Juneau Mayor Beth Weldon announced her intention to seek a third three-year term this week. (Juneau Empire file photo)
A lot has changed for Juneau and Mayor Beth Weldon over the past three years, and the next three years promise to continue to be a time of great transformation for the community. This week, Mayor Weldon announced that she is seeking a third term as mayor and wants to continue leading those developments.
Since the start of her last term, Juneau has been engulfed in a contentious political climate as it climbed out of the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, experienced a record increase in cruise tourism, grappled with a housing shortage while also experiencing a significant increase in property assessments, and proposed consolidation of the Juneau School District and construction of a new City Hall.
Weldon said in an interview Wednesday that the past three years have also seen major new developments, stabilization of basic municipal services like police and public works and efforts to expand services like child care. He also said the council passed a responsible budget even as some crises hit entities it doesn’t directly oversee, such as school districts.
“What we can control is the mill rate, and the mill rate has come down during my time as mayor,” she said. When the council passed a budget earlier this month with a 10.04 mill rate — the lowest in decades — Weldon formally proposed that level as a compromise between those seeking higher rates and those seeking lower rates.
“It took a long time because the other proposals didn’t get the five votes,” she said, “so I came up with a compromise and we got enough votes to pass it.”
Weldon’s three Juneau City Council seats are on the ballot in the city election on Oct. 1. Two seats will be uncontested after Vice Mayor Michelle Bonnet-Hale and Wallar-Gidac Councilwoman Barbara Blake announced they will not seek re-election.
Three of the seven seats on the Juneau School Board are also on the ballot with qualifying ballot measures. Measures still under consideration include about $23 million in bonds for civic projects, a ban on large cruise ships on Saturdays, the recall of two school board members and repealing an ordinance that makes mail-in elections the local default.
The candidate filing period will open on July 12th at 8am and close on July 22nd at 4:30pm.
For Weldon, the decision to run again was a more difficult, personal choice after her husband, Greg, died in a motorcycle accident in April.
“Before he passed away, my husband and I had talked about it and I was planning on running,” she said, “but after he passed away, it took me a while to fully recover personally… It took me a while to recover. I’m still not fully recovered… I’m attending meetings again, but I’m not ready to take part in large gatherings yet.”
In addition to passing the city budget for next fiscal year, the council has addressed a number of key issues since returning to business in recent weeks, including the planned relocation of many downtown employees to the Michael J. Burns Building, use of three buildings the city will take over from the school district when the consolidation officially goes into effect July 1, a financial crisis at Bartlett Regional Hospital that has officials considering cutting “non-core” programs like drug rehab, and issues surrounding people experiencing homelessness after years of not having a city-designated homeless encampment.
A sore point for many voters in last year’s election was a $27 million bond measure for a new City Hall, a year after voters rejected a similar $35 million bond measure. Weldon said he supported a second bond measure after hearing concerns that the first bond measure was too expensive, but that “we got a pretty clear message” after last year’s election and “we haven’t done anything to build a new city hall since that vote was taken.”
Instead, the city is relocating many of its offices to Burnsville, which city officials say is less costly and more practical than moving into buildings vacated by the school district or making needed repairs to existing city facilities.
Weldon said the council’s efforts to work with the school district earlier this year to address the crisis — including approving loans and assuming some “shared costs” like maintenance for buildings used by both the city and school district — were an example of successfully handling an unexpected challenge. She said a similar approach will be needed as city hospitals seek financial help.
“At some point we’re going to have to ask the public, ‘Do you want these services or not?'” she said. “If we want these services, we’re going to have to raise taxes or find other sources of revenue, like seasonal sales taxes.”
Homelessness has come up in recent state legislative meetings, with social service agencies near the airport providing services to homeless people calling for the creation of sanctuaries due to intimidating behavior from people who can’t find shelter. Weldon, one of the state legislators who supported a “dispersed camping” policy after reports of rampant illegal activity in designated campgrounds, said he thinks the policy has worked better than other options that were considered.
“We’ve had issues in certain places,” she said. “I mean, it’s not a great situation because people are congregating on the streets. But is it better than a bad place to house everyone? I think so. In that respect, I think it’s worked out well. But this summer was just about trying it out and seeing what works, and then at the end of the summer we’ll all get our opinions together and see if we want to continue with dispersed camping or do something else.”
Weldon, a retired Capital City Fire Rescue Chief, now owns Glacier Auto Parts. He has two grown sons. He served two terms on the City Council before running for and winning mayor, but he doesn’t expect this race to be much different than his previous ones.
“I’ve done a lot of door-to-door canvassing in this city,” she said. “When I first ran for mayor, I estimated I canvassed over 5,000 houses. I did most of that, so I’m sure I could do it again.”
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
