Following more than an hour of comments at a Haines Borough Assembly public hearing Tuesday, members advanced a revised helicopter skiing ordinance that would permit up to three operators to share a 2,600 skier-day limit.

The ordinance will have at least one more public hearing, its fifth, set for Tuesday, March 8.

The assembly advanced the amended ordinance with a 4-2 vote. Greg Goodman and Steve Vick were opposed.

The heli-skiing season opened this month for Alaska Heliskiing and Southeast Alaska Backcountry Adventures (SEABA).

“I think they’re over-regulated,” said assembly member Jerry Lapp. “I think it’s a bunch of young guys having fun and they’re making a business out of it, and the carbon footprint of this is very small.”

Both Goodman and Vick said they thought the proposed skier-day limit was too high. Photographer days would be lumped into skier days under the proposal.

About half of the two dozen people testifying on the ordinance were affiliated with the industry, most with Alaska Heliskiing.

Vick said he had to look out for the interests of year-round residents.

“I see a lot of faces out there, but a lot of them, I don’t see here two months ago in this town, and I don’t see you here over the summer,” he said.

More than 80 people crammed into the assembly chambers and adjacent hallway Tuesday at the fire hall. Several said they opposed adding a third operator. Alaska Mountain Guides (AMG) last year applied for a heli-skiing permit, but the assembly delayed approval.

“This is not an economic, market-based, competition issue,” said Nick Trimble of SEABA. “This has to do with safety in the field.”

Sean Brownell of Alaska Heliskiing and Scott Sundberg of SEABA have spoken against a third operator at meetings of a mayor-appointed heli-skiing work group and have cited a reduction of available terrain due to a Bureau of Land Management Environmental Impact Statement that has delayed issuing permits for heli-skiing on BLM land.

“I understand the other operators’ concern with adding a third permit,” Sean Gaffney of AMG said via telephone at Tuesday’s work group meeting. “There is terrain out there to support it, and I think that if we’re considering adding a third permit, it would be critical to add it at this time as we’re going through this trial period, to have that baseline data.”

No further work group meetings have been scheduled. The group did not reach consensus on an operator or skier-day limit.