The Juneau Assembly is poised to decide how it will spend $5.2 million in fees collected from cruise ship passengers visiting Juneau.
City Manager Rorie Watt wrote a memo outlining his recommendations for what to fund in anticipation of nearly 1 million passengers this season.
“We have a bunch of good services that we provide that I think everybody that comes to Juneau appreciates,” Watt said. “We’ve got extra foot patrols, we’ve got crossing guards, we’ve got visitor information we staff up (Capital City Fire/Rescue) so we can respond when people have medical emergencies.”
The Assembly’s finance committee is expected to review the passenger fee spending plan at its Wednesday meeting. Not every request can be funded. The city manager has recommended rejecting nearly $3.7 million in requests, including $400,000 from Bartlett Regional Hospital to offset expenses from cruise ship passengers.
Watt said the city has to be conservative in how it spends the $5-per-head passenger fee.
“It’s always a balance of picking the highest priority needs,” he said. “In the case of the hospital, I felt their request didn’t meet the merits of what the fee is for.”
Hospital CEO Chuck Bill declined to comment.
The city’s caution stems from ongoing litigation with the cruise ship industry. A federal lawsuit was filed last year over the city’s use of passenger fees to fund a $10 million waterfront park. The city has spent more than $280,000 on legal defense and recently set aside an additional $100,000.
“We’re very carefully studying the law and being very careful with the decisions that we make — maybe more so this year than other years,” Watt said. “But I think on the whole, if you look at the list, it’s really a stay-the-course list. We’re basically funding things very similarly to the way that we’ve done it for the past 10 years.”
Cruise Lines Industry Association Alaska spokesman John Binkley wrote in an email that the industry was aware of this year’s proposals but declined further comment.
