Not everyone in Wrangell welcomes more cruise ships or the visitors they bring to the community. There are detractors who fear too many ships and their passengers could change the character of the town.
They look at Ketchikan, Juneau, Sitka and Skagway and see more than a million visitors a year crowding the sidewalks and shops, the buses crowding the streets and the summer workers crowding already tight housing.
But they need to look at the numbers for Wrangell; actually, two sets of numbers.
Wrangell could see 40,000 cruise passengers next summer, and then as many as 70,000 in 2026 if the ships are full and no cruise operator changes its plans before then. That’s more than this past summer’s 20,000-something passenger count,
Those numbers are, at most, 4% of what Juneau saw this past summer. It’s probably a safe bet—much safer than betting on football scores—that Wrangell can accommodate several tens of thousands of visitors spread over almost five months, 150 days, without turning itself into a glitzy, overrun tourist trap.
The other numbers to consider are the work opportunities for tour operators and their crew, jet boat and sightseeing charters, shop owners — and also the revenues that would flow to the Nolan Center, the port fund and sales tax account.
The numbers show that the more the borough can collect from visitors, the less it needs to collect from residents. And with a weak economy, Wrangell needs outside money coming into town.
If, for the sake of a math exercise, 70,000 cruise visitors spent an average of just $25 each in town, that would add $122,500 to the borough’s sales tax account, of which 20% is designated for the schools. Add in the per-passenger tax collected by the state and shared with the community and the docking fees, and the numbers show that the revenue could provide a noticeable boost to the borough treasury.
Besides, it’s not like 70,000 is a launching point for hundreds of thousands of summer visitors. Borough officials acknowledge that might be a good number to stop at and look at how the community handles the load and what might be needed to accommodate the increase — such as more public restrooms downtown.
Wrangell has time to prepare for more visitors next summer and in 2026. And that’s the point: The better the community prepares for passengers arriving at the dock, the better the town can prosper from the economic activity.
- Wrangell Sentinel
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