The City and Borough of Juneau is seeking ideas from Juneau residents about how to spend the fees paid by cruise ship passengers this coming year. More than $20 million is expected to be available for tourism-related projects.
Juneau residents and businesses can now submit proposals to the city through Dec. 31. The last round of funding paid for things like free public Wi-Fi downtown and increased bus service to the Mendenhall Valley.
Alix Pierce, the city’s visitor industry director, said community suggestions play a critical role in what gets funded and what doesn’t.
“We do get a lot of good ideas for what residents are feeling the need for in the community,” she said. “And, not spending general fund on our waterfront infrastructure and our visitor services does free up budget elsewhere in the city to do other things.”
Every cruise season, the city collects a $5 fee from each passenger who comes into town from a ship. The fees can fund tourism projects that benefit visitors and locals in Juneau. In the past, these fees have funded upgrades to downtown public restrooms and improvements at Marine Park.
The city expects to collect about $22 million in fees this year. But the money collected can’t go toward paying for just anything. A lawsuit the cruise industry filed and settled with the city in 2019 clarifies the limits on how and where the city can use the funds, and some projects require approval by the cruise ship industry.
Pierce said that people often don’t understand those parameters and that leads to a lot of proposals being rejected.
“It’s unfortunately not money that’s just available to fill the hole in the city budget,” she said. “We are restricted in how we use those funds.”
Usually, the projects are downtown near the waterfront area, where the impacts of tourism are felt the most. But other parts of town can still secure funding for projects, like near the Mendenhall Glacier, as long as tourism reaches that area and the project would benefit tourism.
Residents can submit their suggestions for projects in a few different ways. The city has a web form where people can submit proposals. It outlines what types of projects would fit the criteria. The Assembly will ultimately decide which projects to fund during the spring budget cycle.
Clarification: This story has been updated to reflect that the lawsuit settled between the City and Borough of Juneau and the cruise ship industry in 2019 lays out constitutional limits on how passenger fees can be spent.
