If there was any doubt that Cruise Lines International Association Alaska\u2019s lawsuit against the City and Borough of Juneau is making waves internationally, a visiting delegation of Norwegians put it to rest Monday morning.<\/p>\n
A delegation of about a dozen Norwegians \u2014 ranging from government representatives to business leaders \u2014 met with several Juneau city officials over breakfast Monday to learn how they have responded to the growth of the cruise industry during the past few decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve looked on the internet to see the debates in this area; we pretty much have the same debates back home,\u201d said Noralv Distad, mayor of Norway\u2019s Aurland Municipality, during a question-and-answer-styled discussion after breakfast.<\/p>\n
[Cruise ship group: Whale statue are misuse of fees<\/a>]<\/p>\n The debate to which Distad was referring was the constant back-and-forth between environmentalists and the cruise industry, he said. But that\u2019s not all he found in his internet search of Juneau. He also read about CLIA Alaska\u2019s ongoing lawsuit, in which the cruise organization alleges that Juneau misused about $10 million worth marine passenger fees to build a seawalk.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have more or less the same challenge in Norway,\u201d Distad said. \u201cHow have you handled that?\u201d<\/p>\n [Juneau seeks dismissal of head tax lawsuit<\/a>]<\/p>\n Juneau Mayor Ken Koelsch, a defendant in the lawsuit, responded with a joke saying he had removed longtime friend and cruise-industry representative Kirby Day, who was present at Monday\u2019s meeting, from his Thanksgiving invite list.<\/p>\n \u201cThe really hard decision was that my daughter is a part of the cruise industry, too, so I don\u2019t know where she\u2019s going to go for Thanksgiving this year,\u201d Koelsch added with a laugh.<\/p>\n City Manager Rorie Watt \u2014 who\u2019d only just advised the visiting Norwegians to take cruise-industry instruction \u201cwith a grain of salt\u201d \u2014 took a less light-hearted approach when answering Distad\u2019s question.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not happy to spend time working on defending the lawsuit,\u201d Watt said. \u201cI think I have better things I could do with my time, but it\u2019s our role to protect the stability of the community\u2019s relationship with the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n [Lawsuit looms heavy over Chamber luncheon<\/a>]<\/p>\n Notwithstanding the lawsuit, Juneau city officials and business leaders both agreed that the relationship between the cruise industry has improved over the years.<\/p>\n Community Development Director Rob Steedle said that when he first came to Juneau 25 years ago the dialogue between the industry and the public was \u201crancorous.\u201d He recalled a time he witnessed one of his friends arguing with a shopkeeper in the street because tensions were high.<\/p>\n During the 1990s, Juneau saw three consecutive years during which the number of cruise passengers visiting town grew by 14 percent, according to Day who presented this statistic during the meeting.<\/p>\n Though cruise tourism isn\u2019t new to Norway \u2014 several of the Norwegian delegates pointed out that it has been happening there from more than 100 years \u2014 it is rapidly growing in popularity.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were difficult growing pains in Juneau years and years ago, but we\u2019ve managed to whittle those down to just a few things that are still difficult to deal with,\u201d Day said.<\/p>\n [Audit: No misuse of Juneau’s head taxes<\/a>]<\/p>\n In order to help the Norwegians avoid the difficult growing pains caused by a sharp influx of tourists, Watt recommended that the city leaders establish set tourism plans and adhere to them, lest \u201ctourism divide your communities.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t be afraid to advocate for your communities,\u201d he said, \u201cThe cruise ship industry will not determine what your communities values are, and they won\u2019t work to protect those values. That\u2019s not their job, and they won\u2019t do it for you.\u201d<\/p>\n The Norwegian delegation heads to Skagway via ferry today, and will spend the remainder of its time in Southeast Alaska there are in Glacier Bay. The Norwegians fly home on Saturday.<\/p>\n \u2022 Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n Related stories:<\/p>\n Dead humpback whale found in Glacier Bay National Park has long history in Southeast<\/a><\/p>\n Gimme Shelter (Island): New public use cabin opens on Shelter Island<\/a><\/p>\n Healing history and undoing the silence: New totem poles to acknowledge Douglas atrocities<\/a><\/p>\n Juneau woman questioned on witness stand by own attacker<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If there was any doubt that Cruise Lines International Association Alaska\u2019s lawsuit against the City and Borough of Juneau is making waves internationally, a visiting delegation of Norwegians put it to rest Monday morning. A delegation of about a dozen Norwegians \u2014 ranging from government representatives to business<\/a> leaders \u2014 met with several Juneau city […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":25048,"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-25047","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\/25047","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=25047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25047"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=25047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}