PORT TOWNSEND — Port of Port Townsend Commissioner Dave Thompson’s proposal to raise moorage fees by 5 percent to boost the port’s sinking revenues was tabled Thursday to allow the Port Townsend Moorage Tenants Union time to form a different proposal.
Thompson said Thursday that net revenues from port operations have declined by about $900,000 in the past three years.
The Boat Haven marina’s Tenants Union representative, Gary Rossow, asked that the port first consider that group’s counterproposal before approving a rate increase.
“In general, the moorage tenants all understand that the rates are going to need to go up,” Rossow said, but he added that affordability in hard economic times still had to be considered.
He said singling out the moorage tenants “as a cash cow” was merely asking the tenants to subsidize the losses in the boat yard.
Arguing that the port needed to come up with other sources of revenue, including in the port’s industrial park and at Jefferson County International Airport, Rossow said of the moorage tenants, “When you talk about increasing the rates we feel we’re in the cross hairs all the time.”
The port commissioners last raised the permanent-moorage rate based on a 30-foot slip on Jan. 1, 2009 by 3 percent to $6.24 per boat foot.
In May 2008, the rates were increased 3.9 percent and 7.8 percent in January 2007.
The last 5 percent rate increase came in 2006. A 10.2 percent increase in 2000 was the highest rate increase in the past 17 years.
In 1993, a 30 percent increase was approved bring the rates that year to $2.86.
Thompson said the port’s permanent moorage rates were still lower than most marinas, including John Wayne Marina in Sequim.
Port Commissioner Leif Erickson said he believed Thompson’s 5 percent proposal was “a little steep to me.”
Commissioner John Collins proposed cutting expenses.
Port Executive Director Larry Crockett said his concern was the ability to show the bond market that the port has the financial wherewithal to afford the bond financing to pay for a proposed project that would cost more than $5 million.
The project would replace the A/B Docks section of Boat Haven marina for about 100 boats and relocation and reconstruction of a 70-ton haul-out dock next to the existing 300-ton haul-out.
A/B Docks were originally build in 1967 with an expectation that they would last 25 years, port officials have said, which meant they should have been replaced in the early 1990s.
Should bond financing be approved, work would begin on the new docks in July.
Port Finance Director Don Taylor said the question was whether the port, which has lost $500,000 a year in gross revenues over the past four years, can service the bonded indebtedness.
“We’re spending all of our appreciation just to keep afloat,” he said.
“To me, not to continue to raise the rates at some level is just putting off a train wreck.”
Collins called for a long-term strategy to raise rates, rather than the “arbitrary” 5 percent Thompson said he proposed just to drive up port revenues.
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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
