MY TURN: Juneau budget cuts services as bureaucracy keeps growing

Published 3:30 am Wednesday, June 17, 2026

Last Juneau Assembly meeting was another circus to distract the citizens from looking at the real issue — the city budget.

It’s really hard to understand the budget. Smart people have offered to help make the budget understandable to the average citizen and to help find economies, but were rebuffed. The city introduces the budget, has an open house for comments, but really doesn’t help folks understand who wins and who loses in the budget.

I’m not an expert, but here are some curiosities. Between 2025 and 2026, the city manager’s budget increased $1.4 million, Finance increased $600,000, IT increased $600,000, and similar across the board in many departments totaling millions altogether. Unlike this year, you can’t blame that rise on increases in wages ($3.6 million plus a $600,000 one-time payment – less than 1% of yearly expenditures) because the contract negotiations had not reached settlement.

In addition to departmental budget bloat, there were several high-profile capital project proposals in recent years that some people thought were unnecessary (new City Hall, new JAHC/Civic Center, misspent affordable housing money, new Bartlett building).

So instead of rolling back the CBJ spending increases that sparked outrage, CBJ management decided to keep their inflated budgets and instead try to cancel other folks’ jobs and the services that others provide.

Is it coincidence that the sharp jump in CBJ departmental budgets from 2025 to 2026 is close to the same amount of the drop in revenue caused by the propositions?

This budget cycle, there was the agonizing, dehumanizing and really negative process of having citizens come to plead for the services that make life livable in our cold, isolated, expensive town with long winters. Pitting user groups against user groups was not good governance.

Now, let’s look at the 2027 budget. No rollbacks of the millions of dollars of management bloat of the previous year were proposed – although most departments, except finance, tried to not further increase their budgets. Any deficits were blamed, instead, on the two propositions – even though the property tax proposition will have no funding loss of 2027 revenues because CBJ is committed to bumping up the assessments. But the City Museum is going to suffer staff losses and shorter hours that may cause the museum to fold, because of $250,000 that can’t be squeezed out of the new budget.

I guess the $2 million to relocate the museum to the waterfront just disappeared? That may be logical because what is the point of moving the museum if you are working on closing it? Jumbo Gym will be sold and probably demolished (pretty common theme from the city of late). It is unlikely Mount Jumbo will end up as a community center with mixed affordable housing/commercial that the community expressed support for in recent consultations. Just another case of CBJ selling off/giving away the very limited city-owned land in the denser urban areas, and not considering community input.

Everyone has to tighten their belts. Well, almost everyone. Finance is going to get an $800,000 boost in its budget (on top of the previous boost last year).

There may not be money to fund recreation, libraries, museums, etc., but there is money to ensure profits to developers to tear down city-owned buildings, like at Telephone Hill. I would say that at least we get some tax income from that, except maybe not in my lifetime. Most of these projects come with a tax exemption for many years.

Nano Brooks is willing to forego his Assembly stipend to alleviate the budget shortfall in some small way. None of the other Assembly members were willing to jump on board.

I agree that the compensation is not enough for the work that Mayor and Assembly do, but we all have to tighten our belts.

Right? I guess not.

So as some of us tighten our belts, we move on toward fall elections. I hope some candidates sign up who have compassion for others, have a little good sense, and care about our city.

When January rolls around, I hope we have more to show for 2026 than threats to services, bulldozed buildings and an unhappy community. Just like those old buildings, if you don’t take care of them, they start to fall apart. Our city is falling apart. The infrastructure is falling apart. Engagement is interpreted as annoying. And there is not much to celebrate right now.

Kinda sad.

Carole Bookless

Douglas