A “neutral and factual” FAQ about the Ship-Free Saturdays ballot initiative has been published by Juneau’s municipal government — and if it’s any indicator of the claim to objectivity, advocates on both sides of the issue are finding fault with it.
The three-page FAQ does, however, put a strong emphasis on efforts the City and Borough of Juneau is making to limit cruise industry impacts, with about half of the document listing a dozen provisions negotiated with the industry during the past five years and noting another is in the works. The provisions include a limit of five large ships a day that took effect this year and a cap on the number of daily passengers starting in 2026.
The remainder of the document includes data such as spending by cruise passengers in 2024 ($30 million in direct spending, $3.7 million in revenues for the city) and the increase in annual passengers since 1995 (380,600 in 1995, 951,400 in 2006, 1.65 million last year). There is also speculation on how the ban might affect cruise scheduling if approved by voters in the Oct. 1 municipal election.
“It is impossible to predict the exact outcomes of the initiative, however based on our knowledge of the region and industry, we can identify a range of possible results,” the FAQ notes. Listing possibilities include cruise lines deploying ships either to places other than Alaska or additional ports within the state other than Juneau.
The FAQ also puts legal considerations in front of its readers with the question “Will CBJ get sued if the initiative passes?”
“We don’t really know,” the FAQ states. “The City Attorney certified the ship-free Saturday petition as legal. However, CBJ has received legal letters from several companies stating their intent to sue if the ship free Saturdays passes.”
Not detailed in the document itself is the emotional aspect for locals who love and/or hate the influx of cruise ship passengers, with the FAQ instead providing a link referring readers to annual tourism surveys conducted on behalf of the city. Such emotions are a key argument for proponents of the ban who say they’re seeking a tranquil community once a week during the summer.
The most recent survey, completed after a record-high number of passengers visited Juneau last year, found 48% of respondents stating the industry’s impacts are positive overall and 22% saying they’re negative overall, a more critical outcome than recent years. A total of 64% of the 517 local respondents said they favor keeping the number of cruise passengers about the same or slightly lower in future years.
The ballot measure would ban cruise ships with a capacity of 250 passengers or more on Saturdays and the Fourth of July.
Karla Hart, one of the lead sponsors of the Ship-Free Saturdays measure, stated in an email she was “under impressed” overall due to “subtle biases” and a lack of data she believes would provide a more objective overview of the cruise industry’s true impacts on Juneau.
“How many seasonal employees?” she wrote, listing some of her unanswered questions. “How many of those are resident and how many non-resident? How many cruise-related in Juneau are locally owned? What is the leakage from different forms of businesses? What businesses have the lowest adverse impact while providing the best employment opportunities for local residents? How many housing units are occupied by non-resident seasonal cruise-related employees? Are those units removed from the year-round workforce housing stock or are they new builds?”
Opposing the ballot measure is the group Protect Juneau’s Future, co-chaired by top officials at Goldbelt Inc. and Temsco Helicopters, which in an emailed statement Wednesday noted the city’s FAQ “raises several points that need a closer look.”
“CBJ mentions that there was $30 million in direct spending by cruise passengers,” the email states. “There are significant indirect benefits to the community as well, creating further economic benefits that are not included in the direct spending amount. Effective congestion management requires strategic and collaborative efforts, not arbitrary bans.”
Advocates on both sides also agreed — in different ways — there are questionable assumptions in the FAQ’s assessment of various ways the cruise industry might respond to the ban if enacted. The FAQ lists three possible scenarios:
• “The cruise lines could move a ship to another day, swapping a nearby port with Juneau. Depending on the port, this could have few impacts.”
• The cruise lines could remove a ship from the Alaska itinerary altogether and deploy it elsewhere in the world. If ships are removed from Alaska itineraries, the economic impacts seen in Juneau are compounded region wide.”
• “The cruise lines could add an alternative stop to the itinerary, adding the ship to a neighboring port, this would cause neighboring ports to get busier.”
Hart stated she agrees with the first assumption, but the other two raise questions — and possible bias — with suggestions about the potential economic impacts for other Southeast communities.
“If a ship is pulled (from Alaska), the economic impact is felt region-wide,” she wrote. However, “there are residents in Sitka, Ketchikan, and Skagway who all feel that they are beyond capacity…that may relieve some pressure on communities that aren’t quite at the point of trying an initiative or other limits yet. It isn’t just about money.”
The statement by Protect Juneau’s Future challenges the FAQ’s first assertion that swapping nearby ports with Juneau for specific days could have minimal impacts.
“The idea that shifting cruise ship schedules to other days would have minimal impact ignores the reality of congestion management,” the email notes. “Reallocating ships would make already busy days even more crowded. Proponents claim there’s plenty of room on other days, yet congestion remains a key concern.”
The FAQ was published by the city without the Assembly approving funds that would allow advocacy for or against the ballot measure, which would mean fulfilling registration and financial disclosure requirements with the Alaska Public Offices Commission. While city staff time (and thus funding) was involved in compiling the FAQ, the city manager’s office has stated such work is permissible to provide neutral information to voters.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
