A packed town hall meeting Tuesday night saw a passionate debate over the future of cruise tourism in Sitka.
Two opposing advocacy groups hashed out the potential impacts of increased tourism or a proposed cap on visitor numbers on the town’s economy, environment, and way of life.
The debate at the Centennial Hall auditorium, sponsored by the two groups and moderated by Lisa Busch, centered around the cruise tourism ballot proposition in the May 28 special election, which calls for specific limits on local cruise ship visitations.
The city's notice on the election is posted at cityofsitka.com/SpecialMunicipalElection, where there is voter information as well as a link to the 11-page ordinance that is being proposed.
The Yes-or-No question on the ballot will be on adoption of the ordinance that, among other controls, sets aside at least one day a week for no cruise ships; imposes a cap of 4,500 passengers per day; and limits cruise visitors to 300,000 a year, with visits allowed from May through September. With voter approval, the ordinance would go into effect next year.
Tuesday’s debate ahead of the election began with statements from Klaudia Leccese, Larry Edwards and Devon Calvin, representing “Vote Yes on 1 for Sitka’s Small Town Soul.”
The proponents said that the ballot measure is necessary to preserve Sitka’s character and economic resilience, limit overcrowding, and protect the environment.
Both Leccese and Edwards called for a return to “managed growth,” citing the 2007 Visitor Industry Plan 2.0, which emphasized community input and limiting congestion downtown.
They expressed concerns about growth in visitor numbers from fewer than 300,000 up until 2020, to the almost 600,000 projected for 2024 and 2025, and said that more time, and data, is needed to inform growth.
Edwards said that high cruise visitation numbers were “forced upon our town” beginning in 2022, following the construction of the Sitka Sound Cruise Terminal by a private company.
Leccese said that the terminal development involved with "no collaboration or public conversation.”
She said Sitka now receives 73 cruise ship visitors per resident each year, while Juneau receives 50 visitors per capita.
Edwards criticized city leaders for relying on what he called “vastly overestimated” projections of sales tax revenues associated with cruise ship tourism.
Calvin cited Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation records showing recent cruise ship wastewater violations involving excessive discharges of pollutants like ammonia, copper, chlorine and fecal coliform.
He noted that, in 2019, Gov. Mike Dunleavy pulled funding for the state Ocean Ranger program, which “placed observers aboard cruise ships to monitor wastewater discharges.”
“I believe we need to take action to reduce the frequency of these incidents that occur in the waters that are important to commercial, recreational and subsistence interest,” Calvin said.
Representatives of “Safeguard Sitka’s Future - Vote No on 1,” Jeremy Plank, Teal West, Chris McGraw and Sherri Blankenship, gave rebuttals to the points raised by the SOUL group.
Regarding sales tax revenues, Plank said that a study into a set group of Sitka-based tour operators found a 316% increase in their tourism-related revenues between 2019 and 2024.
West said later that a recent SSF survey of Lincoln Street businesses illustrates the importance of tourism to the local economy. "They reported that only 10% of their entire sales for the year come between October 1 and April 1,” West said.
McGraw said that recent hikes in visitor numbers have not caused congestion and crowding.
He cited Department of Transportation traffic data that he found from the stoplight on Halibut Point Road: “In 2015 we had 117,000 cruise ship passengers. In July (2015), the average number of cars per day was 10,405.
“In 2024, when we had 600,000 cruise ship passengers, the average daily number of vehicles through that intersection was 10,451.”
In later talks about “managed growth,” McGraw pointed to a planned Shee Atiká development past the cruise terminal as an example of distributing guests and tempering crowding downtown.
“Managed growth is defined as what can be accommodated by the community ... What can you accommodate reasonably, and as things change, if you’re allowed to have more guests, you have more guests," McGraw said.
Blankenship and West gave opening statements on behalf of the Safeguard group.
Sherri Blankenship spoke about the role of cruise ship tourism as an economic pillar for Sitka, which supports locals who own and work for businesses like her own Highliner Coffee Co.
She said that recent growth in cruise ship visitations offers “a future where economic strength, community, compassion and thoughtful stewardship go hand in hand.”
Of the proposed cap of 300,000 visitors per year, she said that “we cannot afford to gamble with one of the foundations that keeps this town standing and progressing, not without a clear plan, not without understanding the full cost,” Blankenship said. “And right now, there isn't a plan if this initiative passes, there isn't a plan for the people that have invested and possibly will have a bankruptcy.”
West framed the debate in the context of broader community values, quoting Theodore Roosevelt’s famous Man in the Arena speech to highlight the challenges faced by local businesses during the pandemic.
West reflected on her own experience opening the Sitka Lighthouse Co. Store on Lincoln Street in early 2020, weathering losses during the covid-19 pandemic, and recalling “how the streets slowly came back to life” when cruise ships returned here in 2021 and 2022.
Both Blankenship and West alluded to losses in the once-vibrant timber and fisheries sectors.
“We’ve lost entire industries before,” West said. “Let's not wait until it's too late to protect the opportunities that we have now.”
Responding to the statements from Safeguard, Lecesse noted that “300,000 visitors is more than we ever had in 2020.”
She said that a 300,000-passenger cap would allow for “plenty of people to purchase things and not be overcrowded.”
“The other thing is that we really need to be cautious about putting all of our eggs in one basket,” Leccese said. “We did that with the pulp mill, and people were very worried when that went down in the late '80s, and we saw that Sitka thrived.
“Sitka has a way of thriving, and if we keep a broad variety of industry, we're going to do much better than if we focus only on one faction,” Leccese said. “That’s still a lot of visitors, and there's no wish at all to close down the cruise industry.”
She later cautioned that with more cruise ship visits comes "more likelihood that the cruise companies will begin to purchase parts of the town, the businesses and the homes and things like that.”
McGraw said later that he speaks with cruise line executives “on a regular basis,” and believes that the 300,000-passenger cap could dampen the industry.
Permitting processes associated with the cap would “very likely deter a number of ships from even going through the process and coming to Sitka,” McGraw said.
Following the opening statements by the opposing sides, moderator Lisa Busch read about 10 questions, asking both parties for their responses.
Responses in the Q&A portion of the event touched on environmental standards, economic factors, the state’s school funding formula, the effects of large cruise ships versus small, high-end ships, each group’s “vision for Sitka” in 10 years or 20 years, ideas for “managing growth,” and possible “next steps” if the initiative fails.
Many people in the room applauded following the statements by the Safeguard group, with some audience members opposed to the visitor cap shouting or interrupting members of the Sitka Soul group.
Statements by members of the SOUL group generally received tempered applause from a smaller segment of the audience.
The forum event wrapped up after about an hour and a half.
