City Dock, also known as the Cruiseship Dock, is a t-shaped dock located at the north end of downtown.
The Wrangell Port Commission met for a brief workshop to begin discussions on two topics that Harbor Master Greg Meissner said would be important for the future. One was on potentially changing the fees that Wrangell collects from cruise ships, and the other was on how he could better handle derelict boats taking up space in the harbors.
A spreadsheet was given to board members, comparing the fees that different Southeast Alaskan towns earned from visiting cruise ships. These fees could vary upon the size of the ship, how long it was staying, how many people were on board, and several other factors. Wrangell, for example, charges a dockage fee between $1.03 and $2.28 per foot of the cruise ship at City Dock. They also charge a port development fee, a lightering fee, and $25 an hour for security. Compared to other towns, however, Meissner said that Wrangell was comparatively cheap for cruise ships.
"I took a ship like the Regatta, that's a ship we're all familiar with, and I said 'here's what it pays here,' 'here's what it pays in Juneau,' yada yada, to show you where we're at and the fact we've got room to move without scaring everyone away," he said.
Meissner said that it costs a ship like the Oceania Regatta, which carries about 684 passengers, approximately $7,000 to dock in Ketchikan. In Wrangell, that same ship pays about $2,500. If the port commission wanted to start building up money for future projects and maintenance, he said, they should consider finding ways to increase the cruise ship fees.
One idea that was briefly discussed was to bump up the dockage fee. This was not seen as a good idea, however, as Meissner pointed out that Wrangell's dockage fee was already higher than Ketchikan's. Another idea brought up was introducing a "passenger wharfage" fee, which Meissner described as a fancy way to describe a head tax on passengers. The commission also discussed potentially introducing a port maintenance fee that could help pay for future maintenance projects. Yet another idea brought up was potentially charging tour boat companies a seasonal fee for access to City Dock.
Commissioner John Martin mentioned that the cruise industry was growing in Alaska, and other commissioners agreed that they didn't want to scare off the cruise ships from Wrangell. Meissner pointed out that this was only the start of a discussion and no decisions would be made immediately. The soonest any new fees could be introduced was 2021, he said.
The second topic of the workshop was derelict boats taking up space in the harbors, and how best to deal with them. The way the rules are written now, Meissner said that the definition of "derelict" was a bit arbitrary. He wanted to tighten up the rules to make it more clean-cut and enforceable.
"My thought was why can't we make four simple classifications of vessels, and you have to be active in one of those?" he said. "Here we have commercial fishing boats, we have other commercial such as you guys, tugs, landing craft, things of that nature. We have recreational, and we have liveaboards. If you're not one of those, I'm not sure what you'd be other than a storage unit sitting there."
The commission seemed to like the idea of updating the rules about derelicts, but there was some discussion about insurance requirements. Several commissioners said that they would like to see proof of insurance being a requirement to get a spot in one of Wrangell's harbors. There were some questions about whether this could apply to boats only being docked for a short period of time, or boats that could be pulled out of the water on a trailer. The discussion continued for some time, but as this was a workshop, no final decision was made.
According to the city calendar, the port commission is scheduled to meet again on Dec. 5.
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