Juneau's summer sales tax is official: 6% from April through September

Juneau's sales tax will rise to 6% from April through September starting next spring, now that the city has certified voters' approval of a summer sales tax.

Proposition C passed 5,702 to 4,274 in the Oct. 6 municipal election, according to the certified results Municipal Clerk Breckan Hendricks signed Tuesday. It adds a permanent 1% tax from April 1 through Sept. 30 each year, on top of the city's 5% rate. The city estimates it will raise about $6.8 million a year.

The tax takes effect Nov. 19, but businesses won't start collecting it until April 1, 2027. It applies to everyone buying in the borough during those months, summer visitors included, and remote sellers delivering into Juneau will charge it too. The food and utility exemptions voters approved last year still apply.

The citizen initiative says the money is meant to help pay for indoor and outdoor recreation. That isn't binding: the Assembly decides each year how to spend it, according to the city's ballot FAQ. The budget the Assembly adopted this spring ended all brushing on city-owned trails and cut staff and public programs at the city's arboretum, Alaska News reported May 6.

A year ago, voters turned down a different seasonal tax, 5,853 to 4,365. That plan would have replaced the permanent 1% and temporary 3% taxes with 2% from October through March and 6.5% from April through September, Alaska News reported Oct. 5. Proposition C adds 1% in summer only.

The 6% figure assumes the base rate stays at 5%. That base includes a separate temporary 1% tax set to expire Sept. 30, 2028.

Voters also renewed the city's temporary 3% sales tax, 7,840 to 1,946, which keeps the base at 5%. The renewal runs from July 1, 2027, through June 30, 2032. The tax helps pay for police, fire, street maintenance, roads and other services and brings in about $34 million a year, the city estimates. Had it failed, the rate would have dropped to 2%.

And voters kept the property tax cap they set last year. Proposition B, a citizen charter amendment that would have raised the cap from 9 mills back to 12, failed 5,208 to 4,715. A year ago voters lowered it from 12 to 9, 5,163 to 5,006. The Assembly sets the actual rate each year. It's now 9.92 mills: 9 for general government, which is the cap, and 0.92 for debt service, which falls outside it.

In the Assembly races, Paul Roy Kelly won a second full term in the areawide seat with 5,609 votes, or 62%, over Brad Sapp and James J. McCants. Mila Cosgrove, unopposed in District 1, and Joyce M. Niven, who won District 2 with 2,990 votes in a four-way race, won their first Assembly terms. School Board members David Noon and Britteny Cioni-Haywood were reelected over Christine Johnson.

Turnout was 36%, with 10,027 of 27,768 registered voters casting ballots.