By LEN BOSE
I attended the year’s end Harbor Commission meeting on Monday night, December 11. Over the years, this meeting has been cancelled because of the start of the holiday season. Harbor services is now being managed by the city manager, which had been under the direction of public works, and because of the changed staff it was nine deep that night. The cost of nine staff members reminded me of opening my January credit card statement.
First on the night’s agenda was the review of the Harbor and Beaches capital plan. I have never been a numbers person, although this subject has held my attention more each year. One item on the plan that quickly made me sit up in my chair is the plan to remove the four remaining stationary channel markers. You might recall, the old stationary channel markers 8 and 11 that damage any small boat that ran into them were finally taken out by very large vessels, then replaced with the more compatible floating markers. The City has set aside the funds to replace these remaining markers with floating markers and has been in contact with the Coast Guard to achieve this task early next year. For those of you that are interested in the Harbor and Beaches Capital Plan, I have posted it on my blog site at lenboseyachts.blogspot.com. Two items in the near future are the maintenance of our public piers and review of dredging equipment.
Next up, harbormaster Dennis Durgan reviewed an appraisal of moorings related rents and other Harbor operations fees. The following was taken from the staff report. [Staff retained Netzer and Associates to appraise various rents for the mooring sub-permittees and large vessel anchorage users in Newport Harbor. To clarify, sub-permittees are those boaters who do not have a mooring permit in Newport Harbor but who wish to use one of the “deemed vacant” moorings on a short- or long-term basis. Deemed vacant moorings are fully permitted moorings, but the mooring permittee does not have a boat to store on that mooring.] After a whole lot of explanation, the recommendation was to increase the daily mooring sub-permit fee from $16 winter/$27 summer a day to $1.25 per linear foot of vessel all year round. Do the math and you get $50 a day for a 40-foot boat. At this time, it costs $60 a day at Marina Park. Which would you pick for a 10-dollar difference – the slip or a mooring? So much for making Newport Harbor a friendly harbor for boating visitors, that was my understanding why Marina Park was built.
Harbor Commissioner, Paul Blank, was quick to recognize the rather substantial increase and recommended that the City charge a flat fee of $30 per day. This item was tabled for further review at the next Harbor Commission meeting; the appraisal is posted on my blog site.
Personally, I feel that the City does not want to deal with mooring sub-permittees any longer with an annual income of close to $200,000 a year. Like I said, I am not that good with numbers and I could be wrong but that’s how I read the 2016 statement of reviews for the tidelands.
After I received my “Bye Ferdinand” from Marina Park last week, there were roughly 20 mooring sub-permittees in the harbor. Of the 20, there are 16 that live aboard, and many of them have been renting their moorings for more than five years. The Harbormaster has found in the city codes 17.60.040 H 7. “Live-aboards may be temporarily permitted as sub-permittees pending vessel inspection, for a period not to exceed fifteen (15) days in any twelve (12) month period.” There has been a notice posted on the mooring office desk for more than a month notifying the sub-permittees of the change starting on January 1, 2018. I am not really sure what will happen to all these people after January 15 when they can no longer live-aboard on a sub-permit mooring and doubt more than six of them have read the notice. This will come as an unexpected surprise, as their options will be to move off their boats or go to another harbor. With the very good chance that rent will increase along with a new interpretation of city code 17.60.040 H 7, I believe the mooring sub-permittees could be a thing of the past very soon.
On a positive note, Durgan has been cruising the harbor once a week with the City’s code enforcement and has issued more than 36 citations along with many more notices. This has been long overdue in the harbor and one of the best changes I have seen in a long time. At the end of Durgan’s activity report to the Harbor Commission he said, “It’s like scrubbing an elephant with a tooth brush,” referring to the amount of work that is needed in code enforcement in the harbor.
The Harbor Commission will recommend to City Council that vessels that are over 80 feet will need to obtain a permit to anchor in the turning basin and will be recommended to anchor bow and stern. The Commission tabled 2018 Objectives until January, also posted on my blog site.
Remember that the second round of King Tides [highest tides] will arrive on New Year’s Day.
Sea ya next year!
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Len Bose is a yachting enthusiast, yacht broker and harbor columnist for StuNewsNewport.
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