Two years ago, seniors flooded the Assembly Chambers at City Hall to make their voice heard about proposed restrictions to the senior sales tax exemption.
The Assembly voted 7-2 to go through with changing the rules of the exemption, and now that those restrictions have been in effect for two years, Juneau seniors are once again looking to make some noise in city politics. This Thursday, a group of seniors called Juneau Seniors Supporting Seniors registered as a special interest group with the Alaska Public Offices Commission, looking to make a difference in the upcoming Oct. 3 election.
The group’s stated purpose is “to influence the 2017 Juneau Municipal Election concerning Assembly seats and ballot initiatives,” and group treasurer Ron Somerville said the aim of the group is to get the full sales tax exemption back eventually. As a result of the 2015 ordinance, the only items that are tax exempt for seniors are “essential items,” such as food, electricity and heating fuel.
One of the two ballot initiatives in this fall’s election is the extension of a 1 percent sales tax increase. The money from this increase would go mainly toward maintenance projects of City and Borough of Juneau buildings around town. Somerville said that in past elections, seniors have stayed away from getting too heavily involved in ballot initiatives.
“In the past, since seniors didn’t have to pay a sales tax, they weren’t politically as active in sales tax issues like the 1 percent,” Somerville said. “Now, of course, they have to pay that 1 percent on non-essential items, they’ve become more interested.”
A growing demographic
The group has been reaching out to candidates already, and Somerville has even landed a position on a candidate’s campaign.
Chuck Collins, who is running for the District 1 Assembly seat currently occupied by Jesse Kiehl, sat down with representatives from the group last week and said the meeting changed his opinion on the issue. He wasn’t sure about where he stood on it, but after talking with Somerville and others, his view changed and he even ended up adding Somerville to his campaign on Friday as a deputy treasurer.
“I want them to support me and I’m looking for more people to be on my committee and Ron volunteered,” Collins said Friday. “There’s no doubt about it, I think we have a lot of the same viewpoints on issues in town having to do with everything from budgetary issues, including sales tax, to a number of other things that we’re doing in Juneau that we’re not as happy about how things are going.”
Somerville said he expects Juneau’s seniors to make a difference in this election, citing the fact that there are more than 4,000 seniors in town with sales tax exemption cards who have a reason to come out and vote in this election. In last year’s municipal election, 8,408 people voted.
According to the 2010 census, more than 14 percent of Juneau’s residents were older than 60, and according to the Alaska Commission on Aging, that number is growing. The Alaska Commission on Aging’s annual report from 2016 stated that the population of seniors in Southeast Alaska has increased by 35 percent since 2010.
Living up to projections?
One of the main factors that convinced Collins to switch his position was the group’s claim that the reduction of the exemption hasn’t made the city as much money as city staff thought it would. Somerville said the city is missing out on revenue because seniors are now going to Seattle to buy their cars to avoid paying sales tax, and that many seniors he knows have switched to using online shopping options such as Amazon Prime to also avoid sales tax.
CBJ Finance Director Bob Bartholomew said Friday, however, that the returns have actually been on par with his initial estimates.
Bartholomew said he initially thought the “narrowing of the exemption,” as he calls it, would net the city between $1.5 million and $1.8 million per year. In response to the formation of this group, Bartholomew has asked the sales tax staff to take a deeper look at the sales tax revenue, and they confirmed that reducing the exemptions secured about $1.8 million in revenue in the 2016 calendar year.
Debbie White, who is running for re-election to the District 2 Assembly seat, is wary of Juneau Seniors Supporting Seniors making this a single-issue election. In response to this group’s goals, White penned a lengthy statement (more than half as long as this article) explaining that she stands in support of providing more services for seniors in town, but she remains in favor of sticking to the decision the Assembly made about the sales tax exemption.
She stated that the exemption “is not sustainable into the future,” and that reinstating the full exemption would only delay the inevitable.
“Picking at the scab of the wounds will not move our community forward,” White said in the statement. “It will just ‘kick the can down the road’ for future Assemblies.”
• Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at alex.mccarthy@juneauempire.com.
