Juneau harbor board weighs charter passenger fee of $7.50, up from $2.05

Juneau wants to more than triple the fee that charter fishing and tour boats pay for every passenger they carry out of Statter Harbor — from about $2 a head to $7.50 — and so far the case for that exact number is thin.

The port director proposed the jump in an August memo, arguing it's justified by the services the harbor provides and the cost of expanding it down the road. The memo, though, shows no arithmetic behind the $7.50 figure — and just before it came out, a Docks and Harbors board member had pegged his own estimate at $5. The board took public testimony this month; it hasn't set a rate.

Behind the proposal is a harbor system running short on money. Juneau's harbor fund is projected to end the year at about $1.2 million, which the port director calls perhaps its lowest level ever, and the city just lost an unexpected $450,000 a year when the budget stopped routing a state fish-tax share to harbors. Meanwhile the wish list is long and expensive: a replacement Statter breakwater the port director expects to carry a $20 million local match, followed by a $100 million vision to expand moorage — neither funded, and, the memo concedes, unlikely to be affordable for the city or state.

The charter fee has become a real revenue source, bringing in more than half a million dollars a year since a round of Statter improvements finished in 2023, and it's already outpaced inflation at its current rate. But the harbor's own rules say fees have to be fair, reasonable, and backed by data — and on several of the required measures, staff acknowledged they can't yet say whether the fee meets that standard. The department is still hiring a firm to test whether its base rates are even set right. Asked in August to put a number on cleaning and restroom costs, staff said those were tracked on a spreadsheet but couldn't produce a figure. One board member noted that toilet paper alone wouldn't justify the increase.

The operators who'd pay it aren't quoted in the board's packet. The fee, first set at just over a dollar in 2006, has long drawn the same objection from charter captains: that they should be charged based on passengers they actually carry, not a flat rate. No decision has been made, and it isn't clear yet whether an increase would need the Juneau Assembly's sign-off. The board takes the question up again later this month.