Much has been talked, written and speculated about a couple of possible big changes in the community: Pouring in rock fill and building a new dock downtown to accommodate overnight stays by smaller cruise ships; and moving the freight barge operations away from downtown to borough-owned property at 6-Mile.

Both would cost millions of dollars, though it’s uncertain at this time whether that would be private dollars, public dollars, or a mix of public and private money.

Both would change the downtown waterfront.

Both would generate revenue for the borough, whether the passenger tax on cruise ships travelers and sales taxes on the goods and service they buy in town, or the fees that cruise ships and barges would pay to use borough-owned facilities and lease borough-owned tidelands.

Those all sound like benefits but there are skeptics and questioners who say the town doesn’t need more cruise ships, and that hauling in freight from 6-Mile instead of downtown would add to the cost for consumers and add to traffic on Zimovia Highway.

Neither the passenger ramp for cruise ships nor the freight ramp for a new barge landing have been pulled up and latched down yet. Borough officials are talking with American Cruise Lines, which initiated discussions about building a new floating dock for use by its ships, and also are talking with the freight lines that serve Wrangell.

The topics for those talks include costs, leases, construction schedule, who pays what and who will manage the facilities.

There are a lot of unanswered questions because there are no answers yet, no decisions made.

Before the assembly makes any decisions, it needs to share what it knows, what it is thinking about and hear from the public — which is exactly what City Hall plans to do.

The assembly is planning a town hall meeting about the American Cruise Lines proposal for Dec. 15 at the Nolan Center, to accommodate a larger crowd than can fit into assembly chambers.

A separate town hall is tentatively planned for January to fill in the public on the status, the issues and the path forward on a new freight landing facility to replace the closed-down barge ramp on the downtown waterfront, which engineers determined was too old and too damaged to keep using after nearly a half-century.

Borough officials and the assembly are smart to set aside time in advance of any decisions to brief the public, take questions and provide answers. It will be the public’s responsibility to attend the meetings and learn.