The city’s Visitor Industry Task Force has put out its draft recommendations and is looking for feedback from the community this Thursday at 5:30 p.m. at the Mendenhall Valley Public Library.
The recommendations focus on the whale watching industry, downtown congestion, helicopter flight-seeing and data collection. KTOO’s Mike Lane sat down with Assembly and task force Chair Ella Adkison to learn more.
Listen:
The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Mike Lane: We’re in the studio with Ella Adkison. She is an Assembly member, and you’re here to talk with us about the Visitor Industry Task Force. So, what’s your role with the task force?
Ella Adkison: I am the chair of the Visitor Industry Task Force. Just making sure we all work together and look at what’s best for Juneau.
Mike Lane: I know that there is a draft of recommendations — what are the drafted recommendations focused on?
Ella Adkison: That would be you know flightseeing, whale watching, downtown congestion, and then data collection so we can figure out how best to measure tourism for future regulation of it.
Mike Lane: Now, I had a chance to look at the spreadsheet. It’s not the easiest thing to read. For someone who’s looking at it for the first time. What should they be looking for, or how should they look at it?
Ella Adkison: Yes, so it is. It is sort of a spreadsheet, and you know our excellent folks at the communications department have cleaned it up a little bit because it was a working document for quite a while. But you know it has the main topics of like, “are you really concerned about whale watching?” You want to look at the recommendations that have to do with whale watching and go along those columns to see, you know, what is the recommendation? How much do people think it will cost? What is its priority? Though they’re all pretty high priority, and use that to kind of inform your testimony.
Mike Lane: And how many recommendations are there?
Ella Adkison: Oh, I don’t have an exact number, but somewhere in the thirties, I believe.
Mike Lane: And what are some examples of recommendations?
Ella Adkison: Yes, so there’s certainly some heavy lifting recommendations. One of them is kind of looking at how to regulate and potentially cap the number of whale watching boats. That’s something we’ve worked with the whale watching folks in Juneau on, and it talks about looking into a limited entry system. It talks about capping the number of boats. It talks about a permitting system. So just kind of a list of things for the Assembly and, frankly, law to look at to see what’s feasible and what could work for Juneau. That’s the kind of one of the bigger recommendations that comes to mind.
Mike Lane: Who decides what is high, medium, or low priority on the draft recommendations.
Ella Adkison: Yes, so that is something the task force has worked on with staff, you know? And I would say high priority doesn’t necessarily mean that we think it’s the most important thing, but also maybe it’s something that we think could happen really quickly or right away because there are just some things that are going to take years to potentially implement. Right, like maybe it’s working with the federal government or the Coast Guard on something. Maybe it’s working with Alaska DOT and it’s not fully in the city’s wheelhouse. But if it’s something the city can do right now, right away, that might be a higher recommendation for instance. So don’t take “high priority” as we only care about this.
Mike Lane: And you mentioned that you want to hear from the public on these. So how can the public weigh in?
Ella Adkison: So we have email. You can email the city clerk. That will get out to all of our task force members. But if you’re able to, we have in-person testimony at the Valley Public Library on Nov. 5. So that’s kind of the two main ways you can reach out to us about these recommendations. We really want to hear from you.
Mike Lane: The task force is looking for feedback through or on Nov. 5. So, what exactly should the public be looking at and giving feedback on?
Ella Adkison: What we really want to hear is, you know, what do you think of those recommendations? Truly, the reason we are having testimony before finalization is so that we can make informed decisions based on what the public, you know, gives us as feedback. So, are we missing things? Are there, you know, recommendations that you really disagree with or you think are incomplete? We really want to hear that because you know we’re a group of people, but we’re not the whole community.
Mike Lane: Okay, and who makes the final decisions on the recommendations?
Ella Adkison: Well, the final decisions will be the Assembly. The Visitor Industry Task Force will finalize them and present them to the assembly. What the Assembly chooses to adopt and implement will be, you know, fully policy and up to the Assembly.
Mike Lane: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Ella Adkison: Well, I just really want to emphasize that the public meeting for testimony is at the Valley Library, and please come and give us your thoughts. We really, really welcome them and want to hear them.
Public testimony will be accepted via email and in person during the meeting Thursday at the Mendenhall Valley Public Library at 5:30 p.m. The Visitor Industry Task Force plans to finalize the recommendations on Nov. 12.
Learn more about the Visitor Industry Task Force here and read the 2026 draft recommendations here.
