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On busy summer days, it’s not only downtown Sitka that becomes crowded. Sitka’s trail system is also seeing more use, as are remote recreational sites that were once exclusively visited by locals.

The Sitka Assembly wants to overhaul the commercial use of local trails and parks, but it’s proved to be a big job. After a first look at the plan, the assembly on Tuesday (12-17-24) sent it back to City Hall for more work.

The draft “commercial use plan” outlines a process for securing permits for commercial use of the city’s trails, lakes and other recreational sites, establishes maximum group sizes and groups per week for those areas, increases permit fees, and establishes a fee schedule for tour groups. It’s a comprehensive overhaul of the city’s process to regulate commercial use of its trails, lakes and parks. And it’s driven, in part, by a recommendation from the former Tourism Task Force to “identify and protect priority recreation sites” in the midst of strong growth in the tourism industry.

Planning Director Amy Ainslie said the city wants to support an industry that does a valuable service of getting visitors on the trails, but it’s still a shared use that needs to be evaluated.

“When we have operators that are, and I’m not, there’s nothing wrong with it, but they are making a profit from public lands, the public should have an opportunity to have a say in how that use comes out, and as well as to have revenue that helps to account for the shared use of maintenance and upkeep of those areas,” Ainslie said. “We really want to make sure that the citizens of Sitka are fairly considered and compensated for the use of their lands.”

The application fee for a permit will increase from $250 to $400 dollars and the Fees will increase from 2 dollars to 5 dollars per client for use of most areas, with the exception of Baranof Warm Springs and Goddard Hot Springs, which will increase to $10 per client. Ainslie said it’s the first time permitting fees have been increased since the early 2000s, and while the plan caps group sizes and number of groups for each area, Ainslie said it still allows for around two-and-a-half times the reported commercial use of city land compared to previous years. 

As an example, under the new plan, the Herring Cove trail would allow 18 commercial outfitter groups per week, with a maximum group size of 8 participants including the guide. To land on these numbers, Ainslie and Parks and Recreation Director Kevin Knox reviewed the US Forest Service’s permit requirements for use of its trails and lands and aligned most of their maximum group sizes with those. They used data gathered from a community survey, spoke with permit holders and held work sessions with the Planning Commission to develop the plan. They also used data collected from an AI app called “Placer” that tracks cellular GPS information to determine how many tourists and Sitkans were visiting city-owned recreation sites over the last three years, and figure out when the high traffic times were. 

“At first when we were just kind of getting into it, I was ready to, like, chuck my phone in the ocean and hide in the woods,” Ainslie said. “But I will say that the data really is anonymized. It’s aggregated. We cannot see any individuals. We cannot see any identifying numbers.”

Several tour operators spoke out with concerns about the caps on group size and amount, and felt the increased client fees were too steep. And Ryan Harris, a longtime tour operator, worried that limiting the number of permitted tours would mean more visitors hiking trails without a guide.

“We’ve had a lot of bears on trail, and I have had to physically stop people getting closer to get a better photo of the bear. If we put these limits on, in particular the Thimbleberry Trailhead, people are going to be wandering up there without supervision, and I’m worried for their safety,” Harris said.

After reviewing the plan, some assembly members called for changes. Assembly member Scott Saline felt like there hadn’t been enough outreach around the plan, and pushed back on permitting commercial use at Goddard Hot Springs, a recreational site just 25 miles by boat or plane from Sitka that sees mostly local traffic.

“There’s so many people in town that are without a skiff that have only been to Goddard a few times,” Saline said. “And so you’ve been in town for forever, and now you get to go to Goddard one time when somebody’s going to bring you. Now you’re choked out with a whole commercial deal there, where, usually you can go there and you know somebody that’s in the tub, you get in the tub with them.”

But assembly member Kevin Mosher noted that Baranof Warm Springs, on the eastern side of Baranof Island, is already seeing high visitor numbers. The small community is within the Sitka Borough, but too far away for Sitkans to routinely visit. Mosher argued that this plan would help generate more revenue to offset the maintenance costs for the site, which has a dock and boardwalk.

“A lot of these homeowners…have been maintaining these boardwalks themselves at their own cost. So I think that’s an attempt to kind of bring that to heal a little bit by getting a little more money to repair,” Mosher said. “I don’t think we want unlimited numbers out at Goddard and and Baranof. Like Amy said, I think she said about 8700 users? That’s a staggering amount of people out there.”

Mayor Steven Eisenbeisz said he appreciated the concept of the plan, but recognized that the city is walking a narrow line. 

“Definitely, on one side is is my business side, where I want to encourage development of businesses and facilitate businesses within our municipality. On the other side is the residents saying, ‘We’re getting choked out.’ And that’s on multiple levels. That’s from 10,000 people a day in our downtown corridor, that’s to groups on trails. It’s in multiple different levels,” Eisenbeisz said. “So I want to try and balance the two of them between this.”

Eisenbeisz said if the plan was approved, they’d need to develop a budget for the revenue generated by the fees. Other changes to the plan were suggested by assembly members, like aligning the city’s maximum group size for Thimbleberry Trail with the Forest Service’s, and enacting the plan in 2026 to give outfitters time to adjust to the rate increases and new process for securing an annual permit. But rather than amend the document at the meeting, the assembly decided to direct city staff to make some of those changes to the document. They postponed voting on the plan, agreeing to revisit it at the first regular meeting in January.

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