City proposes $15 million bond package to stimulate economy<\/a>]<\/ins><\/p>\n\t\t\t\tAssembly member Wade Bryson said he would’ve liked to lower taxes, but the current economic climate makes the bond package a good way to stimulate the local economy.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“Keeping it even right now was kinda the best scenario,” Bryson said. “I think this does a lot of good for the community, I see this as a way the city can help people out at a time when they’re struggling.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
The suggestion that the city invest in infrastructure projects came from the Juneau Economic Stabilization Task Force and city staff created a list of projects. The original list included new construction projects such as extending the West Douglas Pioneer Road, but the proposal was changed to only pay for repairs and pre-existing infrastructure, according to Mayor Beth Weldon.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“We tried to make it projects that were just dealing with infrastructure and deferred maintenance, repair issues.” Weldon said. “We were responding to those people in the public that asked us to do that.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Also Monday Assemblymembers voted to appropriate $12 million of CARES Act money on grants for small businesses and nonprofits in Southeast Alaska.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
The city’s small business grant program received $8.5 million, the nonprofit grant program received $3 million and $500,000 went to emergency air transportation company Airlift Northwest, to help them continue to serve Southeast. Assembly members will get an update on the city’s CARES Act spending at their Finance Committee meeting Wednesday, Weldon said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Brief interruption <\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\tTuesday’s meeting was briefly interrupted when a member of the public called in and made sexually explicit comments directed toward Assembly member Carole Triem during a public comment period.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Assembly members came to Triem’s defense, an act she said was appreciated.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“I’m really glad my fellow assembly members spoke up last night, I know that can be really hard to do in the moment,” she told the Empire Tuesday in an interview.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Triem dismissed the caller but said the incident was reflective of an environment women often have to deal with and hoped it would raise awareness about the pervasiveness of sexual misconduct against women.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
• Contact reporter Peter Segall at psegall@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @SegallJnoEmpire.<\/em><\/p>\n\t\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Funds target schools, roads and parks. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":531,"featured_media":62403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[703,75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-62402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-coronavirus","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62402","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\/531"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62402"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=62402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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