Assembly to Receive Draft Cruise MOU

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Category: News

Created on Monday, 21 October 2024 16:34

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By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
    At Tuesday night’s regular meeting the Assembly will review a draft Memorandum of Understanding on a city cruise ship policy that City Administrator John Leach has negotiated with the Sitka Dock Company LLC, at the direction of the Assembly.
    “The purpose of this MOU is to establish and define the agreed upon purposes, intentions, and expectations between the Parties with respect to the operation of their respective facilities to support the sustainability of cruise tourism in Sitka, Alaska,” the introduction says.
    The Sitka Tourism Task Force, which has since sunseted, made their tourism recommendations to the Assembly, and since then Assembly members have proposed actions related to the recommendations.
    One of the first was to establish a permanent Sitka Tourism Commission. A memorandum of understanding with the cruise ship industry was one of the other recommendations, under Directive 1 related to finding the right level of tourism for Sitka.
    The draft of the MOU Leach negotiated with the privately owned cruise ship dock company sets daily visitation limits and details such as designated quiet days. The Assembly has created an official city tourism commission, but as its members have not yet been selected, it did not participate in drafting the agreement that is going to the Assembly. The packet includes a proposed motion for an Assembly vote to adopt it.
    Assembly member Chris Ystad, the former liaison to the task force, said he learned how polarizing the growth of tourism has been in the community. He was expecting to see the MOU presented to the Assembly, and hoped that it would connect to ideas and discussions that the task force heard at the table and community events.
    “Everyone wants to have the conversation, and this is a good starting point to have the conversation,” he said. “Obviously not everyone is going to be happy because there is a lot of people at either end of the spectrum. ... A lot of this came out of community wishes and there should be a lot of approval of this document.”
    Part of the draft MOU covers port calls and berthing guidelines and another relates to cruise ship scheduling.
    The city and cruise dock under the draft MOU will establish criteria for planning cruise calls, including:
    – not allowing cruise ships with more than 1,000 passengers to dock at the city’s docks if doing so would result in the total cruise passenger number exceeding 7,000.
    – on days when 4,500 passengers are scheduled on ships at the city docks, the cruise company will not allow the docking or tendering of ships of more than 1,300 visitors at the cruise terminal, if doing so would result in more than 7,000 in Sitka for the day.
    –- maintaining a quiet day on a weekend day. This means the city will not allow cruise ships with more than 1,000 passengers to dock at or tender to city docks on the  cruise terminal “weekend day reserved for one ship with a capacity under 1,250.” Saturday is the designated quiet day in the draft MOU, but it can be changed through negotiations.
- in April and October, the city will not permit ships greater than 1,000 to dock or tender at city docks.
    The section on scheduling calls for  providing more readily accessible ship schedules and coordination, through:
    – sharing quarterly schedules with an explanation for changes.
    –- providing the stated lower berth capacity for each ship during the season.
    – drafting a berthing schedule no later than 18 months before each season.
    – the city and cruise terminal need to notify each other of impactful schedule changes within three months of the season, or during the season. Changes are be sent to the administrator, cruise terminal, harbor department and tourism manager.
    The Draft MOU is one of several items on a lengthy Tuesday night agenda that includes appointments to the new Tourism Commission and discussion of the RFP for the visitor services contract, a  supplemental appropriation for the airport terminal operation, and an executive session on a lawsuit filed by a taxi company against the city.
    The meeting starts at 6 p.m. at Harrigan Centennial Hall.