Cruise ship passengers line up to wait for a tour bus as cruise ships line the docks of the Port of Juneau on June 25, 2024. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
Voters in Alaska’s capital city have rejected a resident-written ballot proposition that would have banned large cruise ships on Saturdays and the Fourth of July.
Tuesday was municipal election day for most of Alaska’s cities and boroughs, and in preliminary results in Juneau, about 60% of participating voters sided against the “ship-free Saturdays” initiative. Some ballots have yet to be counted but are not expected to change the result.
Elsewhere across the state, municipal elections saw voters decide mayors and city councilors as well as ballot initiatives.
No local issue in Alaska was more closely watched than Juneau’s cruise ship proposal. Juneau, population 32,000, welcomes more than 1.6 million cruise ship passengers per year, and opponents of the proposal indicated in campaign finance reports that they spent $600,000 on a campaign to block it.
That money came from local stores that cater to tourists, Juneau’s chamber of commerce and big cruise companies, including Disney. Proponents, conversely, raised and spent less than $1,000 altogether, according to campaign finance reports published through Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the City and Borough of Juneau reported 3,873 votes against the proposal and 2,586 votes for it.
Juneau conducts its elections by mail, and additional ballots will be counted through Oct. 14, as long as they were postmarked on or before election day.
Elsewhere on the Juneau ballot, voters appeared to have reelected Mayor Beth Weldon, approved the sale of bonds for water treatment and communications equipment, and rejected the recall of two school board members.
The recall was inspired by residents’ dissatisfaction with the closure of one of the city’s two high schools amid budget trouble.
A mayor’s race tie in Nenana
While Anchorage, Cordova and Valdez hold their local elections in the spring and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough holds its election in November, most of Alaska’s 164 local governments hold elections on the first Tuesday in October.
No race was closer than the mayoral contest in the small town of Nenana, south of Fairbanks on the Parks Highway, where both candidates were tied at 85 votes after election day.
Incumbent Mayor Josh Verhagen is seeking reelection against Jeremiah “JT” Baker.
Fifteen absentee votes and twelve challenged ballots remain to be counted on Oct. 8, and if the result remains tied after that, city code calls for a winner to be chosen by “cast lots,” such as a coin flip.
Too close to call in Fairbanks
In Alaska’s second city, Fairbanks, the race to be mayor of the Fairbanks North Star Borough remained too close to call after election day.
Former Democratic state Rep. Grier Hopkins held a 43-vote lead over former Republican state Sen. John Coghill, out of more than 18,000 ballots counted through Tuesday evening.
The borough clerk’s office reported more than 1,500 remaining absentee and questioned ballots to be counted on Oct. 8, but historically, late-counted ballots have trended Democratic.
Fairbanks borough voters returned former Democratic state Rep. David Guttenberg to the borough Assembly and have likely elected former Republican state Rep. Tammie Wilson to the Assembly as well. Wilson would replace Savannah Fletcher, who is running for state Senate as an undeclared candidate.
Santa Claus returns to North Pole City Council
Santa Claus, a democratic socialist who previously served two terms on the North Pole City Council, was reelected unopposed to a third term alongside Ellen Glab. Claus ran for U.S. House in 2022, finishing sixth in a 48-way special primary election to fill the seat after the death of Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska.
Hotel tax to rise in Petersburg
In the Southeast Alaska town of Petersburg, voters approved a hike in the city’s hotel tax, from 4% to 7%. Of about 1,000 votes cast on election day, nearly four in five voters approved the increase. Voters also approved bonds for school maintenance and a $19.3 million loan from the state for a new water treatment facility — a large expense for the town of 3,300 people.
Skagway approves sale of medical clinic
Skagway, the gold-rush town that’s turned into a cruise tourist mecca, has voted to sell its city-owned clinic to a new nonprofit that will operate it. Skagway’s clinic is the only one in Alaska that answers to a local Assembly, KHNS-FM reported earlier this year, and recently ran into federal funding issues. Almost 300 of the town’s 350 or so voters approved the switch.
Haines offers bigger tax break for seniors, disabled veterans
Voters in the borough of Haines, just west of Skagway, approved a measure doubling the borough’s property tax exemption for seniors and disabled military veterans from $150,000 to $300,000. Haines has the oldest average population in Alaska, and the increased exemption is expected to cost the borough about $300,000 per year.
The state of Alaska requires local governments to exempt the first $150,000 of a home’s value from local property taxes if the owner is 65 or older, and Haines becomes one of a handful of local governments to increase the exemption beyond the state-mandated minimum.
Haines’ voter turnout through Election Day was 47%, among the highest in the state. In comparison, voter turnout in the Kenai Peninsula town of Soldotna was 4.8%, among the lowest.
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Correction: The initial version of this article included an incorrect total for spending on the Juneau cruise ship initiative. That total, based on campaign finance documents published with the state, included projected spending. An organizer of the initiative provided a figure for actual spending, and the article has been updated.