The presentation John Binkley gave during Thursday\u2019s Juneau Chamber of Commerce luncheon was a little longer than he had originally planned when the chamber asked him to speak a couple weeks ago. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s because Binkley, a former Alaska legislator and president of the Cruise Lines International Association\u2019s Alaska affiliate, couldn\u2019t give the cruise industry update he had prepared without mentioning that his organization is suing the city.<\/p>\n
Shortly after beginning his presentation in the crowded ballroom of the Hangar on the Wharf, Binkley assured his audience that he would explain the \u201cactivities of earlier this week\u201d before he finished. As if referring to Voldemort, he didn\u2019t mention these \u201cactivities\u201d by name, but most people already knew what he was talking about. On Tuesday, CLIA Alaska announced that it is suing Juneau and several city officials including the mayor in federal court over the alleged misuse of marine passenger fees.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to find a way to move forward,\u201d Binkley said of the lawsuit. \u201cWe\u2019ve had this long-standing dispute \u2014 difference of opinion \u2014 and it\u2019s causing more friction, I believe, between the industry and the community, and the only way we think we can solve that is through our judicial system.\u201d<\/p>\n
The city currently collects a $5 entry fee from every cruise passenger and another $3 fee for port development. The fees are collectively referred to locally as the cruise ship head taxes, and they add up. In the past four years, Juneau has received more than $35 million from cruise lines, according to CLIA Alaska. <\/p>\n
Juneau is not the only community in Southeast Alaska that levies head taxes, but it is the only community CLIA is taking to court. This is at least in part because of the Whale Project. Though the almost $3 million whale stature was paid for with private donations, CLIA Alaska alleges that the $10 million in head tax money the city is using to fund the seawalk and park surrounding the life-sized bronze whale crosses the line. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have a problem with the whale,\u201d Binkley said. \u201cIt\u2019s about a mile from the current docks, and that\u2019s really our concern.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Binkley and CLIA Alaska, head tax money has to be spent in a manner that \u201cimpacts the ship and the passenger arriving on the ship.\u201d Though cruise passengers may very well walk a mile to see the whale, the sculpture doesn\u2019t benefit the cruise ships in any way, which is where Binkley finds fault with it. <\/p>\n
Bob Janes, the owner of Gastineau Guiding, was in the audience and took issue with this point. Janes\u2019 company operates nine whale-watching boats out of Statter Harbor in Auke Bay, which sees a sizeable increase in traffic during cruise season. In fact, 98 percent of the roughly 32,000 people who Janes\u2019 company moves through the harbor during the summer months come from cruise ships, he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere are big impacts that are figuratively close to the docks,\u201d he told the audience before asking Binkley if he thought infrastructure improvements in Statter Harbor would be an appropriate use of head taxes. Binkley said that answer depends on the outcome of the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur interpretation is that it really has to be tied pretty closely to the ship; it really has to have a nexus to the ship,\u201d he responded. \u201cI don\u2019t know what the answer is, but hopefully we\u2019ll get some guidance from the court.\u201d<\/p>\n
That guidance is likely to come at a heavy cost to Juneau though, according to City Attorney Amy Mead. It\u2019s too early to tell exactly how the lawsuit will unfold or how much it will cost, but it will likely be a \u201csignificant amount.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not a case I can handle out of this office; I just don\u2019t have the resources to take on this and meet the normal legal needs of the city,\u201d she told the Empire in a phone interview Thursday afternoon. \u201cWe are going to have to retain outside council, and I suspect that will be costly.\u201d<\/p>\n
If she were to try to handle this suit in-house, Mead said she would need at least one more full-time attorney and a paralegal. <\/p>\n
Binkley said that he hopes this lawsuit doesn\u2019t create any animosity between the city and the cruise industry, and he acknowledged that the city has spent some marine passenger fee funds appropriately. He supports the construction of the two new Panamax docks downtown, both of which were funded partially by the local port development fee. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s really what these fees are supposed to be used for,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The city maintains that it has used passenger fees in an appropriate manner. <\/p>\n
\u201cJuneau has a long history of legal and responsible community planning and implementation of passenger fees for the management of our visitor industry,\u201d Mayor Ken Koelsch wrote in a city press release Wednesday. Koelsch was present for Binkley\u2019s talk Thursday and is one of the city officials named in the suit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The presentation John Binkley gave during Thursday\u2019s Juneau Chamber of Commerce luncheon was a little longer than he had originally planned when the chamber asked him to speak a couple weeks ago. That\u2019s because Binkley, a former Alaska legislator and president of the Cruise Lines International Association\u2019s Alaska affiliate, couldn\u2019t give the cruise industry update […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":15172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-15171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15171"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=15171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}