The author of two failed attempts to put a ballot proposition before Sitka voters limiting cruise passengers last fall is back, and this time he’s got an organization behind him.
Larry Edwards is now a board member of Small Town SOUL, or “Save Our Unique Lifestyle.” His nonprofit hopes to not only develop a citizen initiative, but to put it to voters in a special election sometime this summer.
Edwards, and SOUL president Klaudia Leccese stopped by KCAW and spoke with Robert Woolsey.
For Klaudia Leccese, the record numbers of cruise passengers visiting Sitka over the past two seasons has been more than an inconvenience. She says it’s forced her to rethink where she calls home.
“It’s been a real difficult last couple of years with the overcrowding, with the traffic on the highways, traffic out on the waterways,” said Leccese. “And so for the first time in my life, being a lifetime citizen, I’ve thought about moving. And that is kind of terrifying, when you have invested your entire life into a community, and all of a sudden, you don’t feel welcome anymore.”
Leccese contributed her signature to both initiatives proposed by Larry Edwards last fall which would cap cruise visitors in Sitka. Both were rejected by the city’s legal department and failed to make it to the ballot.
Edwards has long felt that there’s more at stake in the rapid growth of cruise tourism than the increased congestion – or the increase in sales tax revenue – that most people dwell on. Small Town SOUL has made protecting Sitka’s rural subsistence designation a priority. Sitka already exceeded the population limit the last time it had to argue for its subsistence designation in 2013. Now Edwards says that expanding the town’s infrastructure to accommodate cruise traffic will push Sitka that much farther over the line.
“The problem with the amount of cruise vision we have is just a symptom of a bigger problem,” said Edwards. “So we’ve constructed our mission statement for the organization to get down to the root of the problem – which subsistence is a big part of that – but it’s just how we have not really been looking out in the way planning is done in the city for keeping this a small town into the future.”
Leccese says Sitka’s subsistence designation is about much more than the ability of residents to set skates for halibut. For her lifestyle – and for many other Sitkans – far more is on the line.
“As a hunter-fisher-subsistence lifestyle person, if we lost that, we would lose our ability to go out to Redoubt and catch sockeye, we would be lose our herring harvest, we would lose our January (deer) hunt, which for many reasons is important to a lot of people.”
On February 29, the community of Bar Harbor, Maine, won a major lawsuit that allows it to limit cruise passengers in that community to 1,000 people a day, from all ships. Although that ruling likely will be appealed in a higher court, the uncertainty over that pending litigation played a role in Sitka’s rejection of Edwards’ two prior ballot initiatives.
Now, Edwards believes Sitka’s legal department will have more clarity, and SOUL is going to try again to develop a citizen initiative capping cruise passengers.
Leccese says it will be more than Bar Harbor’s limit, and a number that has worked for Sitka in the past.
“SOUL has been pretty consistent with a 240,000 limit per year, with cutting the shoulder seasons so that we don’t have the tourists here when the kids are still in school,” said Leccese, “and with a daily limit that I don’t think we’ve come to a firm grips on, but 1,500 to 1,600 seems like a reasonable daily limit. There are some that would say 3,000 but have more days off.”
Edwards says the organization has retained an attorney, and hopes to have an initiative petition circulating soon, for a possible special election as early as this summer.
Asked if he thinks Sitkans have an appetite for limiting cruise numbers after two record seasons, Edwards is looking forward to an answer.
“I guess we’ll find out,” he said. “We’ve never really asked the public.”Small Town Soul – or Save Our Unique Lifestyle – is a registered 501(c)4 organization with a nine-member board of directors. The group’s website went live on March 1. Edwards says they’re looking for any input helpful in developing responsible management of tourism in Sitka.
