The City and Borough of Juneau is looking to expand.
Juneau already owns a northern portion of Admiralty Island, but is interested in expanding to other parts of the island and one portion of land adjacent to the Petersburg Borough. City officials are in the process of setting up a meeting with the Angoon City Council to discuss the possible expansion.
City Manager Rorie Watt will be one of five delegates on a possible trip, and said the meeting would open lines of communication between Juneau and Angoon, an Alaska Native village located on the west end of Admiralty Island. Admiralty Island, or “Kootznoowoo” in Tlingit which means “Fortress of the Bears,” is famous for being home to the highest density of brown bears in North America.
“We felt that we should reach out to Angoon,” Watt said, “because there are definitely some strong opinions from Angoon about what land is more in their area, historical use and cultural influence, and economic importance, and all that stuff.”
There are a few areas of land under consideration for expansion, and these areas are all within Juneau’s model borough boundary — that is, they are within the areas that the state initially identified as suitable land for Juneau to expand when the borough system was put in place.
In a memorandum to the CBJ Lands Committee, Lands and Resources Manager Greg Chaney recommended that the city apply for the annexation of three areas. Two of these areas are on Admiralty Island (neither area includes Angoon), and one is a triangle-shaped portion of the mainland between Juneau’s and Petersburg’s boroughs.
That triangular region has been under discussion at city meetings for a few months, with the Assembly’s Committee of the Whole adopting a motion in February to pursue this area of land.
“In the near future,” Chaney’s memo read, “annexation of this region is mostly symbolic since there are no local residents or private properties. In the long run mineral development or tourism could generate economic activity in this region.”
Chaney explained in the memo that Juneau should apply for all three of these areas at once, for multiple reasons. First of all, it’s more efficient to package these applications together. Secondly, and more importantly, priority in land annexation usually goes to the first applicant.
Juneau learned this the hard way in 2015. When the Petersburg Borough was first formed, it applied for an area of land that was inside Juneau’s model borough boundary — that is, land that Juneau doesn’t own but that it should, in theory, have priority on. Juneau then quickly filed an appeal, but the Alaska Supreme Court ended up siding with Petersburg for the land, which included the Tracy Arm-Ford’s Terror Wilderness Area.
That experience served as a bit of a wake-up call for the city, Watt said.
“Part of losing that battle with Petersburg is, we have not actively pursued our model boundary, which to some people expressed the idea that maybe we weren’t interested in our model borough boundary,” Watt said. “Following up on that, now we are looking at our boundary and trying to decide where it should be.”
A group of five representatives, which includes Chaney and Watt along with Mayor Ken Koelsch and Assembly members Norton Gregory and Debbie White, is hoping to get a jump on opening up the lines of communication with Angoon.
Juneau has not yet filed its application, which would go to the State of Alaska’s Local Boundary Commission, but hopes to do so soon after discussing the expansion with Angoon. A meeting was originally set up for April 18, but Angoon mayor Harriett Silva informed Chaney on Friday that several city council members are traveling and there won’t be enough present for a quorum Tuesday. The two towns will continue to work on a date.
• Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at 523-2271 or alex.mccarthy@juneauempire.com.
Boroughs adjacent to Juneau.(Courtesy of the City and Borough of Juneau)
