NOTN- The Juneau Assembly is considering new ways to manage the city’s visitor industry, which saw an increase this summer, including the possibility of formal passenger limits on cruise ship arrivals.
At Monday night’s Committee of the Whole meeting, officials discussed formalizing mooring agreements for docks and potentially advancing caps on visitor numbers, moving beyond current memorandums of agreement with the industry and making it official legislation.
“We will be looking at supporting the community’s ability to assess and manage growth.” Mayor Beth Weldon said Monday morning.
Mayor Weldon also said the Assembly introduced a new Visitor Industry Task Force that will pick up where the previous group left off.
“The task force will basically take up where the last one dropped off, and also continue to look at managing community impacts with infrastructure. And if that’s working well or not.” she said, noting that whale-watching will be a particular focus.
More than 1.7 million cruise visitors arrived in Juneau this season, according to city data.
