The Juneau Assembly voted Monday night to delay a decision on whether to codify Juneau’s voluntary five-large-cruise-ship limit into local law.
Since 2023, the City and Borough of Juneau and cruise lines have negotiated a limit of five large ships per day during the cruise season. But that agreement is voluntary and nonbinding. Advocates unsuccessfully tried to put it on the ballot in a recent election.
At a committee meeting on Monday, the Assembly discussed a proposed ordinance that would codify Juneau’s limit into local law. If approved, it would make it illegal for a sixth cruise ship to berth in the City and Borough of Juneau – which includes Douglas Island.
Assembly member Ella Adkison said the Juneau community has made it clear it supports a five-ship limit.
“For the many years that I’ve been on the Assembly, I have seen overwhelming support for the five-ship limit. It’s consistently a thing that scores very highly in all of our surveys,” she said. “It’s something that everyone has kind of rallied around as a good thing and a good first step, and the only reason we haven’t made it code is that we were not legally able to.”
The Assembly hasn’t pursued codifying the limit because it was unclear whether it was legal. Other communities have tried regulating the industry and wound up in court, like Bar Harbor, Maine. Local business owners in Bar Harbor sued the town in 2022 after its citizens voted to approve a 1,000-passenger daily limit. After years of litigation, a federal judge ruled this spring that Bar Harbor’s passenger limits were in fact legal, opening a legal pathway for Juneau to pursue its own limits.
Even so, Juneau City Attorney Emily Wright told the Assembly that pursuing legal limits here would come with challenges.
“There is no scenario where you don’t get sued in this. I want to make that very clear,” she said. “Someone is going to sue you at any level of this.”
Wright estimates it could cost the city between $1 and 4 million dollars to litigate the ordinance if challenged — and she couldn’t promise whether Juneau would win.
Mayor Beth Weldon proposed postponing the ordinance due to the city’s current financial state and to allow the city’s Visitor Industry Task Force to conclude. Deputy Mayor Greg Smith agreed and said now’s not the time to push the ordinance forward.
“We have a five-ship limit now. We are seemingly effectively negotiating and discussing and having a positive relationship with the cruise lines, which I think is a good thing,” he said. “I guess I’m kind of like, ‘Don’t kick the dog if it’s not misbehaving.’”
The vote to postpone was approved in a narrow five-to-four decision. Assembly members Nano Brooks, Maureen Hall, Neil Steininger, and Mayor Weldon and Deputy Mayor Smith voted in favor of delaying, and Assembly members Alicia Hughes-Skandijs, Christine Woll, Paul Kelly and Adkison voted against. The city’s Visitor Industry Task Force is slated to finish its discussion and make recommendations to the Assembly later this fall.
