A petition to restrict the number of daily cruise ship passengers in Juneau and shorten the season for ships with capacity for 250 or more passengers is now being circulated by people hoping to put the question on the fall municipal election ballot.
A backer of last year’s unsuccessful “Ship Free Saturday” petition says the new proposition largely seeks to enact into law voluntarily daily limits the cruise industry has already agreed to starting in 2026. Opposition is again being expressed by tourism and business officials — who along with citing the economic benefits of the cruise industry to Juneau are focusing on what they call unconstitutional provisions of the proposal.
The initial petition titled “Cruise Ship Limits” was certified Friday and supporters have until noon May 19 to turn in at least 2,720 valid signatures from registered voters, according to a letter from Beth McEwen, municipal clerk for the City and Borough of Juneau.
“The key initiative is do the citizens of Juneau want a hard-and-fast limit on how many cruise passengers are coming to Juneau on any given day, and throughout any given year?” said Karla Hart, a longtime cruise industry activist who was a primary backer of that initiative as well as the new one, in an interview Monday.
The official summary language states the initiative would set a daily limit of five ships with capacity for 950 or more passengers, a daily limit of 16,000 “lower-berth capacity” passengers Sunday through Friday and 12,000 on Saturdays, allow ships with capacity for 250 or more passengers between May 1 to Sept. 30, and set an annual limit of 1.5 million lower berth capacity passengers. Juneau had 1.64 million passengers in 2023 and a record 1.68 million in 2024.
In addition, the initiative “requires medium and large cruise ships to get a permit from CBJ and imposes penalties for violating permit restrictions,” according to the official summary language.
A request to deny certification of the petition due to multiple alleged legal faults with the proposed initiative was sent to McEwen by attorney Scott Collins with the law firm Helsell Fetterman LLP, which is representing the local tour and transport company Allen Marine Inc.
The letter argues the wording of the proposition is so vague it violates due process provisions of the U.S. Constitution since cruise companies will not have a clear sense of the restrictions or punishments imposed. It also argues the proposal violates constitutional provisions on free travel and the type of permit fees local governments can impose on vessels.
”The bottom line is that the proposed initiative is wholly inadequate in attempting to address the complexity of limiting, permitting, and penalizing cruise ship visitation,” the letter states. “That inadequacy is compounded by inaccuracies, vagueness, ambiguity, and hyperbole throughout the mere two pages of proposed ordinance. The proponents need to do so much more, and so much better, to impose limits, permits, and penalties on cruise ships calling on Juneau.”
Hart, while not having legal rebuttals to all of the arguments presented in the attorney’s letter, said some provisions of the measure can still be enacted even if a court declares some invalid — and noted a pending court case in Maine could uphold the right of municipalities to enforce daily cruise passenger limits.
Also, she said, the Assembly can remove an initiative from the fall ballot by enacting a substantially similar measure, which she hopes might occur if people show enough support for the petition.
“If the Assembly looked and said, ‘Wow, OK, 3,000 people or 2,700 people signed the initiative and want this maybe we should just do it,’” she said.
Some local circumstances have changed since the “Ship Free Saturday” initiative failed last October by a 61%-39% vote, Hart said. Among those are the Assembly earlier this month approving a tidelands lease for a private cruise dock that will be the fifth downtown dock, plus Goldbelt Inc. and Royal Caribbean Group announcing plans after last fall’s election for a two-ship private cruise port in west Douglas Island, raising concerns about how that project will change the landscape for cruise-related businesses downtown.
“The dynamics have totally shifted on these next couple of docks and so it’s possible that we’ll get support that we wouldn’t have gotten otherwise,” she said.
A counterargument in Collins’ letter states “Juneau’s voters soundly rejected” the limits proposed last year and Hart is “refusing to accept the will of the CBJ electorate” by filing the new measure. He reiterates arguments the cruise industry and local businesses made in a heavily funded opposition campaign last year that emphasized the economic benefits of tourism, citing a CBJ-requested study in 2023 that found the cruise industry accounted for $375 million in direct local spending, 3,850 jobs providing $196 million in labor income, and CBJ collecting $22 million in cruise-related fees and an estimated $18 million in sales tax revenues.
But the dominant portion of his letter focuses on the alleged legal problems with the initiative. Some enforcement wording refers to ship size while other limits apply to passenger totals, creating one of multiple situations where cruise lines won’t have clear knowledge of what rules they have to comply with, Collins argues. Also the provision requiring cruise ships to obtain a “Juneau Port Call Permit” is vague.
“It would force the City Manager to shoot in the dark, as no detail whatsoever is offered to guide the City Manager on a multitude of matters and concerns in trying to adopt such regulations,” the letter states.
Furthermore — and “perhaps more importantly” — is the lack of specificity and due process in setting fines and other punishments for cruise companies violating the limits, according to Collins.
Unanswered questions include: Who determines whether a violation has occurred?” he wrote. “Who determines what penalty is to be imposed if there has been a violation? What process does a cruise ship have to participate in, defend itself against, and appeal from decisions on penalty imposition?”
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
