09/19/2026
Our Cruise Tourism Questions are today being answered by Councilor At Large Candidate Atiim Boykin.
Learn more about his platform here:
https://atiim.org
Follow him on FB here:
https://www.facebook.com/atiim.boykin/
1. What role should cruise tourism play in Portland?
Cruise tourism has a place in Portland's economy, but the costs of that tourism should be borne by the ships that create them, not by the people who live here. The trajectory is what concerns me:
roughly 100 calls in 2025, about 144 scheduled for 2026, a 44% jump, with some vessels carrying up to 4,000 passengers. That pace has outrun the city's planning for the real costs: the load on Casco Bay, the concentrated strain on the peninsula, and the fact that residents absorb the impact while the revenue and the decisions sit elsewhere. I'm not looking to end cruise tourism. I want Portland to set the terms rather than absorb whatever arrives, same coast, two honest questions: What does it give us? And what does it cost us?
2. Do you support prohibiting the discharge of exhaust-gas scrubber washwater in Casco Bay?
Yes. Scrubber washwater is toxic to marine life, and Casco Bay has been a federally designated No Discharge Area since 2006. Here's the precise legal picture: a general city ordinance banning discharge outright would run into VIDA preemption. But Seattle didn't do it that way. They banned at berth scrubber discharge through their own Terminal Tariff, a condition of using the port itself, not a citywide environmental ordinance. The Port of Seattle's own government relations team has confirmed that mechanism is "unimpacted and independent of VIDA." Portland has the same tool available right now. I'd bring a Rule 8 revision to Portland's own Terminal Tariff prohibiting scrubber wash discharge at berth, the same route Seattle and Vancouver have already used successfully, alongside the tariff pricing already in motion, and partner with Casco Baykeeper on monitoring.
3. Is Portland adequately addressing neighborhood and transportation impacts from cruise visits?
Not yet adequately. Charter-bus idling, congestion, pedestrian safety, noise, crowding: these land on specific streets, and the people who live with them haven't had enough say. The fixes are concrete: enforceable anti-idling standards with staging away from residential blocks; pedestrian-safety attention at the most-affected crossings on call days; and call-schedule coordination so multiple large vessels don't overwhelm the peninsula the same day.
There's also a real business opportunity here I don't think we've explored. Emeryville, California, where I actually keep a studio, so I know this system firsthand, runs a free shuttle called the Emery
Go-Round, funded entirely by a business improvement district that commercial property owners’ tax themselves into. It moves over a million riders a year on a loop people can count on. Portland could build something similar around cruise days: a shuttle connecting the port to downtown, Washington Avenue, and out across the bridge to South Portland, and further out to shopping and attractions in Westbrook and Scarborough. This isn't competing with Metro's regional routes, it's the same relationship AC Transit's regional buses have with Emeryville's local shuttle: one covers the region, the other covers the crevices a regional line can't reach on a tight, reliable loop. That opens the city to cruise passengers and to Portland elders who don't drive, and it gives neighboring towns real upside from port traffic that right now mostly stays on the peninsula. I'd bring the Chambers of Commerce,
Visit Portland, and neighboring town councils to the table to structure the funding the way Emeryville did.
And the bigger investment: we should be building toward a green port, the electrical infrastructure that lets ships plug in at berth. That's not just a climate win; it's a neighborhood win. And it's not just
Portland's cost to carry. South Portland, Westbrook, and Scarborough all stand to benefit from a cleaner harbor and the regional draw the port creates, so they should have real skin in the game in funding it, alongside pressing CMP and Augusta to help carry the cost.
4. Do you support public-health protocols for cruise ships arriving with infectious-disease outbreaks?
Yes, and this is one I speak to directly, because public health is my professional field. As a clinician, the protocol is straightforward: advance notification when a vessel reports an outbreak, transparent
plain-language communication with the public, and coordination with the Maine CDC before passengers disembark. Information should be timely and accessible, not buried, and the city should be prepared to adjust disembarkation and public operations on public-health guidance. It's simply the right thing to do. Protecting public health isn't optional, it's the job.
5. Your highest priorities for cruise-ship policy, and how you would pursue them?
1. Ban scrubber discharge — revise Rule 8 of our Terminal Tariff, the same mechanism Seattle already
used, and build toward a green port with shore power.
2. Give impacted neighborhoods real standing — anti-idling, staging, pedestrian safety, call-day coordination, built with the residents who live with the impact.
3. Honest accounting — the public should see what cruise tourism costs Portland and what it contributes, in plain numbers.
How I'd pursue them: through the tariff and berth-access levers the council actually controls; coordinating with Augusta, South Portland, Westbrook, and Scarborough on shared funding for the green port and a regional shuttle; in partnership with Casco Baykeeper and the Maine CDC; sitting
down with affected neighborhoods to build the response together.
