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Angela Rodell: Mayoral candidate
Age: 56
Occupation: Legislative staff
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
As a first-time officeseeker, why are you running for mayor instead of a lower position such as an Assembly seat?
“I’ve had leadership positions in the state, Juneau is my home, I have the skills to bring, I love this town, I want to see it go in a different direction and I just feel that as mayor I can offer the full breadth of those skills.”
What should the mayor and Assembly be doing now to address the concerns of people affected by flooding from Suicide Basin, who say not enough was done after last year’s flooding and are worried the same flooding will happen next year?
“I think that is a big mistake that the city made last year in not recognizing just how devastating future years could be and the things that they could do, and their unwillingness to make big decisions. What they’re doing right now — which is meeting with the Army Corps of Engineers, meeting with the U.S. Forest Service, talking to hydrologists, talking to engineers — this is what I’d be doing as mayor, is convening these resources and determining what are things we can get done this year. The city owns land on the Brotherhood Bridge side of the river; are there things that we can do right now with the land we own that doesn’t need the permitting, that doesn’t need the 10 years of study that perhaps the federal government needs? How can we get resources? What kind of grants? What kind of money are we looking at? We have to look at using those rainy day reserves — I think we’re having a rainy day out there in the Mendenhall Valley.”
A concern of people affected by flooding is a shortage of repair workers and materials, due to ongoing issues such as housing shortages and costs that deter new employees from moving here as well as supply chain difficulties. What as mayor would you do to address such problems?
“I can’t wave a magic wand and all of a sudden, 25 homes appear. This is a very real problem that we have. And part of the challenge we have is that we have to make sure people feel heard and seen in all of this. And sometimes I think that’s half the battle people are struggling right with. The home issue is absolutely 100% real. If you wanted to sell your home the odds are you’re going to have a real challenge selling a home, walking away from it, and people have their life savings in these homes. I mean, this is a very big problem, and the city needs to lead the discussion on it and bring us together as a community to figure out what our answers are, and what we can do in the short term and what have to be long-term solutions.”
What would you have done differently than the current mayor during the past year and past three years?
“I’ll take the past three years first. We’ve seen property taxes go up over 50% the last eight years. The bulk of that has been in the last three to four years. And I understand and appreciate the rules around valuation, so we’ll leave the valuation aside and the questions about the high valuations, what we could have done?”
And what I would have would have done is I would have worked with the Assembly and urged the Assembly to do an adjusted mill rate…I would have said the old valuation and mill rate produced this amount of revenue for us, (and have) an inflation-adjusted amount over one year. That means if we would have raised 50 billion this year, we get to have 55 billion next year. And so we would have dropped that mill rate to produce the amount of inflation-adjusted revenue.”
“COVID skewed a lot of that spending revenue as well. And the city started spending COVID money on programs and issues that were not one-time, and so we’re on the hook now to keep programs going or shut programs down because they were used for operations rather than one-time expenses…I’m not going to specify what’s not worthy. I’m saying that there wasn’t any lens about how we’re going to keep this sustained once the COVID money ran out. And that’s what we see time and time again. We spend money on things with no long-term plan in mind about how this is going to be sustained. It’s just assumed we will always have revenue.”
If you favor such controls on property tax collection while also favoring spending rainy-day money for purposes such as flood mitigation, where do funds for the things you support spending funds on come from on a sustainable basis?
“They have $14 million set aside for a new City Hall that the voters have voted down twice that they can start tapping into. And the issue I’m having is that there are a lot of things that are nice to have and there are must-haves. I go back to making a livable city that focuses on fulfilling our obligation to our entire community — first focusing on safety, focusing on education, focusing on clean water (and) looking at options about the landfill, which the city doesn’t own…Instead, we’re talking about things that are nice to have. A civic center is nice to have, (but) I’d rather have 18 new JPD officers protecting, and walking downtown and the valley and Douglas, and maintaining safety.”
Where do you think the city spends its money efficiently and inefficiently?
“I was on the Juneau airport board for six years and I thought they did a really good job of balancing all the requirements around its federal revenue, and not going to the city for for very much money. I want to see the city become more efficient. I wanted to see it become more productive. The employees there, I think, do the best they can with what they with what they have. But we have to be making smart investments in technology to generate a better, more productive outcome. Processes aren’t moving forward like they need to. It should not take years to get permits in some cases.”
You are among a small minority of candidates opposed to two municipal bond measures totaling about $23 million that essentially pay for wastewater treatment upgrades and a new police/fire department communication system. Why?
“I believe debt has a definite purpose for communities. It is not for buying what should be routine operational maintenance equipment on a regular basis. This is stuff we should have been funding all along. And why are we issuing long-term debt to fund (emergency) equipment…what is the lifespan of that equipment? It’s like financing your iPad. Some people do finance that or their cell phones, and then in three years they get a new cell phone. But we’re going to go to the bond markets, incur all the cost of that, and do it all at once rather than having a technology plan where we’re routinely investing and upgrading people’s equipment.”
Speaking of debts, the Assembly has dealt with a school district and a hospital seeking help with major debt problems. What should be the Assembly’s role in sustaining such CBJ-owned entities if they are struggling?
“I think the Assembly has a huge responsibility in the excellence of a school district and in two ways. One CBJ, I believe, supports the school district traditionally…(and) we have an obligation, representing the entire community, to ask questions about metrics, about performance, about their assumptions. And the Assembly could have weighed in and asked about some of the demographic trends and why the school board was choosing to spend certain monies the way it did, just even asking and highlighting and bringing up to the surface those questions.”
“The second obligation the city has is to create an economically thriving community. So to the extent that we are promoting job creation — whether it’s through a transportation network, building a second crossing, docks and harbors, supporting the (private cruise ship) dock, things like that — that economic activity creates opportunity and ways for families to support their children and raise healthy families here.”
If elected you would be the mayor of a city that’s projected to shrink in population during the coming years, although a portion of that reduction will be offset by the homeporting of a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker here. What is your vision for Juneau as a smaller city, or thoughts on how that loss of population can be avoided?
“If we can get the property tax assessment mill rate down — we spend $3 million, $4 million on certain items that can cover (implementing) a sales tax exemption from groceries. If we can start tightening our belt, focusing on basic essential services to lift up things that and make them work again. My goal is to first stem the departure, give opportunity to young families and make it affordable for seniors to stay.”
If you were among the city’s leaders a year ago, when contentious discussions about homeless issues including warm-season camping and and a cold-weather warming shelter, what actions and policies would you have supported?
“Homelessness is a really tough issue, especially for a community that’s isolated like Juneau — sometimes you just don’t have some of the options that other communities that are on a road system might have…So I’m not sure that there’s a lot more I could have added to what the city was already trying to get done: helping Housing First raise money, create the planning and the permitting to get that (housing) built. And to look at the shelter situation the fact is that there are certain populations that don’t necessarily fit easily into these solutions. That’s why homelessness is so difficult. I think it’s also why it’s so disappointing what happened with the crisis center (closing) at Bartlett because that was going to be a key component that mobility crisis offering on some of this, and now they’re having to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to make that work.”
“A year later the court decisions have been reversed, communities have more control again, and we have to put all the tools for homelessness back into our toolbox and be willing to use all of them. People need to feel safe, I need to feel safe, my neighbors need to feel safe walking home from downtown like we always did…So we need to be willing to use public safety in a compassionate manner that works. The training we need. We need a full-scale JPD. (And) we need to have the sheltering and the services. But my point is is not everybody is going to accept the sheltering and services, and they can’t be allowed to camp out on Franklin Street and destroy personal property out there.”
What else do you want to tell voters?
“I think Juneau can be a place again where families want to raise their kids and grandchildren, and you have multiple generations here. It means some really tough choices in the near term. It means having to figure out what we really care about and what are nice-to-haves, and really focusing on making our community stronger. This is not about the three communities of Douglas, the Valley and downtown competing for resources. This is about maybe ‘I have a home on Douglas. I go out in downtown for dinner and I play out in the Valley.’ We have to recognize we use this entire community, no matter where we live, no matter where we work, and together we can make it stronger.”
