to encourage the cruise ship industry to voluntarily lower their limits because if we’re fighting the industry they’re going to fight us back, and that’s not going to be happy for anyone,
Aside from residential housing, what do you see as things the Assembly needs to take up in terms of development and quality-of-life issues?
I think one of the things — it’s been better this year — but public buses. Getting more busses on the road, getting more efficient routes. We have gaps. There isn’t a bus that goes from the ferry terminal to the airport, for example. That’s often a trip that doesn’t necessarily affect Juneau residents, per se, but it affects people who come through Juneau. And I know there are challenges, but there are challenges that we I think we can overcome. Basic street infrastructure. Even the city building code I don’t think has been updated in 20 years and that needs looking into. We should be looking at building codes and updating them, especially in the aftermath of the flooding. We should be looking at rezoning through the flood area, avalanche area (and) rock slide area. It’s going to be annoying in the first couple of years when the market readjusts too, but in the long term that’s how people stay safe and that’s how people can be secure in their house investments.
What are your thoughts about the city’s current property tax assessments, mill rate and other revenue-collection measures?
It’s a very broad question, very complicated. At the end of the day — this question that I got asked a lot last year — the answer is what do you want your city government to do and how much are you willing to pay for it? I think it is tricky because there are people who want more services, and then there are people who want fewer taxes, and you can’t have both, and you can’t please both people well.
I think some things need to be assessed year to year. Like the mill rate was lowered this year, but it is partially in reaction to house prices rising so people aren’t necessarily experiencing lower taxes. I think the amount of services that CBJ provides right now is about in the right ballpark so the amount of revenue shouldn’t be changing significantly. If housing prices are rising then we should continue to decrease the mill rate appropriately. If house prices start to plateau then the mill rate stays the same.
Where does the city spend its money efficiently and inefficiently?
I think a great example of CBJ working very well is the Parks and Recreation department. We have projects all over town that are constantly being built and renovated and enjoyed by the community. We just had Capitol Park, the official ribbon-cutting reopening. It’s a beautiful facility. We have the playground at Sandy Beach that was rebuilt in the last year. Parks and Recreation does a lot of things that people don’t necessarily see as well — the youth shelter’s under the Parks and Recreation umbrella. There are community activities that happen on a regular basis. I think that’s a department that’s doing its job very well, very efficiently.
Inefficient? Bartlett, I think, is the headline. And I don’t think that’s a secret. Everybody knows that Bartlett has had financial issues. We’ve now had to cut back services that we only just recently opened. We’ve had what, five CEOs, in the last five years, something like that. Bartlett needs to be stabilized and we need to get to a point where we can think about expanding our services. But we need to get to a point where Bartlett is self-sufficient before we can do that.
What engagement and direct involvement do you have with anything related to CBJ and the municipal government?
During COVID I was working in the public information office managing social media outlets. So I was getting a lot of the information and passing it on to the general public, and it gave me a lot of insight into how city government works, and gave me a lot of insight into how people think city government works. Nobody can know everything and even a relatively small town like Juneau has so many levels of complications. And I think a lot of times people make a lot of very well-intentioned assumptions about how things work, and I think sometimes CBJ should be doing a better job of communicating some of the bigger realities, and also sometimes listening to the people who are expressing their needs. Sometimes, like with a ballot initiative, I think the need being expressed is genuine. I think the solution being proposed isn’t necessarily the right solution, but it should indicate to us that this is something that requires attention.
What else do you want voters to know?
I recently learned about a gentleman named Robert Steele who died on 9/11. He wasn’t in any of the aircrafts. He wasn’t in the World Trade Center or the Pentagon or anything. He was eaten by an alligator. It just happened to be on 9/11 and that’s the thought that came to my head and I couldn’t get it out. I know that’s not relevant. He lived in Tampa, Florida. He’s just some guy. It’s one of those things that just kind of crossed my attention.
