I am having a difficult time deciding who to vote for among the candidates for mayor. These are some of the things they should be concerned about.<\/p>\n
Out of the three largest cities in Alaska, why is Juneau by far the most expensive to live in? Could it be that a road to the Lower 48 makes a difference in freight charges?<\/p>\n
For the past five years, Juneau’s population and school enrollment figures have been on the decline. Could it be that $12-15 an hour seasonal jobs are starting to catch up to Juneau? If a family can no longer make a living here, they must leave.<\/p>\n
If one drives from Juneau to the Mendenhall Valley, you pass a very large building standing vacant. It was left behind by a rental business that could no longer make it here. If you continue to the shopping malls in the Valley, you will find them half-vacant also. Could it be there is less money being spent, but the cost of running a business here in Juneau has risen?<\/p>\n
The Juneau economy should be at the top of the mayor’s list, not building more things we must then pay to operate. A young family with children cannot move here or remain here without a good-paying job. The sooner they figure this out, the better off we will be.<\/p>\n
Having a mayor and Assembly that are drunk on 5 percent sales tax money generated by tourists and then spending the money on things that are not needed, such as bronze whales, swimming holes, libraries, skating rinks and soon a new Juneau Arts and Culture Center, if they get their way. None of these things are on the tax roles, and all take tax dollars to operate.<\/p>\n
I hope that the people of Juneau wake up to the fact that a good-paying job will attract and retain people here, not nice things to have.<\/p>\n
Dick Dau,<\/strong><\/p>\n Juneau<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am having a difficult time deciding who to vote for among the candidates for mayor. These are some of the things they should be concerned about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":36145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":14,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[97,176],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-36144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-letters","tag-letters-to-the-editor","tag-municipal-election"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36144"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=36144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}