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Maureen Hall: Juneau Assembly District 2 candidate
Age: 64
Occupation: Retired school nurse
As a first-time Assembly candidate, what involvement and familiarity do you have with Juneau’s municipal government?
That is why I’ve gone into full retirement, in order to devote the time to this that I need. So I’ve been attending the Assembly meetings, I do have a copy of the budget and I’m poring over that, as well as planning to set up a meeting with both (Deputy City Manager) Robert Barr and the head of the finance department. So in addition to the campaigning and everything else, I’m doing my homework to get up to speed on all of the issues and get my head around — you know, you hear things from this side and things from that side.
If you’re running for office presumably you have either a certain level of dissatisfaction with what current leaders are doing and/or a belief you can do something new or better. What is your motivation?
The one thing I do see is that as someone who has lived in the community for 31 years, raised a family here, worked within the school district for 17 years, and the nonprofit world — St. Vincent de Paul — for nine years I’m deeply aware of the homelessness issues, (and) the crisis in our schools with the flat funding from the state. And so I look at our Assembly and I appreciate the fact that we’ve got so many young people willing to serve, but I don’t see the experience that I could bring to the table. So that’s what I’m going to be here for. My kids and grandkids are all in Alaska, two are raising families here in Juneau with kids in our school system, and another son up in Haines who’s raising his kid with their family there. So I’m deeply invested in the future of our community. I also see our hospital and our school district, and I think as a school nurse I’m knowledgeable about both of those, and I’m not seeing that with anyone currently on the Assembly.
If you had been on the Assembly a year ago when homelessness issues such as problems at Mill Campground and the warming shelter were discussed, what — if anything — would you have done differently than the policies that were enacted?
Double down on trying to find an adequate place for the cold-weather shelter. The Thane shelter, I appreciate the fact that that was offered, although it’s quite a ways from where the homeless folks are residing during the day. And I’m not saying that downtown’s the answer, but I thought surely we can do better than a warehouse way out in Thane. However, I do see the dedication of the staff…and I have confidence that St Vincent’s is going to staff it with competent people who really care about the population they’re serving.
I don’t believe the dispersed camping has worked. That’s very disruptive to neighbors and to the homeless themselves by not having a safe place to leave your stuff during the day as you go about your business. I would again look for a campground or maybe more low-barrier shelter spaces…Without a place for people to be you create chaos with people living dispersed throughout the community. Sites filling up with trash, no services, no dumpster for people to put their garbage in, and so it just becomes a dispersed mess. Like I say I would double down on trying to find a place. Or what is being done now with navigators working to get people into permanent housing.
A paradox presented at a recent candidate forum is downtown Juneau has 17 vacant buildings, yet a record number of cruise ship passengers last year and a similar number this year. Among the resulting problems is a lack of housing for workers such as those in tourism. What should the Assembly be doing about that situation?
I think looking at anything the city can do to make housing more affordable for our community. If that’s bringing property taxes down a bit more, I think there’s room to constantly looking at that. The mortgage rates are still high, but starting to come down. But I know we can’t do this on hope. It seems like every apartment that becomes a condo becomes an Airbnb, so we’ll be needing to look at that and what other communities are doing to get a handle on the Airbnb issue. I know some apartment complex in the valley was purchased to house seasonal workers and the folks living there have been displaced. So looking at any involvement in the city — maybe it’s an older person that has a big old house, but could use a little extra caregiving. You know, how can we be creative and using the space that we do have?
Our population is greying (and) I believe in the coming years, as many of the elderly folks either have to go down south to be closer to medical services or are passing on, there will be more housing. That sounds kind of crass, but I believe a house that used to have a family in it now has a single person living in it. So how can we be creative about encouraging (things like) mother-in-law apartments, which might be a win-win for the elderly person to have someone under the roof.
What are your thoughts on Juneau’s property assessments and mill rate in recent years?
It was clear that the assessments — the way they went about it, having such a big jump in one year — was quite problematic. It needed to happen, but probably a more incremental movement to where the values actually are. And then I think as the assessments went up I was a little surprised to see that there wasn’t a little bit more of a dip in the mill rate to kind of compensate for that, especially with our sales tax revenue going up and up with tourism.
How does the city spend its money efficiently and inefficiently?
Maybe it’s not exactly how they’re not spending it efficiently or inefficiently, but I would say maybe having quite a pocket of money set aside when the voters have voted down the new City Hall twice. I do agree something needs to happen with City Hall, but is it prudent to sit on that big pocket of money pending that decision?
I don’t believe there’s any one area that stands out as not working out well. I think everyone really is trying to do the best they can do with the resources we have. And I think in one area, the head tax dollars — could we not be using some of those dollars for our hospital, especially in the summer, the upward pressure on hiring additional nursing staff and social workers to manage the flow of the cruise passengers, getting them back to their home community?
Both the Juneau School District and Bartlett Regional Hospital have asked the Assembly for help dealing with major financial crises. What do you see as CBJ’s role in supporting such operations if they are struggling?
Are we going to let it all go down the drain? I do support, in the failure of what the state isn’t doing, these are young people. These are the future of our community. And I do think we need to support the school district. However, I (also favor) advocacy to really get the state to do what they need to do. As far as the hospital, it’s really challenging for a municipality to run a healthcare system. And these next few years are going to be pretty crucial with Bartlett and how we’re going to sustain our healthcare system into the future. There may be programs that have to be trimmed in order to do that, and might make more sense. And I know the current board is looking at that — who can do this better than we can? And so those conversations are not that we don’t need those services. We absolutely need them in our community. But who could possibly do this better than the local city-run hospital?
What should the Assembly be doing, short-term and long-term, to address the concerns of people whose homes were damaged by flooding from Suicide Basin?
I’ve been talking to quite a few people about this. The glacier is incredibly dynamic. I think that any of the proposals such as blasting the mountain or drilling through to Nugget Creek, I think those are not workable — plus the whole permitting quagmire. Probably the same for a dike around the lake. I think you know the problem is our river capacity needs to be expanded, so I think doing in that it’s city-owned property over on the Brotherhood Bridge side of the river and so I think any solution could be done. And I know we have the people power here in town to do something. But again, the permitting process.
The city, they weren’t sitting on their laurels. But people weren’t expecting it to be bigger. And the river at the upper part as a result of the flooding that wasn’t as much of a problem, although I would like to visit with more of the folks along View Drive to see how they weathered it. But they didn’t need to shut down that bridge due to the redesign of that and much of the mitigation that happened, and all the erosion from last year’s flood got a wider channel. But where the chokehold happened I think that’s where we need to direct our efforts. I’m a nurse, I’m not a hydrologist or an engineer, but I think we need to definitely and rapidly bring together a group of not just local knowledge, but also folks that deal with river flooding, the Army Corps of Engineers. We’ve absolutely got to get some things in place this season, prior to the next flood.
What else do you want to tell voters?
One of the big things is I’m a people person. I’m paying attention to the people of our community. I see our aging population having fewer healthcare options available to them. Dermatologists, ophthalmologists, cardiologists, no beds in assisted livings. Our retirees are as we speak making that decision to move closer to services and along with that taking their nice Tier I pensions with them. I also see our folks when we send a single mom home from the hospital with no one kind of checking in, I think programs like Parents as Teachers, I think any home-visiting program in those crucial birth to three years of age are very valuable and money well spent. That’s preventing downstream.
I would encourage folks to to study the adverse childhood experience study and know that any prevention we can do early in life (will help) those folks enter our workforce and fully participate in society down the road, instead of homelessness, incarceration and inability to fully participate in holding a job. And so I think that’s crucial. We’re running into a cliff with workers. The school district, the instability has contributed to their vacancy rate. The hospital isn’t fully staffed. Our police force isn’t fully staffed. Our local restaurant owners have a heck of a time finding people to work. So I think paying attention to our workforce and the people of the community…I would love to have it be a community that folks stay here, live here, raise a family, and so the people will be what I’m paying attention to.
