Juneau Assembly to take up ordinance making 5-ship cruise limit enforceable law

Juneau's five-large-ship-per-day cruise limit could become enforceable municipal law under an ordinance the City and Borough of Juneau Assembly is set to introduce July 27. The measure would convert an existing voluntary agreement into a binding municipal rule, though no final cap becomes law at that meeting. Introduction would send the ordinance to the Assembly Committee of the Whole for further review before any public hearing or final vote.

The ordinance would amend Title 85, Waters and Harbors, to cap large cruise ships carrying more than 950 passengers at five calls per day within borough boundaries and would govern both docking and disembarkation. The limit itself is not new. The 2020 Visitor Industry Task Force recommended it, and a 2023 memorandum of agreement between the borough and the cruise lines formalized it. What the ordinance would change is the legal standing behind it: a voluntary agreement carries no municipal enforcement mechanism, but a Title 85 ordinance does.

Assembly members Woll, Hughes-Skandijs, and Kelly are the sponsors. City Manager Katie Koester recommends the ordinance be introduced and referred to the next Assembly Committee of the Whole meeting.

Codifying the limit would give the borough an enforcement lever the current agreement lacks, but locking in a specific number carries risks officials have flagged. At a November 2025 Assembly Committee of the Whole work session on related cruise policy, then-City Manager Neil Steininger warned against legislating without accounting for how the industry evolves. "If we legislate limits that aren't thinking about the changing and evolving nature of cruise tourism in Juneau, we can lock ourselves into a position where you know, we could have 2 empty docks downtown because we set limits that weren't based on projects we know about to potentially expand," Steininger said.

A public hearing and final vote on the ordinance would follow at a later meeting after committee review.