At meeting Monday night, the members of the Partnership Board for the new Juneau Arts and Culture Center (JACC) agreed that they no longer want the City and Borough of Juneau Assembly to increase the hotel bed tax to raise money for the new JACC’s construction.
After talking with Travel Juneau and others in the community who expressed concerns about the effects of raising the bed tax, the board members penned a letter to Mayor Ken Koelsch and the Assembly to ask them not to go forward with the proposal.
Partnership Board Co-Chair Peter Jurasz said he and his fellow board members didn’t want to see the new JACC causing a rift in the community.
“The new JACC has the potential to being a major unifier and a significant economic contributor,” Jurasz said. “The last thing we wanted as a board was to have it turn divisive or create division in the community.”
The proposal under consideration would have raised the bed tax from 7 to 9 percent. This increase would have raised the city $400,000 per year, and under the proposed ordinance, the city would donate that money to the new JACC. This would have netted the JACC $1.6 million toward its overall goal of $26 million.
Some vocal members of the hotel community expressed concerns about this plan. With the city’s 5 percent sales tax also in place, this would raise the overall tax that visitors pay to visit to 14 percent. That’s a higher percentage than Anchorage (12 percent), and would be the third-highest total in the state.
This endeavor began at the July 13 CBJ Assembly Finance Committee meeting, when the committee was voting on where the city would spend revenue from an extension of the 1 percent sales tax increase. The committee voted not to allocate any of the $47 million that will be raised by that sales tax increase if it’s approved in the Oct. 3 election.
This coming Monday, the Assembly will vote on whether or not to put the sales tax extension on the ballot.
The Partnership Board sent a memo to the committee just prior to that July 13 meeting requesting that the committee either allocate some of the sales tax revenue or increase the bed tax to raise money for the new JACC. Assembly member Loren Jones made the proposal at the close of the meeting, and the Assembly members have considered it ever since.
“I certainly respect their decision,” Jones said Tuesday. “They’re the ones that raised the issue. I am very supportive of the new JACC and the process they’ve been going through. I would have supported using some of the 1 percent sales tax, but that wasn’t available.”
Jones said he’s still disappointed at the decision, as he believes it will be more difficult for the board to raise the money now.
Nancy DeCherney, the executive director of the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council and secretary of the Partnership Board, said Tuesday that the board has raised nearly 20 percent of its $26 million goal (around $5.2 million). The board will be unveiling a new fundraising approach this weekend, DeCherney said.
The fundraising program, called “Groundbreakers,” will give people an option to donate some money up front and then spread out the rest of their donation over the ensuing couple of years while the construction is going on. DeCherney said she hopes that the building is ready for Celebration in 2020, and that next summer signals the start of construction.
“The goal is to raise enough money to get shovels in the ground next June,” DeCherney said.
• Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at alex.mccarthy@juneauempire.com.
