PORT ANGELES — Port of Port Angeles commissioners are expected to hear a staff recommendation Tuesday that Boat Haven moorage fees be raised and perhaps to drop the other shoe on a question that’s lingered for months.
Commissioners could act on the proposal, which would feel like a kick in teeth to a citizens committee that wants to reduce the rates, according to the panel’s chairman.
The topic is on the agenda for a port commissioners meeting that will start at 9 a.m. in port headquarters, 338 W. First St.
For more than a year, the port has weighed the committee’s recommendation while it awaited advice from a consultant that it peg a moorage-rate increase to 1 percent above the cost-of-living index. They received his proposal last spring, but port staff moved toward a recommendation only when planning loomed for the 2016 budget.
“We’ve got this done because we have to work on the budget,” Karen Goschen, the port’s chief finance director, said Friday.
Commissioners may choose among at least three alternatives:
■ Leave the rates where they are, starting at $5.50 per foot per month for a 20-foot boat.
■ Raise them to 90 percent to 95 percent of an average of marinas that include Oak Harbor ($6.61 per foot per month), Port Townsend ($7) and Pouslbo ($7.89).
■ Lower them to a level charged at Kingston ($5.41) or lower.
All rates are according to their respective marinas’ websites and do not include a 12.48 percent leasehold excise tax.
William Spring, the citizen committee chairman, said Friday the group, which had given its recommendation to the port 14 months ago, was told Thursday that the issue would be on Tuesday’s agenda.
“We were stonewalled,” Spring said of the intervening time.
When port staff informed the committee of its recommendation, “they basically completely denied and disregarded our input,” Spring said.
“We felt insulted.”
Spring also said the port staff’s recommendation grossly overestimated the amount to set aside for administration, maintenance and depreciation of the Boat Haven. The consultant had warned those costs could “spiral.”
For the port’s part, “intelligent people can examine the same data and reach different conclusions,” said Goschen, who met with Spring on Thursday.
Especially galling to the citizens committee, Spring said, is the port’s paying $37,600 to Bst Associates of Bothell, headed by consultant Paul Sorensen.
Seventeen committee members, who Spring said included three people who hold graduate degrees in marketing, worked “scores of hours” for free, he said.
The committee’s contention has been that the Boat Haven is spurned by many boat owners outside Clallam County because of its distance from population centers, some boaters’ reluctance to brave the Strait of Juan de Fuca, debris outfall from an adjacent log yard, and a lack of amenities.
Its draw should be low moorage rates that would appeal especially to Canadian boaters, Spring said.
Attracting and retaining more boaters also would boost marine trades like boatwrights, painters, fiberglass repair firms and others.
The last moorage rate increase in 2005 started a slide in slip occupancy, according to Spring, but Sorensen said other factors hurt both the Boat Haven and the recreational watercraft industry.
Boaters older than 65 have dropped by half, he said, and the recession robbed people of the source of second mortgages with which many people had financed buying boats.
Boating has resurged some with the economy, but not to the same degree as the index of consumer confidence, he said. Meanwhile, more people have turned to other, less costly, recreational activities.
The biggest threat to marinas, however, has been development of trailers capable of carrying 26-foot boats and of pickup trucks powerful enough to pull them. Sorensen said.
The result has been more boats parked in driveways and fewer boats moored at marinas. At the same time, the commercial fishing fleet has dwindled by half, he said.
Four hundred boat owners tie up at the Boat Haven, with up to another 300 at Sequim’s John Wayne Marina, out of a Clallam County population of 70,000.
The port granted a modest moorage reduction during 2014 and 2015, which Sorensen said produced a “modest” increase in occupancy that was more than offset by reduced revenue.
“Either the rates pay for the marina, or that’s subsidized by something else,” Sorensen said.
“It’s not a difficult choice.”
Spring said he was upset that port staff apparently had reached a decision but that he had not heard from the elected commissioners.
Commissioner John Calhoun, however, has been dismissive of the committee’s role in the issue.
“I really do feel the question needs to be disassociated from those who would get the most impact from the rate structure,” he said May 26, when commissioners heard Sorensen’s report.
“I just don’t think it’s a very good optic from the public standpoint to have the tenants set the moorage rates.”
Calhoun, who has supported industrial development of the port’s waterfront — which the Boat Haven splits in two — also said marina profits could support other port projects.
“Our responsibility as a port would be severely restricted if all marina revenues were sequestered for the marinas,” he said at an earlier May meeting.
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
