The Tourism Advisory Board discussed staff-recommended revisions to the borough’s business licensing code Tuesday that would eliminate references to protecting public safety and welfare, disallow the transfer of commercial tour permits and eliminate an automatic allowance of 25 percent growth to tour operators.
The borough’s Title 5 code addresses not only business licensing but tour operator permitting. The borough is currently revising code to make it more clear and decrease workload on staff during the permit approval and renewal process.
Borough clerk Alekka Fullerton said when public officials and staff discuss public safety and welfare in regard to approving or renewing commercial tour permits, it feels like the borough, “sometimes we just go by the seat of our pants.”
“I don’t know what that means, and I can’t sit down and evaluate something based on the public safety and welfare, and neither can the assembly right now because we don’t have ascertainable criteria,” Fullerton told the board. “Either we create ascertainable criteria for what that means, or it shouldn’t be in there.”
Fullerton, who practiced law in California before moving to Haines, said if the language was eliminated, the borough’s liability would be reduced.
Board member Sean Gaffney said removing the language would take the public voice out of the process. “I want business owners’ interests to be protected. I want the public’s interests to be protected,” Gaffney said. “A lot of this process is here to protect the public interest and I think that’s a critical part of this whole process.”
Gaffney said he thinks code is inconsistently interpreted and that finding specific language to protect businesses and the public is the best solution.
Tour operator Dan Egolf told the board that Title 5 was created using regulations borrowed from Juneau, Ketchikan and Sitka about 20 years ago and protecting the public safety and welfare was one of the first reasons they created the code.
heliski operator Scott Sundberg said, from a liability perspective, language referencing protecting the public safety and welfare doesn’t need to exist and the borough “should only prescribe things if it’s definable and objective.”
The conversation turned existential when Fullerton asked the board why the borough permits tours at all and that the assembly needs to grapple with that question. “It’s environmental impact. It’s for town impact. It’s for fixing the potholes in the road,” Fullerton said. “There are all of those reasons in (code.) I think we need to go through and say, ‘Yes, those are still our targeted reasons for permitting.’”
Gaffney said his recollection was that all the language in Title 5 was deliberate and well vetted. “It’s just difficult to understand the intent from here now, but I don’t think it’s right to assume that any of the material that’s in there was off the cuff,” Gaffney said. “It was all deliberate.”
The board then discussed borough manager Debra Schnabel’s recommendation to disallow the transfer of tour permits when an owner of a tour company decides to sell their business.
Gaffney was adamantly opposed to the recommendation. “If you want to try and hurt this section of our economy as much as you possibly can it’s difficult for me to imagine a better way to do it that than this,” Gaffney said. “Why would you go and invest in a business in the visitor industry if your permit is worth nothing? You can’t build a legitimate business without the right to transfer all of the work you have done.”
Schnabel said when a tour company grows, its growth is based on the right to use a public resource. “I realize people sell their business, but what is being sold is the permit,” Schnabel said. “So, there needs to be a way for the community to be assured that that transaction taking place, it’s a private exchange, it needs to have some element of public scrutiny.”
Board member Barbara Mulford said code already has provisions to hold companies accountable to the public.
The tourism advisory board will meet again on Tuesday, Nov. 6 to continue discussing public safety and welfare language as well as other topics.
The borough assembly will discuss the recommended changes at a future date.