It was a beautiful day in Juneau and we were on the Malaspina sailing into Auke Bay; I’d been gone for a while and excited to be back home. I couldn’t help but wonder: what is happening to Juneau? How are we going to deal with these tough fiscal times? And who will we have as local leaders to lead us and what are their plans?
Juneau has been our home most of the past 40 years. My adult life has been built here as the director of the Alaska Marine Highway System (AMHS), local business owner, chief of staff for Tony Knowles, and high school baseball coach. I played in the rain, sun, sleet and snow while raising our son. I know/hope I will spend the rest of my life here and eternally rest somewhere near our friend Bishop Kenny. But today the anxiety and unrest in Juneau is palpable.
Families are very concerned about what’s happening to services for our seniors, with our schools, and what will happen to their jobs.
As elections near, some campaigns look for “wedge issues” — things that divide the community and set up negative attacks and offer “bumper sticker solutions” to make an election about one or two hot button items. It is politics at its worst: partition, polarize, push and wedge, so that the discussion of basics and hard work that are so critically important are lost. Those campaigns are hoping that families who have so much to do will get duped by a single wedge issue rather than seeing which candidate is working hard for the community on the range of issues facing Juneau during these tough times.
“The road” is an example. Many like me are dubious of stated details of the project: construction cost, traffic estimates, avalanche mitigation, annual maintenance cost, safety, economic benefit, passenger access, etc. Never mind that to build the road, rail belt legislators would have to appropriate the federal money, ($600-800 million at best). That is money that could be spent on AMHS, or worse for us, in other districts during this time of minuscule capital budgets.
We need to focus on the big picture: improving access to the capital city as a whole. That means maintaining and improving our airport, telecommunications, and infrastructure, and strengthening our ferry system. While road proponents talk of jobs and folks that the project will bring, we need to focus on the good jobs and families that are here. Do we want the mayor and assembly losing focus on what Juneau families need, instead spending their time, energy and our money to wildly chase one project that still has serious questions?
One candidate who I’ve known for more than 25 years and sees the big picture is Kate Troll. She is smart, strong and dedicated to our community. I find she is open to all ideas but currently is focused on economic necessities identified by the Juneau Economic Plan: housing, child care, making Juneau a research hub, revitalizing downtown, and more. These will positively impact long-term and broad-based prosperity for us and future generations. It is because of Kate’s strength and openness combined with ability to see Juneau’s best interests that I will proudly vote for her.
• Jim Ayers lives in Juneau.
