OPINION: Is Juneau buying solutions — or just bigger social service budgets?

Published 3:30 pm Wednesday, June 10, 2026

Capital City Fire and Rescue (CCFR) released its May 2026 response statistics earlier this week. During the month of May, CCFR personnel completed a total of 860 responses and service activities across emergency response, Mobile Integrated Health, CARES operations, crisis response, the Sobering Center, fire prevention, training, and community outreach programs.

Among those calls were seven fire incidents, 381 EMS (Emergency Medical Services) and rescue incidents, three hazardous condition calls, 23 service calls, 44 good intent calls and 20 false alarm or false call responses.

This is an increase over the month of April, when CCFR responded to a total of 793 calls.

In April, CCFR also reported that their CARES and Mobile Integrated Health teams were “… heavily engaged throughout the month supporting vulnerable members of our community through crisis response, transports, mental health outreach, and sobering center operations, accounting for an additional 377 responses, contacts, and transports.”

$8-$9 million of CCFR’s budget is funded by local taxpayers and supplemented by other fees and taxes totaling approximately $7 million. Included in supplemental funding is almost $1 million in Marine Passenger Fees (“head taxes”) this year to help pay for ambulance and EMS support for cruise passengers. Cruise passengers generally carry good insurance that provides additional compensation to CCFR to offset the cost of emergency services.

If nearly half of the call activity to CCFR was for “vulnerable members of our community,” it calls into question the efficacy of policies, programs and strategies employed by our Assembly’s grant-funded partners paid to attend to Juneau’s vulnerable population.

Are other City and Borough of Juneau (CBJ) departments – such as the Juneau Police Department – also disproportionately impacted?

Several years ago, generous Juneau residents contributed to moving the Glory Hall from downtown to new quarters in the valley and to help fund construction of the adjacent Teal Street Center to serve as a hub for our social service agencies.

The point was to provide a convenient and purpose-built social services campus where core social problems could be properly and professionally addressed and not perpetuated.

A news story about a year later announced that Kaia Quinto had been hired as the director of the Glory Hall. She told the Juneau Empire that, “A goal of mine is that the shelter becomes underutilized.”

Ms. Quinto’s stated desire to be so successful at solving the problems of our unhoused population that she’d essentially eliminate the need for her job was refreshing. (Why didn’t someone nominate this woman for Citizen of the Year or draft her to run for the Assembly?)

The goal of every non-governmental organization or non-profit agency whose mission is to tackle a societal problem – be it domestic violence, drug addiction, homelessness, or suicide prevention should reflect that mindset – embracing the best practices possible to help people solve their problems, become productive members of the community and no longer require the services their organizations provide.

Are we implementing programs that get us to that goal? Or have we adopted the same failed strategies of cities like Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco, where billions have been spent, yet homelessness and funds directed to it continue to rise unabated?

Social service agencies provide critical assistance, but mission creep is real, and unchecked compassion dependent on taxpayer dollars is not sustainable. Nor should “success” be equated with an expanding mission and additional programs.

Our Assembly, and our social service providers, are all people of goodwill. But neither our government nor any of its “partners” should be judged on their good intentions. They should be judged on results.

Juneau is an exceedingly generous community, and a large piece of our Assembly budget is directed toward social service grants. While the Assembly has been devoting an inordinate amount of time deciding on whether to cut back on pools, libraries, the museum, and recreational programs, perhaps a broader look at our municipal budget is in order.

If a significant and growing portion of Juneau’s fire department budget (and, most likely, the Juneau Police Department’s and Barlett Hospital’s budget) is being directed towards Juneau’s most vulnerable, it should be evident that social service-related strategies and programs should be re-evaluated.

Win Gruening retired as the senior vice-president in charge of business banking for Key Bank in 2012. He was born and raised in Juneau and graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1970. He is active in community affairs as a 30-plus-year member of Juneau Downtown Rotary Club and has been involved in various local and statewide organizations.