Friday, February 12, 1998
Capitol
School now belongs to Legislature
The deed is signed, and should be recorded next week. That's what City Manger Dave
Palmer says about yesterday's 5 to 2 vote by the CBJ Assembly to turn over Capital School
to the Legislature. City and State maintenance personnel will get together next week
to go over the building. According to Deputy Mayor John MacKinnon, the Legislature
will save about $330-thousand a year on office space rent, and will only be responsible
for paying utilities and maintenance.
JEA,
JSD begin bargaining
Contract talks between the Juneau Education Association and the Juneau School District
opened this week, and according to District Superintendent Mary Rubadeau, they are using
an interest based bargaining approach to the negotiations. The process requires both
sides to bring proposals to the table and submit them to a problem solving process.
Some key issues identified by both sides are how can the contract be improved to
enhance student achievement, how can fair compensation of teachers be balanced with other
District operational needs, and how can staff development be improved and expanded to be
effective for all. The talks will continue at the end of the month, and during the
week of March 9 through the 13.
AFN
seeks constitutional amendment
The Alaska Federation of Natives met with the Democratic Minority yesterday, and they
called for the Republican Majority to drop their subsistence lawsuit against the federal
government, and put a constitutional amendment on the ballot. A-F-N President Julie
Kitka says the lawsuit against Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt is a delaying tactic to
divert attention from resolving the issue.
Libraries
add to electronic knowledge database
Offerings on CD-ROM at the Juneau Public Libraries have grown by 11 over the past 6
months, making the total number of CD-ROMs available at the three branches 21.
Barbara Berg with the library says they have offerings for pre-readers to adults,
and often the CD-ROM equipped computers are vacant, while the Internet capable units are
busy. The Library also has hooked up their Geographic Information System, that is
linked to the CBJ assessors office, and offers a baseline database of the CBJ's computer
mapping.
Container
ship refuses to turn back
Efforts to get the Hanjin Barcelona to return to Dutch Harbor for questioning are failing.
The container ship struck a fish processing ship early yesterday, sinking the
Alaska One, and sending 33 crew members scrambling for life rafts. The Coast Guard
wants to question crew on the Panamanian flagged ship to learn why the two ships collided.
El
Nino drives temperatures up
Juneau has seen four high temperature records broken in the past four days. The
Tenth had a new record of 47 degrees set, while it reached 43 on the Eleventh and 46 on
the Twelfth. The high so far today has been 46, breaking a record set in 1977 of 44.
Forecasters in Juneau suspect the weird weather could be related to El Nino.
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