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Discover the heartbeat of Juneau's cultural and community landscape with 'Capital Chat.' This series explores the vibrant world of the community, arts, and dynamic cultural and social events happening in Alaska's Capital City. Tune in to 'Capital Chat' for your essential guide to the pulse of our community, where every story is an adventure and every voice matters.
And now Capital Chat on KINY, where we connect you with Juneau and Southeast Alaska's community organizations only on KINY.
Speaker 2:And good morning, Juneau. KINY, ninety four point nine FM and always 800. It is Capital Chat this morning. I'm Justin Miller coming at you from the Gold Belt Tram studio. And in the studio today, we have Ben Brown from the Juno Chamber of Commerce.
Speaker 3:Good morning, Justin.
Speaker 2:Good morning, Ben. How are we doing today?
Speaker 3:It's a pretty great day out there. I'm having a pretty good Tuesday and I trust you are as well.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, I definitely was nice to wake up with a little more less wetness going on outside. But Chamber's got a lot of stuff going on recently. But for those for folks that are familiar with Chamber, I'm sure everyone knows that you're very involved in the community with different projects and different organizations. But for those that don't know much about what the Chamber does for Juneau, can we just do a quick summary on that?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I actually pulled up our bylaws because that is our governing document. And the purpose of the chamber is to develop, advance, promote the economic, industrial, commercial, professional, cultural, and civic welfare of the Juneau area with an objective to improve the business climate and make the community more prosperous and a desirable place to work and live. And so the final part of our purpose and objective statement says in these pursuits, the Juneau chamber seeks to provide leadership for political action on business issues and a forum for the exchange and dissemination of member ideas. But we have a limitation.
Speaker 3:We are nonprofit, we're nonpartisan, we're nonsectarian, and we do not endorse candidates for public office.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Now that stated, of course, as everyone listening knows, I'm sure we do have three ballot propositions before us this election season. And as I was saying when I was doing problem corner yesterday, our ballots arrived. I think most people will have received their ballots in the mail either yesterday or even maybe on Saturday. Right. And so the chamber is very interested in these three propositions because they would individually and collectively have a tremendous impact on Juneau, potentially good and potentially bad.
Speaker 3:And so there's just a lot to dig into and think about what these mean for the community.
Speaker 2:Right. And as most of us know, that's been a heavy topic, especially all across Juno and especially here on the radio station, we've been kind of diving deep into those ballot initiatives. So how is the chamber viewing these initiatives going on?
Speaker 3:Well, we decided, the board of directors unanimously decided to instruct our relatively new executive director, Rebecca Parks, who's been on the job since the August. And she's doing a great job. And I would have had her with me here today, but our annual dinner is coming up on the October 11 and she's really, really, really busy getting prepared for that. And we also have two forums coming up and I'll talk about those in a moment. But one of the first things we worked with her to do, and she had had some experience from prior jobs, was to do a survey of our members and ask them what they thought about proposition one, capping the mill rate proposition two, exempting food and residential utilities from sales tax and proposition three, imposing a seasonal sales tax, so taking it down to a much lower level from October through March, and then jacking it up higher than it currently is April through September.
Speaker 3:And there were some interesting results, Justin, to that survey.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. What was those kind of results on that?
Speaker 3:Well, so again, it was not a scientific survey. It was a pretty comprehensive set of questions that had open ended spaces for answers. So told people it could take between five minutes and twenty minutes to fill out depending on how thorough they wanted to be. And we ended up having over 30 responses. We extended the deadline just to get a few more people to chime in.
Speaker 3:And only on the third ballot measure was there there was not unanimity of responses on anything, but it was only on the Assembly's proposal to impose a seasonal sales tax where the vast majority of our members said that they were not comfortable with that at this time. Because and I think there's some really good reasons for that. Well, some of our largest members are of course Hickley Greens Creek and Coralaska Kensington Mine. They have to buy things year round. And we want them to shop local, know, not bring it on the barge from outside.
Speaker 3:They're And going to be paying tax on all those supplies they need. And they can't just stock up in March and then not buy anything through September. And since they are currently the largest property taxpayers, interestingly neither Hecla nor CORE has come out in favor of proposition one saying they want to cap the mill rate. So I think they were more concerned about the adverse effects of a seasonal sales tax than the beneficial effects of capping the mill rate. However, so to go to those earlier, so the chamber did take a position and we issued a press release where we are actually opposing proposition three, the seasonal sales tax at this time, because of the concerns our members voiced about the impossibility of avoiding it during the summer months.
Speaker 3:And then also there was a lot of concern about the administrative difficulty of how do you change a tax rate, especially for the sellers of services. If you're an attorney, if you're an accountant, if you're doing anything that is selling a service that's not a tangible good, when did that service start and when did it stop? You know, on the April 1, if it's a court case that you're paying your attorney to represent you for months and months, it's one thing to change the tax rate on a candy bar, it's another on services. But even for the candy bars, people would have to recalibrate their point of sale system, make sure their employees knew that. And then, you know what?
Speaker 3:It's a big burden on our businesses. They are responsible legally to collect these sales taxes and remit them to the city. And if they don't, it's actually a misdemeanor. People have gone to jail in Juneau for not turning in their sales taxes.
Speaker 2:That's definitely a huge concern. Just thinking about how each business and each entity in Juneau is going to have to shift gears and totally change on how they operate their business if that were to go through.
Speaker 3:Right. But so looking at the other propositions, proposition one, the property tax cap, majority of respondents said that it would either negatively or not impact their business. And then somebody was about half and half. But several respondents said that that might benefit their business. As far as Proposition two, the sales tax exemptions, there was a majority that thought that that would benefit their business positively.
Speaker 3:But there were also some who said it would be negative or there'd be no impact. And it was really only in the third one. So we've not taken a position on proposition one or proposition two as a chamber. And again, there was a lot of difference of opinion among the survey respondents and on our board. So we met to go over the survey and deliberate about each of these three things.
Speaker 3:And we agreed that it was just not possible for us to tell people yes or no on one, yes or no on two. But we did think no on three was something that reflected the will of our membership. Now I can say, you know, personally, I'm concerned about proposition one passing and that kind of preventing the city from having the flexibility to generate revenues to do things like respond to glacial outburst flooding. I'm also I really do think there's a lot of interest in this exemption for food and residential utilities because that would directly make life more affordable, especially for households with smaller incomes. But it will reduce the city's budget by nine some million dollars.
Speaker 3:That's why the assembly thought, okay, we'll solve that problem by putting the sales tax, the seasonal sales tax forward, but they would both have to pass. So if two and three passed in conjunction, that would be kind of a possible slight revenue gain for the city. And I know some people think why do they need to gain anything? Why couldn't it have been a slight loss? Very good question.
Speaker 3:I can't answer that. I'm not on the assembly. But what we do have is sort of a complicated election with three interrelated measures. And people just need to look at all of them and then think about what the effect will be in conjunction. That's the bottom line for the chamber.
Speaker 3:We always want people to become more informed about what they're voting on. But again, the takeaway for us in this case is we know that the vast majority of our members were just really too concerned about the seasonal sales tax to go forward at this time.
Speaker 2:So not speaking just for the members, it's sounding like it's more of like a yes, yes, no for the majority of them.
Speaker 3:Well, I don't know. I mean, I really think we have a lot of members that are probably going to vote no, yes, yes. But I mean, I can't predict that. Yeah. But at any rate, the voter information pamphlet, which I've mentioned repeatedly on probable quarter the last couple of weeks, it is a great resource.
Speaker 3:It really does explain what the effects of these would be. And so people should look at that before casting their ballots. And then of course, ballots are out there so people can go ahead and vote. So as far as the propositions go, you know, we we will probably have some conversation about those, not at the forum this week. This week, we're going to have the four school board candidates at the chamber luncheon at the Moose Lodge.
Speaker 3:That'll be at noon this Thursday. And if you want to go, don't have to be a member. You can register online at junochamber.com and you don't have to pay for lunch. You can just go and pay a reduced fee and just be there for the presentation. There are of course three seats open for the school board.
Speaker 3:One's a partial term created by the resignation of Will Mundun. And then there's four people running for those three seats. And so we will have a forum with those four candidates. I think Becca has, I know she's reached out to them all. I'm not certain that they've all confirmed their attendance.
Speaker 3:But hopefully they'll all be there. We usually don't have too many no shows when we do candidate forums. A week from this Thursday, we will have the assembly candidates there. And so of course, District 1, Wade Bryson is the incumbent, Nana Brooks is challenging him. We're going to give the lion's share of the time on the October 2 to those two gentlemen because they're, you know, in a contested race.
Speaker 3:We're going to have Greg Smith and Ella Atkinson come and give them a few minutes just to say a few words, but, they are running unopposed. Of course, people do win on write ins. Will Muldoon, whom I just mentioned, you know, first joining the school board as a write in candidate. And of course, Lisa Murkowski famously, you know, kept her U. S.
Speaker 3:Senate seat while the few were write in. So I would never discount the possibility of a write in candidate being successful. We haven't seen any action about that thus far.
Speaker 2:Okay. So we'll see if there's a sneaky write in candidate for a school board maybe this year.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, I'm not running, not the school board. Would be keeping my eye on the assembly races. But that would be interesting if someone did it for the school board. But we really do enjoy our chamber luncheons there every week at the Moose Lodge.
Speaker 3:And we have moved back there from downtown. And you know past several years we tried to have the luncheons downtown and get legislators and legislative staff to attend them. But they started doing a lunch and learn series in the capital on Thursday. So we were directly, you know, counterbooked and so we've I I think we haven't decided finally but I think there's a good chance we're just going to stay out at the Moose Lodge this legislative session coming up because they do a great job for us and there's plenty of parking and it's not a hassle going downtown and having to worry about if you can find a place for your car.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the Moose Lodge has been such a great spot throughout the years here in the community as far as like the chamber usage or even other community uses. That's great. So again, those candidate forums, when are those happening?
Speaker 3:This Thursday, September 25, we will have the four school board candidates at the Juno Chamber Luncheon. And then on Thursday, October 2, we will have the four candidates for the Juno Assembly, two of whom running unopposed, have brief moments to speak. And then the two running for District 1, the incumbent Wade Bryson and his challenger, Nano Brooks, will have the fullness of the rest of the hour for their conversation. And I'll be moderating those and we will get them the questions in advance. And I'm looking forward to having a robust conversation.
Speaker 3:I did have a couple of calls yesterday about the forum on Friday night and I didn't get to attend it. So I can't really comment on what it was, but it sounds like their format may have been a little different than what our format is going to be.
Speaker 2:Okay. Is there any other events coming down the pipeline or just kind of the main things going on in the next few weeks?
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely. We'll continue to have luncheons. I think we're going to have our annual meeting on the October 9. Our executive director is going to be at the Alaska Chamber Business Summit. So we may have to move that around a little bit.
Speaker 3:But on the October 11, right after that luncheon, we're going to have our annual dinner at Centennial Hall. And this year the theme is for the health of it. Yes. And two co sponsors are Bartlett Regional Hospital and the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, the two largest healthcare providing entities in town. Interestingly enough, and we learned this through a chamber luncheon presentation by Melanie Chivans from Raincoast Data, Healthcare is now one of the largest employers and certainly in terms of higher end wages, the largest employer in the city and borough of Juneau.
Speaker 3:And as everyone knows, if you just look around, search is continuing to grow. Bartlett has continued to kind of stabilize its operations. And so we are very grateful that both those organizations were willing to step forward. Airlift Northwest is the lobby sponsor. And so the thing about the chamber dinner is we don't often have that many tickets to sell to the general public because our higher level chamber members get tickets and tables as part of their membership package.
Speaker 3:That stated, there will be some tickets available. And I know that Becca and our wonderful executive assistant, Makayla McDonald Cox, yesterday were crunching the numbers. To the extent that tickets for the Juno Chamber dinner will be available, they should be available online probably a little bit later this week, but they will go quickly. But it should be a lot of fun. You know, it's an event of people like to put on their formal gear, maybe wear a tuxedo, get down to Centennial Hall.
Speaker 3:We're going have a DJ this year, try to make sure there's some time for dancing after dinner part is concluded. We actually are going to be awarding a Citizen of the Year Award, a Business of the Year Award, and I believe a Lifetime Achievement Award. We had nominations for those open till last Friday, and we actually have the awards committee meeting out at the chamber office this afternoon. And we like to make those a surprise. And so the recipients of those awards usually don't know until they're there that night, which is kind of tough, you know, to keep a secret in this town.
Speaker 3:But it's really exciting when you turn around and you see someone realize, Oh my goodness, they're talking about me.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Yeah, I had a great time the last chamber dinner I did, the station I invited to and that was a good time and seeing all the people coming out for those dinners. So I highly recommend for the general public, if you're able to get in on it, definitely do so. It's a great time, great food and just great company. You could network and meet a bunch of different people involved in the community.
Speaker 2:That is awesome. I'm definitely looking forward to that. Ben, is there anything else that we need to talk about as far as Juno Chamber before I let you go for the day?
Speaker 3:Well, my term as president of the Juno Chamber will conclude at the annual dinner and I will pass the gavel to Corey Baxter of the International Union of Operating Engineers. He's our president-elect coming in. And I just want to thank Juno Media Center for the years and years of great support for the chamber and our members, but specifically for the chamber. You are so helpful helping us get the word out about our events, about our raffles, about the things we're doing in the community. And we really value that working relationship.
Speaker 3:So thanks to you, Justin. Thanks to Cliff and Lisa Dumas and everyone else here at Geno Media Center. We just really, really appreciate everyone's support for us.
Speaker 2:That's the power radio, Ben. And we, that's what we're here for, mister. I appreciate you coming in this morning, Ben, and I hope all these events go well. So again, folks, if you need to get in contact or figure out more info on the events coming up, how can they find you? Is it junochamber.org?
Speaker 3:Oh, no, no. Junochamber.org, they'll try to sell you that domain name. Junochamber.com is what it is. And if you go to junochamber.com, you can look at our calendar of events, you can register for the luncheon this week or next. As soon as there are tickets for the annual dinner, you could buy those there.
Speaker 3:And we've also posted the press release that we issued about our position on proposition three and our clear and deliberate choice not to take a position on propositions one and two. And then our overall recommendation, be informed, learn what you can about the propositions, learn what you can about the candidates, cast your ballot, let's all vote, let's make wise decisions and then we'll move forward as a community and prosper and be happy.
Speaker 2:I couldn't have said it better myself, Ben. Well, thank you so much for joining us this morning. And you could always check out this episode if you missed it this morning over on kinyradio.com. Thank you, Ben Brown for joining me on Capital Chat this morning and we'll see you till next time.
Speaker 3:Very good. Thanks, Justin.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to Capital Chat on KINY, your connection to the people and organizations making a difference in Juneau in Southeast Alaska.