PORT ANGELES — Movable docks that provided seasonal moorage space for boats on the south side of City Pier will not be reinstalled this year, city parks and recreation officials have decided.
Corey Delikat, the city’s parks and recreation director, said the decision came amid public safety concerns over the deteriorating wooden docks and ongoing city costs needed for their upkeep.
Delikat came to the city’s Parks, Recreation and Beautification Commission last week with his recommendation to not reinstall the structures, called floats, this year, and parks commissioners unanimously agreed.
The decision does not mean the floats will not be replaced with newer structures at some point in the future, though Delikat could not estimate when city funds might be available to buy new ones.
“They’re something great to have, but at this point, we don’t have the money to replace them,” Delikat said.
In the near term, Delikat said his next steps are to figure out how much money, if any, the 20-year-old floats can be sold or salvaged for and determine an estimate of how much new ones will cost.
The city’s yearly capital facilities plan, which lists myriad projects that the city eventually wants to undertake, has included a $750,000 entry for new floats since 2006, though Delikat said more-in-depth study of new float options will be needed before a concrete figure is developed.
“I want a precise number on what it’s going to cost the city, and then from there, I can look at possible grants,” Delikat said.
Delikat said the lack of floats this year will not affect the 13 cruise ship visits scheduled this spring and fall as the ships will dock on the opposite side of City Pier from the floats.
Figures provided by Delikat show the city has made about $18,800, roughly $3,700 per year, in moorage fee revenue off the floats over the past five years.
Boaters were charged $10 per day to tie up to the floats, Delikat said, though city records do not show how many individual boats used the floats over the past five years.
Delikat said the Feiro Marine Life Center also used the floats for educational classes in the summer, as did the tall ships Lady Washington and Hawaiian Chieftain when visiting Port Angeles.
Marine center Director Deborah Moriarty said the floats will be missed this summer, as they allowed children to get within arm’s length of the water of Port Angeles Harbor and investigate the creatures living there.
“It would be great to have the docks here, but if we can do anything to support the city on getting the docks in, we’d sure be happy to partner with them,” Moriarty said.
Joe Follansbee, communications director for the Grays Harbor Historical Seaport Authority, which runs the Lady Washington and Hawaiian Chieftain, said the decision to not install the floats this year will not affect the ships’ scheduled July 10-11 visit this year.
“I just want folks to know that Port Angeles is still on our schedule,” Follansbee said.
“We’ll hopefully find a way to be there or nearby.”
At the parks commission meeting last week, Delikat said parks and recreation staff has spent about $135,000 over the past five years keeping the six floats the city maintains from falling apart from rot and the wear and tear of being buffeted by waves.
“If it wasn’t through some craftiness with my staff, we wouldn’t have gotten five more years out of them,” Delikat said.
Repair efforts included securing the floats’ individual planks together with custom-made bolts and frequent replacement of the brackets that held them to individual pylons along City Pier, Delikat said.
The floats also have lost buoyancy as they’ve aged, Delikat explained, meaning they threaten to pull on or completely tear out the pylons to which they’re attached.
“I’m just afraid of [the floats] making more damage then they already have and [for] people’s safety,” Delikat said.
City staff members remove and store the floats in a city-owned parking lot on Ediz Hook each fall to protect them from the strong wave action that typically accompanies winter storms, efforts Delikat said have extended the floats’ usable life.
“I honestly think we would not have gotten 20 years out of them if we left them in the water the whole time,” Delikat said.
Reporter Jeremy Schwartz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jschwartz@peninsuladailynews.com.
