Juneau staff ask tourism task force to retarget stalled $1 million loan fund

Juneau's visitor industry director, Alexandra Pierce, is asking a city task force to help give a stalled $1 million tourism loan fund a new purpose. The Visitor Industry Task Force, which advises the Juneau Assembly, takes up the question Thursday at 5:30 pm.

The money comes from Marine Passenger Fees, the $5 charge collected from cruise visitors, and would go to tour operators as low-interest loans. The Assembly approved the fund in the fiscal year 2025 budget, but the program stalled.

Pierce explained why in an Oct. 12 memo to the task force. Staff "struggled to stand the program up as described," she wrote. The plan was to help operators buy cleaner vehicles, vessels and equipment. But staff could not settle which technologies count as clean, make loans large enough for electric boats or buses without tying up the fund in one or two borrowers, or show that each loan meets the rules for passenger fee spending.

The memo offers three possible directions. One is flightseeing noise. Pierce wrote that public comment to the task force this year shows float plane noise has returned as a concern as traffic has grown. A second is quieter or lower-emission propulsion for whale-watching boats. The task force is also weighing whether to license and cap whale-watching boats. A third is electric or lower-emission shuttles, or staging and loading improvements to ease downtown congestion.

Staff modeled the original idea on a 2003 program. That year the Assembly put $1 million in passenger fees into a Floatplane Noise Abatement Program, which lent operators half the cost of converting piston-engine de Havilland Otters to turbine power, up to $250,000 per aircraft at 2% interest over 10 years.

A four-aircraft turbine Otter fleet was flying from the downtown waterfront by the 2005 season, according to the memo.

The memo asks the task force whether the new fund should target one impact, as the 2003 program did, or stay broad, and what community benefit each borrower should be expected to show.