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First Things First by The First Things First Alaska Foundation (FTFAF) is broadcast monthly on KINY on Saturday at 9 a.m. and on KJNO on Sunday at 9 a.m. Each episode explores the balance Alaskans face: protecting our state's rugged beauty and vast wilderness while advocating for sustainable economic growth through responsible natural resource management.
With thousands of jobs lost in the past decades due to restrictive regulations, First Things First raises vital questions about the future of Alaska’s economy. Can we preserve our cherished landscapes, waterways, and wildlife while fostering prosperity for generations to come?
Join FTFAF as we explore essential areas for Southeast Alaska’s growth—highlighting education, advocacy, and smart development.
It is time once again for another First Things First podcast. I am Dano, your host. I have Don Habiger right across from me, executive director of First Things First. Don, we're coming off a very exciting mining month podcast, and we thought it'd be very fitting as we get into our tourism months in July and August that we kinda focus on tourism.
Speaker 2:That's correct. We're looking forward to the conversation.
Speaker 1:And we wanna welcome into the studio for this podcast this time around. We got Scott Bergman. He's the owner of the Alaskan Fudge Company and lifelong Junoites. Scott, welcome to the studio.
Speaker 3:Glad to be here.
Speaker 1:And Ben Brown. No other than Ben Brown, president of the Juno Chamber of Commerce and development director of Perseverance Theater. You know I have to get that in Ben.
Speaker 4:Thank you very much. I'm also a lifelong Alaskan but I've only lived in Juno year round since 02/2001. So I'm getting used to it.
Speaker 1:I feel like we have enough Juno experience here to really dive into tourism and I think the big question for me is because I haven't been here as long as you all is where did tourism start? Because we were having this conversation of is Juneau tourism in its infancy or how long has it been doing this compared to other places around the world? So I think it's a good place to start.
Speaker 2:Well, me take the start of that. For me, tourism started in 1980. Excuse me, 1985, better remember that And I wanna talk about tourism and how it benefited my family in this little story. The story is we were a young couple. We had a one year old.
Speaker 2:I was looking for kind of that grounding employment. And because you have to do a lot of things, tourism became that lot of things I could do. So for summer, I was a cruise ship agent and did that for five years. And finally in 1990, it became that grounding industry for me. And then I stayed with tourism 20, up until about 02/2002.
Speaker 2:But in that, I kinda grew with that career and became Regional Vice President of Royal Caribbean and did their government relations for the West Coast. It was a good industry for me. Before 1985, I can't say I know much about tourism, but I do know that we had princess ships here, Canadian princess maybe. And so Juno has a history with tourism.
Speaker 4:Absolutely it does. It really goes back to the beginning of the twentieth century, Don. You know the Princess Sofia which is famous for having wrecked was a, I just actually looked it up, a Canadian Pacific Railway steamship. But people were coming here one hundred and twenty years ago to see the beauty of Southeast.
Speaker 2:Certainly, if you just wanna verify that, look at the mural on the back of the downtown library and you will see you know, early tourism as a piece of art.
Speaker 1:So when did it really start to get, I don't know, regulated, I guess? When did it really start to become a thing that Juno realized it could make a lot of money off of, it benefits our community and when did they start to, I don't know, kind of put regulations into place?
Speaker 2:Well, that's a great question. I remember in the early, I'll say the 90s, we were beginning that discussion as a community. Where do we put docks? If you go back in that time, we don't have our current configuration of docks and lo and behold, the community had a discussion on whether they should replace the Delta Western dock, which is sort of a piece of junk at this point in time. However, if you go back to our February podcast, you'll hear Susan Bell talk about the new infrastructure that's going in that location.
Speaker 4:Auk Landing.
Speaker 2:Auk Landing, thank you, Ben. But again, the point is that community has been talking about tourism, how to make it advantageous for our community, how to grow it and do so in a thoughtful manner that benefits our community. So that's been a while.
Speaker 1:And here we are. So I think this is a good way of going of where we are now and where do you think the state of tourism is in Juneau. You guys think we're in a good spot? Especially, I wanna talk to you Scott, particularly being the owner of the Alaska Fudge Company over there. You see this foot traffic day in, day out.
Speaker 1:Where do you think it's at right now? In a good spot?
Speaker 3:I think it's think it's at a good spot. I mean, I do know the streets are streets are crowded, which helped my business. But I don't I haven't heard any negativity from, you know, people coming to the store about overcrowded streets or overcrowded. I mean, biggest complaint I hear is the Tracy Crab Shack line is too long. You know, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3:But no, everyone still seems to be, you know, generally pretty happy. You know, weather, that seems to be a complaint I get. But, you know, they also realize it's Alaska and they can't do anything about that. So, no, I'd say we're good at spot. I, you know, question going forward is, you know, where do we go from here?
Speaker 3:And maybe we'll discuss a little bit more of that on this show.
Speaker 2:One of the things I wanna add, and this is a 2023, I believe, report for McKinley Research and I was just looking for the right quote, but I'll do it out of memory. And one of the things that I found really fascinating is tourism or our local tours, you know, flight scene, helicopter rides, hiking, biking, those kinds of things, is the number one activity that passengers, our guests, enjoy. But not far behind that, the number that sticks in my head is 144,000,000, is in retail. And so for Scott's colleagues down around town, that is a big number and it really does benefit our small businesses.
Speaker 4:And proof of that is that we have an assembly that's looking at a seasonal sales tax, trying to find a way potentially to get more of that money and have it underwrite public services. I'm not saying I'm for seasonal sales tax, but they do it in other ports of call in Southeast like Sitka, and they've appeared to have made it work. I know there are a lot of concerns about that policy from specifically Robert Venables and Southeast Conference because of the way we serve as a hub to our other neighbor communities in Southeast. And a lot of them come here at the exact same time as cruise ship passengers. So they would be paying that higher tax too.
Speaker 4:But it's definitely true that our retail sector and also our stores that are doing secondary supplies for the crews and for that they are selling a lot of merchandise and that benefits all of us because our shelves get refilled. We have access to a greater variety of products all because of that activity. So you're right, that McKinley study is very important, Don.
Speaker 2:Well, another thing that just is a big number and it's millions is the crew spend. So if you look at, they call it in this report our box stores, but Fred Meyer's, Costco. Our crew, our visiting crew, they spend millions of dollars on groceries, items for whatever they need them for. And I'll take an aside here. One of the things I have done in the past is I've escorted crew out of the country.
Speaker 2:There are certain situations where they just need a escort through US territory and then they're watched to get on a plane to ensure that they get out of the country. And always, always you will see that crew member trying to get their suitcase under 50 pounds because they bought too much. I encourage that they buy too much, but it's also good that The US border protection gets them out of the country when they need to.
Speaker 3:I'll point out that I've seen in my years of being downtown, the amount of, I think now there's three places that sell suitcases, which I remember when there were no places that sold them. Yeah, so I mean, every day I see people wheeling suitcases by.
Speaker 4:And of course, if they're not Club forty nine members, Alaska Airlines is making an extra baggage fee. We Alaskans are fortunate to be able to check a few more bags like that. Well, to go back to the perspective of the Juno Chamber of Commerce, Dano, about what we think, we're very proud of our history as a destination as Alaska's capital city. Even before we were Alaska's capital city, we were still Juno. And we're very pleased with what we've seen over the past few decades in terms of the robust injection into the healthy life of our local economy that's come from the visitor industry.
Speaker 4:But we're also aware that there are tensions that arise from that. You know, we have, as our members at the Greater General Chamber of Commerce, the large cruise lines, Norwegian Cruise Lines, Royal Caribbean, the Holland Princess Group. And and we're very grateful for their membership. But we also have really small members, you know, who are small mom and pop businesses like Your Shop Frank and Laura Martinson, McDonald, you know, Caribou Crossings. And so all those businesses are important to us and we want to make sure we are trying to encourage an integrated balancing act between them so that everyone is benefiting to the greatest extent possible.
Speaker 4:And it's not easy. And so those tensions come to the forefront and we as a chamber really strive to promote harmony among our members, but it's not easy. It's a continuing struggle because of the ever increasing demand.
Speaker 2:And part of what First Things First does, Ben, is that we try to educate the public. And this podcast is a prime example. And for example, you talked about a seasonal sales tax. And first things first, while we haven't got officially involved, we're also concerned about the affordability of Juneau. So how does all that fit in?
Speaker 2:Do we increase taxes and simply cause more harm to our citizens or not? But it's a part of the discussion and it's something that First Things First always looks forward to.
Speaker 4:And we can't oversimplify it. Chill Cooch Charlie's slogan is we cheat the other guy and pass the savings on to you. Well I mean we have to make sure that's not what we're doing and any sort of change to our sales taxation or our overall taxation structure. And you know I'm not an assemblyman and I don't want to be because it's a huge amount of work but I I really do feel for our mayor and the and the of the folks on the assembly who are struggling with some of these difficult decisions. Obviously, now, we have some ballot measures out there that are going to spur the conversation to be a little more lively and people are going to have to think about these things And I just encourage people to do that, to look at what happens if you push a button here, what comes out over here?
Speaker 4:Because it is all interrelated and the answer isn't gonna be easy, but it'll be the best answer the more people in the community are involved in it. And that goes for bigger issues, but certainly with the visitor industry.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And Scott, I wanna hand the issue off to you. And this issue is sort of the labor pool. If you talk to some of our community members who are trying to hire, particularly the social services, they're not finding qualified candidates. But you are more entry level, I believe.
Speaker 2:How are you doing in that and what are your colleagues up and down Franklin Street doing? Are they resolving those issues?
Speaker 3:Well, speaking for just our business, right after COVID, that was probably the worst hiring year ever. Like the first year of 2020, yeah, let's see, 2021 was like a partial year because we got ships later. 'twenty two was the first year that the ships were fully in. And yeah, that was the worst year I've ever had hiring. I do hire mainly entry, a lot of 14, 15 year old kids, college kids sprinkled in.
Speaker 3:So this year, the last two years have been pretty good. So, I can only speak for myself on the amount of kids that wanna come in and work out. I don't get a lot of twenty, twenty five. There's other jobs for them. They get paid more doing other things.
Speaker 3:So, I have heard of a few gift shops just in my wanderings taking visas and doing stuff like that. I'm not familiar with that. My parents were flying up with someone and they were telling them that they hire like, it's a certain day, so they get half of the first part of the season till July or something, and then they get a new visa program in from foreigners. I can't remember where they're from. But they're selling gift shops.
Speaker 3:It used to be back when my parents were running the business and they retired in 2020, but they did it for forty years before then. That was not a thing that gift shops did. That was what the fish processing plants did, stuff like that. To get back to labor, I would say that this is probably the better year I've had when it comes to hiring. Lots of kids seem eager to get jobs, want jobs.
Speaker 3:And at least at my shop it is. Maybe it's because it's candy and they wanna work around it, I don't know. No, I'm pretty pleased with what this summer's been.
Speaker 2:So, you pay them in fudge instead of? I them in fudge instead love it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, makes it easy. No, they, I mean there is the, obviously the minimum wage is creeping up higher and higher. Hired my son, you know, he's 14 for his first year and he likes to brag about how much he makes compared to what I made when I first started. But I tell him everything was cheaper when I was buying lunch, you know, every single day.
Speaker 2:Put that in perspective. I started as a shoeshine boy and I made 65¢ an hour. So, there you go.
Speaker 4:I think my first job that was, you know, a formal job was at the Happy Greek, a pizza restaurant in Palmer. I can't imagine I made more than 6 or $7 an hour, which, you know, seemed like a lot back then.
Speaker 2:You were rich.
Speaker 4:You were rich. Of course, it's very timely because ballot measure one goes into effect. I actually just sent out an email to all chamber members with thanks to Katie Kaposi in the Alaska State Chamber of Commerce. I used information she and her staff had pulled together. But from when they sent that message out at the middle of last week to the end of last week, the Department of Labor and Workforce Development finally promulgated regulations which are now out for a thirty day public comment period.
Speaker 4:So the law goes into effect tomorrow. There's no implementing regulations. And it's going to make life more difficult for businesses like you, Scott, So because you're going to have to give sick leave and track that. And that's going
Speaker 1:to be a rolloverable thing and a cash outable
Speaker 4:it's just, it's not easy to be a small business person these days, is it?
Speaker 3:No, no. There's lot of stuff that we have to keep in the back of our mind.
Speaker 4:And that just got, there's now one, there's a few more things.
Speaker 3:That's one that I forgot about. So thank you for reminding me
Speaker 4:of that. Well, if you go to the
Speaker 2:raise after all. Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 4:If you go to the Department of Labor's website, you can see a frequently asked question document that talks about the the law itself is passed by the voters. The And draft regs are out. I think the most important thing is if you can find time in the next thirty days and you're a business owner, small or large, look at those and comment on them because your comment will affect what is finally adopted. And that's where the implementation is going to go through. But this is not a good time to make life more complicated for our businesses in Juneau.
Speaker 4:There's already a lot going on and it makes me really happy to hear, Scott, that you're having a better time finding
Speaker 3:I folks to work this think it's something that, I mean, my parents have always had good, I mean, one, it's the community, lot of friends. My parents joke that I've got four siblings. There's four of us total, I have three siblings. And there was a time that all our friends were working in there. Yeah, my dad said it's labor.
Speaker 3:Now my son's at that same point where his friends are working. So that definitely helps. And then Phil, business partner, he's got three kids and their friends are in there working. So it definitely helps make it a little easier to also recruit kids because if they're working with their friends, they're having more fun.
Speaker 2:So Scott, Ben brings up a good point and that's just maybe the onerous side of compliance as a business owner. How much of your time, just a very quick percentage, is dedicated to compliance, whether it's community regulations, whether it's state, federal, all of that?
Speaker 3:Well, I've got two shops and there's three, there's myself, there's Phil and there's Jason, our partners. I mean, it's probably a full time job just amongst its, we divvy it up between us what to we do. Yeah, I mean, it's something in the back of our mind. Something that we always, a lot of times, might put a pin in it that we have to get back to. But this time of year is the time we make everything.
Speaker 3:And I'm also up producing. That's the other hard thing with what I've got going on is I'm hand making all my candy and things like that. That's a commitment.
Speaker 2:So speaking of hand making, thank you for that answer first of all. A full time job for a two shop company.
Speaker 3:Yeah, two shops, yeah.
Speaker 2:Two outlet company. But I wanna redirect that a little bit. You talk about hand making or artisan craft, if you will. So how many of those young kids that you're mentoring, if you will, are leaving with at least some kind of artisan craft? And can they apply that in the rest of their life, for example?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say, I mean it's funny because not everybody wants to get their hands covered in chocolate. Some kids really do want to, but I usually have two or three kids that I will have on rotation as far as what I call them as dippers. Where they dip the chocolate and stuff like that. The cooking side of it is usually takes a year of you kind of standing over the hot, if you ever walk by the store, you'll see us standing in the window cooking fudge. That's kind of the entry level position.
Speaker 3:And then the next year is they'll start working on kind of the creaming and shaping, which is what you see us doing on the table when everybody's standing there watching. And yeah, I know there's multiple people that my parents have hired throughout their, got their own kids and stuff like that. And they'll make chocolates and things like that on their, know, in the kitchen and stuff like that. I
Speaker 4:know I can say, I actually worked in the industry back at Dock Waters. People may remember.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's right.
Speaker 4:By the hanger on wall. I was a bartender there. This was actually after I had passed the bar in Alaska and New York. The legal bar, not the bar bar. But I wanted to work there one summer and I talked Jason Maroney into letting me do so.
Speaker 4:It's actually where I met my spouse, so I'm really glad I did that. But just watching the people younger than me who had not just finished law school that Jason hired to come work there, it really is interesting seeing how people can learn a lot of skills that transfer to so many other ways of parts of life in their future employment in visitor relations jobs. Because you really have to know how to be welcoming and make people feel like they're in the right place for the short amount of time they're here in Juneau. And that really is a skill set. I'm sure you some take to it really naturally and some are pretty grumpy and you just have to be like, you cannot talk to the people that way.
Speaker 3:You're 100% right. And I think that's the biggest skill that I've seen. I've had so many people come back and know, I work for your parents and every, they say everybody should get a service. You know, or like a, where you're in front of people, you're checking them out or chatting with them and stuff like that. Because we tell all our kids, you know, you're not just putting things in a bag and you know, giving it to them, know.
Speaker 3:They're coming in here, there's no pressure, they don't have to buy anything. Sometimes they just come in and you chat. How's it going? What's the daylight? And they're so fascinated to hear about Alaska too.
Speaker 2:So Scott, let me, it brings up another issue and I just wanna drill down very quickly. How much of your time storefront is dedicated to our guests and how much is dedicated to our locals? So what's that mix?
Speaker 3:You mean like by storefront? Like how do I spot for local? Your business,
Speaker 2:yeah, basically your business.
Speaker 4:Because you're operating one location year round.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yes, we have one location year round. I mean, I would say, I don't know what the percentage is to locals to, you know, most of the, like in the summertime, most of the locals, they'll come in and, you know, they'll read a cruise ship calendar. You know, a lot of my regular customers, they will, they'll see and be like, Oh, I know there's only one boat in, come in, get their candy. Locals usually know what they want. A lot of times when I'm in there, I'll recognize someone.
Speaker 3:And even if they just kinda came in and there's a line of people, I'll help them because I know what they want, to try to get them out. They don't have to wait in the line the whole time. That's right, those turtles are fantastic. Yeah, they'll come in for their pound of stuff and I'll get it to them and they'll go out. But it's kinda hard.
Speaker 3:I mean, when it's busy, you know, there's a They'll avoid, you know I don't say they'll avoid us. That never got really You know, there's not a lot of attitude towards it. But, know, they'll walk by. My storefront is small. That's the issue I have, is it's kinda divided with a staircase in the middle.
Speaker 3:Don't have a great flow, you know, they kinda flow in and out and a lot of times they'll just, if it's really packed, just be like, oh, we'll come back later. They're not in a rush. That's what I've noticed about most of the locals. They're just, they're fine. They know we're here year round.
Speaker 3:Most of them do.
Speaker 4:You're in an easy, relatively easy to get to location though. I have a friend in New York and she loves to have the cans or the jars of smoked salmon, she likes it from Taco Smoke Reefs. And literally she's like, can you just run down there? Like, well, a five ship day, can't just run down you know to that that end of the town. It's kind of a destination thing.
Speaker 4:Getting a parking spot down there requires pretty amazing luck and I would never park illegally in Rish's lot of course. Would never do that or in the CBJ lot. But so but it's you know that that ship calendar and what the cruise line agencies have done to get that information out there. Information is power and that's one good way we as Juneau residents can appreciate the industry but also don't go into it to be frustrated if we don't have to. We can choose when we wanna go visit your shop or talk to Smokeries or any of the other great businesses that are down there.
Speaker 4:So I think that helps.
Speaker 2:Well, we're going back to history. Here you go, Dano. And if you go back in time and you talk about tourism and the opportunity that it presents Junoites, in the 80s when I was starting in the industry, I would go out to Long Run Drive, Sandro Lane's house, garage really, buy the sides of salmon and hike it out to a princess ship or something like that. And now he's got a waterfront presence. He's no longer involved.
Speaker 3:But
Speaker 2:you talk about now a dynasty on the waterfront. Juno really does provide opportunity. You're talking about that, Ben, you're talking about that and that's exciting for our community.
Speaker 4:And you know, we've been talking about where we were and where we are, Deno. I know you wanna get to where we're going And you mentioned Dock Landing and Susan Bell and Russell Dick and the work they're doing at Hunter Tono Corporation. I am so excited about that project. And this is the chamber has formally, you know, come out saying we support this. That's going to distribute visitor load in a very beneficial way to a different part of downtown.
Speaker 4:And I think illustrating how that can help the situation be better is going to be a really positive effect. They've also spent a lot of time working with Russell shareholders, you know, to make sure that there is a very solid Klingit authentically indigenous component to that project, very similar to what's been going on for a very long time over at Icy Strait Point. Great success. And so if you've not looked at the schematics and the design for the Auk Landing project, you should go to htc.com and do so. Susan's put together some really lovely visuals of that.
Speaker 4:I've actually had her on Problem Corner, but I think there are other projects that are not so fully formed that we continue to look at as being ways to distribute the visitor load more around the community so that we're getting all the benefits and sharing the joy and sharing some of the, not pain, but the struggle because it does take work to welcome 1,600,000 people to your town of 33,000.
Speaker 2:Well, it does. Ben, thank you for that segue. One of the things I just wanted to throw on the table and that is how we are approaching tourism, in this case, cruise tourism, as a community. And one of the things that kind of we get engaged in is a, if you will, a lower birth cap. And so MOUs were signed between the city and the industry on six days a week.
Speaker 2:You can have up to 1,900, excuse me, 19,000 lower Let me get my numbers right. And then on Saturday, drops down to 12,000 lower bursts. So that's really the large cruise ships. Now what's interesting is I kind of read in going back to our Juno economic impact study of the cruise tourism, it says, and here we go from whatever page we're on, Juno has long been the most popular cruise port in Alaska, welcoming nearly every ship that sails the state's water. But when I was down in Ketchikan a couple of months ago for some business, I was told, and it surprised me, that Ketchikan now has more ship calls than Juneau.
Speaker 2:I never thought I'd live long enough to hear that, but I double checked on that and that is absolutely correct. Juneau is, I don't know, I forget my numbers, but around six ninety whatever port calls in 2026, and Ketchikan now goes to 700 or thereabouts. So, based on my math, we're seeing their growth at an extra 4%. And we're gonna stay still. Unless, as you say, Ben, we think about other projects and distributing the load and new projects on other parts of our community.
Speaker 4:And there are some things like the second crossing, the North Douglas Crossing that we want just because they're the right thing to want for the capital city. But that would also really help with that redistribution of visitor traffic. So interesting thing about Ketchikan, of course, they are not a unified home rule municipality under Title 29 like Juneau is, the city and borough of Juneau. They have the city of Ketchikan and then the Ketchikan Gateway Borough. So they have not been in a position like Juneau has as municipal government to come up with memoranda of agreement with the cruise lines.
Speaker 4:And so that's why, you know, there's no even agreed to non binding cap on the numbers there. The other thing, and I was just checking, we are still waiting to see what happens with the appeal to the federal appellate court from the Bar Harbor suit. That's not come out yet. And that's going to inform whether mandatory voter pass limits are actually something that are constitutional. I don't know how that's gonna shake out and it was supposed to be by the June and today would be the June.
Speaker 4:So, I've kind of got to check and Is see if that
Speaker 3:that the main that
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, Bar Harbor main, exactly. And we've all been watching that. Alex Pierce, the CBJ tourism manager talks about it a lot because that's to be important even though it's on the other side of the country and even though, well, appellate court might be able to enjoin something that a district court couldn't. The Supreme Court didn't rule on that recently. But at any rate, just that jurisprudence at some point, whether or not under the tonnage clause, you can make these kind of limits and is that a taking of private property under the fifth amendment of the constitution is a really huge issue.
Speaker 4:But in the meanwhile, we do have a small tourism staff at the city and they've been working very well with the industry to try to balance things out. And so it'll be interesting to see what Ketchikan surpassing us looks like and how they deal with that as a community.
Speaker 2:Well, is a community issue and it's something just to keep in mind, which is why we ought to bring it up and talk about it. But thinking about, Ben, I'm glad you pointed out something on the backside of Douglas, because one of the things, and I'm gonna put on just for a brief moment one of my other hats, is reentry. Those coming out of incarceration to the community. There simply is not enough housing in this community and we need to look at ways to grow our housing stock and affordability. So there you go, many benefits from something like that.
Speaker 4:Absolutely, there's a lot of land over there. There is potential housing for year round residents, as well as potential housing for seasonal residents. And you know, we are definitely hamstrung right now as a community. If Liz Perry were here, she would tell you Travel Juno is, it's not gonna be possible for AFN to come to Juno until we build a lot more hotel rooms. And right now, our hotels are at capacity and that doesn't seem to be something that people really want to invest in.
Speaker 4:Some of the existing ones that have been bought by firms that have turned them around and assigned to new brands, there doesn't seem to be appetite for that. But that's another piece of the puzzle is short term housing as well as long term housing, Don. And land on the West Side Of Douglas Island could be involved in both those things.
Speaker 2:Well, another thing I'll just point out and we're getting off of tourism slightly but it's back to mining, was last month. Juneau Economic Development, they did a study, they did surveys of miners, out of state miners, and why they choose not to live here. And affordability was one of the major reasons for not living here. So if we can change that around, perhaps we'll have mining residents increases in that. And I think that's good for our schools.
Speaker 2:Think that's good for you, Scott, because now you have a bunch of new kids.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that might be why I might not have the issue of hiring because I do have an entry level position. You know, with a lot of 14, 15 year old, they live with their parents. They don't have to find housing and
Speaker 1:But stuff like I know
Speaker 3:Skagway was a big issue for my business partner when he ran in Skagway. You almost had to have your own trailers or something like that to put somebody in.
Speaker 2:Well, ran into an old tourism colleague. He owns one of our local tours. And this was a couple of years ago, just after COVID and kind of the release of the new industry era. And he told me that he's no longer in tourism but he's in housing because he was buying housing for his out of state employees. And he couldn't survive according to him at that time unless that occurred.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Well, it's a yes and situation. Know, we need to say yes to tourism. Need to do it the right way. We need to say yes and mining as well because we would not be here without mining.
Speaker 4:You know, the new project, the new Amalgam project is just kind of getting the info out there. Very exciting. But that JED survey about minors and why they don't live here actually Brian Holst walked the chamber board through that. Very interesting results. But I will just say one thing that people do love about here is the recreational amenities, the arts and culture life, even the nightlife, the culinary variety.
Speaker 4:We have so much going for us in Juneau, we just need to make sure that we can keep it going.
Speaker 2:Absolutely and keep it going. We must be right about done, Dano. Is that true?
Speaker 1:Delicate balancing act is what I've heard throughout this whole thing of how do you balance this life that we live here in Juneau with tourism and keep it growing from here so people like Scott can continue to thrive and continue to employ locals from Juneau. Delicate balancing act. But we do love Juneau for all the things that Ben mentioned and we just love Juneau for what it is. And of course tourism, you can't deny it, is a big part of Juneau. Whether you want to or not, it is a big part of Juneau and it's going to continue to grow so it might as well be something you embrace, learn about, and we all grow together.
Speaker 2:And most importantly, you can feed your family on tourism and that's an exciting thing.
Speaker 4:And it's renewable. It's a renewable resource.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 4:Yep. So thank you, Dano.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Don, let's give that shameless self promotion. If people are into what First Things First is all about, you like what you're hearing on these podcasts, which you can re listen to over at kinydio.com. Don, how do people get involved with Absolutely. First Things
Speaker 2:Thank you, Dano. And just check out our website and that is f t f a k foundation dot org. Send us a message through our website or check out our content.
Speaker 1:And remember you can download any of these First Things First podcasts over at kinyradio.com. I wanna thank Don Habiger for coming executive director of First Things First. He's always here but we're happy to have Scott Bergman in here, lifelong Juno White, owner of Alaska Fudge Company and Ben Brown. Thank you so much for all your knowledge as well. President of the Juno Chamber of Commerce and development director for Perseverance Theater, which we can't wait to hear about that when you get some shows rolling out here soon enough.
Speaker 4:Stay tuned. We'll have news next week, I
Speaker 3:hope.
Speaker 2:Cool, man.