By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
Assembly members at their Monday meeting approved the draft of a request for proposals for a contract to provide bus service for cruise ship passengers between the Halibut Point dock and downtown Sitka, but with some minor changes to the initial draft.
The city has been paying $1.07 per passenger arriving at the dock, although not all passengers use the service. The cost of the bus contract is covered by the city’s share of the state cruise ship passenger excise tax.
But with numbers of cruise visitors expected to climb sharply over the next two years, some Assembly members questioned whether the proposed terms would be a good deal for the city. City staff estimated the value of the deal at $204,000 in 2021 and $257,000 in 2022, given the estimates for cruise ship numbers.
Chris McGraw, manager of the family-owned cruise ship dock, has been providing the bus service, and says he believes it’s a fair deal, since the service benefits passengers paying the tax. He said the $1.07 per passenger charge falls short of covering his costs. He owns the buses, and contracts with Alaska Coach Tours to hire drivers.
“My costs are over $3 per passenger,” he said in an interview today. “That doesn’t cover the actual cost of the buses.”
And those costs are going up beyond the amount he will receive in increases under the contract since he will have to increase the number of buses on the big cruise ship days, McGraw added.
He said he and the city don’t have any better options for covering the cost of the service, other than the Commercial Passenger Excise Tax funding from the state.
“Option one is we don’t run a shuttle and passengers have to find their own way; two, we run a shuttle and charge passengers; or three, run a shuttle and pay the whole cost ourselves,” McGraw said.
Charging customers would discourage people from coming into town, and he would have to raise docking fees if he foots the cost of the bus shuttle himself, he said. Higher docking fees may, in turn, discourage cruise ships from using his facility or coming to Sitka, he said.
Interim City Administrator Hugh Bevan estimated the number of cruise passengers in 2020 at 190,000 ($204,000 for the bus service); and 240,000 in 2021 ($257,000 for the bus service). The city plans to use other CPET funds in the current year on the Cross Trail, cruise ship security, the Sea Walk extension, and pedestrian improvements on Lincoln Street.
At Monday’s meeting Assembly members asked that the request for proposals be changed to take into account not just the total number of cruise passengers coming in to the dock but the actual number using the bus service. Bevan said he has changed the RFP to reflect this.
McGraw said that would reduce income from the shuttle contract, since local tour companies, such as Allen Marine, Sitka Tours and Alaska Coach Tours pick up passengers at his dock and drop them off downtown, or deliver them to the dock after a tour that starts at Harrigan Centennial Hall.
Some Assembly members noted that the buses take a toll in terms of wear and tear on the Sitka roads, quality of the air and traffic congestion.
“We need to balance that with the need to bring people downtown,” Kevin Knox commented at the meeting.
Bevan said today he has added a requirement for buses to clean up any spilled oil at Harrigan Centennial Hall.
