This story has been corrected to note the group Protect Juneau’s Future was formed in 2021, not this year.
Supporters of a petition seeking to put a Saturday ban on large cruise ships on the fall municipal election ballot said Thursday they submitted more than the minimum signatures required to the Juneau city clerk’s office and are prepared to get more if the certified total falls short 10 days from now.
Residents sponsoring what they call the Ship Free Saturdays initiative brought 2,459 signatures to the clerk’s office on Thursday morning — exactly 100 more than required — but one petition book with 37 signatures was invalidated due to lack of proper notarization, said Karla Hart, a leader of the campaign. The city clerk’s office has 10 days to review and certify or reject signatures.
Petitioners are typically encouraged by officials to gather significantly more than the minimum required signatures since some names may be declared invalid by the clerk’s office for reasons such as duplicates or not being a valid resident. Hart said she isn’t concerned about the small safety margin of the current signatures submitted, since supporters will get an additional period if they fail to meet the certified minimum.
“We knew going in that we had (another) 10 days to make it up,” she said. “And so we decided to just use that 10 days because to be honest it was a pretty tough collecting environment in terms of, not so much the (opposing) signs that the industry had put out, but the change in civic society that places that normally we would gather signatures weren’t welcoming initiative signature gatherers. So we had to meet a lot more dispersed population.”
The 2,359 certified signatures required is 25% of the total voters in the most recent regular municipal election.
The petition calls for a ban on cruise ships with a capacity for 250 or more passengers on Saturdays and July 4.
“All we are seeking is one day a week, plus the Fourth of July, when locals can go downtown, visit the glacier, hike on our trails, and go fishing without competing with thousands and thousands of cruise passengers,” said Steve Krall, a supporter of the initiative, in a press release issued Thursday by Ship Free Saturdays. “This is a modest and reasonable request: a simple day of rest for everyone.”
If the proposed ban qualifies for the ballot its opposition will include the group Protect Juneau’s Future, which at its website states “on Saturdays alone, cruise passengers are estimated to bring in nearly $32 million of direct spending into Juneau’s economy in 2025.” In a statement issued Thursday, the group expressed disappointment about the number of signatures turned in exceeding the necessary minimum.
“This measure threatens to undermine the significant progress made through open dialogue between our community and the cruise industry,” the statement notes. “We believe such important decisions should not be made through a ballot process but rather through continued collaboration and communication.”
The group opposed a similar attempt at limiting cruise ships in 2021 with three measures imposing restrictions. Hart, who also led efforts favoring those measures, has previously said organizers’ efforts were limited due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Juneau set a record for cruise ship traffic last year with about 1.67 million passengers, with about the same number forecast this year despite a new five-ship-a-day ban taking effect due to an agreement between the city and cruise industry. Local leaders say they are attempting or considering various steps to lessen the impacts of tourism, including spreading visitor activities over a larger area (including a gondola at Eaglecrest Ski Area scheduled to be operating by the summer of 2026) and a daily limit on the number of passengers.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
