The Volendam cruise ship docked in Ketchikan this summer.
The Ketchikan City Council agreed Thursday to extend dock tour vendor booth leases, but will put the food booth leases back out to bid, at the request of the lease holders.
The City of Ketchikan rents out booth space on the downtown docks each summer for vendors. Some offer tours, and others sell food to the hundreds of thousands of summertime cruise ship visitors.
The question of the leases has been deferred a couple of times, partly because of concerns about hawking. The Council talked a little about that last night, but Port and Harbors Director Steve Corporon stressed that tour vendors are not allowed to hawk.
“We allow them to talk, but they’re not supposed to talk about tours unless they’re asked,” he said.
Council Member Bob Sivertsen, who was calling in from the Alaska Municipal League meeting in Anchorage, said hawking is a problem elsewhere in the city, and he’d like to see the issue addressed by the joint city and borough cooperative relations committee.
Sivertsen added that not every vendor on the dock follows the spirit of the no-hawking rule.
“There are some people down there that are a little more aggressive than others,” he said. “I think there was a time when they were putting ropes out, directing people and doing different things. That’s something that should be cleaned up.”
Also Thursday, the Council approved a motion for city officials to negotiate a new contract with Regional Disposal Company of Seattle to transport and dispose of the community’s solid waste. The price has gone up and unless the city can negotiate a better price, the new contract will cost about $300,000 more per year, not including an added fuel surcharge.
At the end of Thursday’s meeting, Assistant City Manager David Martin told the Council that staff will present a draft water compliance plan at the next meeting. Consultants CH2MHill will attend that meeting, and Martin says the city hopes to have Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation representatives there, as well.
The city has been struggling with water issues for a while now. A new treatment system has reduced the amount of regulated byproducts in city water, but not by enough; and the city’s source water has had high levels of coliform.
The next regular Ketchikan City Council meeting is Dec. 4.
