The community is short of public restrooms near the City Dock and could be short port security staff this summer if people don’t apply for the jobs soon.
One is an immediate concern, while the restroom shortage requires a longer-term solution.
Tour operators and borough officials met last Wednesday to discuss the upcoming visitor season, which could be a challenge for borough staff and tourism operators, said Port Director Steve Miller.
“Finding a driver, finding security. No one is applying for the jobs,” he said.
“I haven’t jumped on that yet to figure out the amount of crew I already have and how we’re going to go through it,” he said. “For the normal guys that I have on my crew, they’re already doing everything that needs taking care of at the harbor. It’s hard to break them off to do ship security when they are supposed to be greeting passengers. We’ll see how it rolls out. We know everyone is complaining about the same thing, and it’s not finding enough workers.”
Last week’s meeting opened with a familiar topic: Not enough public restrooms downtown.
Brenda Schwartz-Yeager said the shortage of public restrooms often comes up at tourism planning sessions. She owns Alaska Charters & Adventures with husband John Yeager.
“We have some really good long-term solutions,” such as building permanent facilities as part of the community’s port development plan, she said Monday. “That’s very long term and very expensive.”
The borough-maintained public restrooms building behind the Elks Lodge is small, and not real close to the dock, Schwartz-Yaeger said. Visitors getting off cruise ships at the dock and climbing aboard buses or vans for tours and charter boats need access to restrooms nearby, she said.
The borough will look at positioning its portable toilets near the dock this summer, though the limited number of units may not be available depending on their use at other sites and events, Carol Rushmore, the borough’s economic development director, said Monday.
Access to public restrooms in cruise ship towns “is always a huge issue,” she said. “There is no magical answer.”
Sitka this summer is offering grants of $1,000 or more to businesses and other entities that will open their bathrooms to the public. The community is expecting cruise ships with capacity to carry close to half-a-million passengers this summer, more than double the pre-COVID year of 2019.
Wrangell could receive almost 19,000 cruise ship passengers this summer, if all of the ships scheduled to call on the community are full. The first ship is scheduled to arrive May 12; the Ocean Victory, with accommodations for 200 passengers.
Reaching full staffing at tourism-related businesses also is a concern this summer. It’s an issue throughout Southeast, as cruise ship traffic rebounds after two summers of pandemic closures, Rushmore said. In Wrangell, one concern is having enough fill-in staff to help cover on busy days or when regular staff is out.
Yeager said the outlook is good for the couple’s business, which Schwartz-Yeager began in 1989. This will be the 18th year Yeager has been a captain and guide. The couple is beginning to see their tours fill up.
“July 3 and (July) 4, when a couple of ships are in, that will be tricky,” he said, noting that Wrangell’s tour and charter operators are “more than willing and capable to work together” to handle booking requests. “We’ve proven that in the past. We have a great group of people down there. We have to do the best we can do.”
While tour operators don’t have much of a say in the cruise ship scheduling, they’ve learned to accommodate it, he said.
“If we don’t address some of that infrastructure like restroom facilities, and maybe even with the port, expanding dock space … that might be a problem, but I won’t get nervous about it until we see an increase in cruise ship stops,” Yaeger said. “I think we have the ability to deal with the cruise ships we have coming up.”
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