Port looking to re-align ‘grandfathered’ moorage rates

Posted

Port of Port Townsend officials are backing away from a proposal to ask tenants at Jefferson County International Airport to pay stormwater fees next year.

At the port commissioners’ meeting last week, Eron Berg, executive director of the Port of Port Townsend, said it became apparent that such an addition would be harder than initially thought.

“Specifically recognizing that the Port has not done a wonderful job in recent years of managing the stormwater system, I noticed that the leases that I had reviewed had this language that allowed the Port to institute a stormwater fee,” Berg said. 

But after reviewing the other airport leases, Berg explained that the majority of the agreements do not also contain the same language that would allow for the adoption of stormwater fees for tenants.

“At this point, I would propose pulling this item, because it really doesn’t work if it can’t work more broadly,” Berg said.

“If we’ve got a user group of pilots, and airport lovers who would like the airport to look a certain way — and that includes costs — probably the appropriate conversation for the user group is, ‘How do we pay for it?’

“If we’re not doing it through a stormwater fee, then we’re probably talking about just ensuring that our lease rates reflect the commission’s identified rate,” Berg added.

“I think the discussion about where we want to be is certainly a good one to have,” said District 2 Commissioner Bill Putney.

“We are tied up with a lot of leases that have a lot of years left to run, so the idea that we’re just going to change all these rates, contractually that probably doesn’t work very well,” Putney said.

As leases come to the expiration of their terms, Putney suggested Port staff broach the subject of aligning its rate structure for airport facilities at that time.

Much of the discussion at the budget update centered on rates paid by different users of port facilities.

For some tenants at the Port’s Boat Haven Marina, the issue of “grandfathered” rates came up once again.

Berg said certain tenants have been allowed to tie up in slips that are longer than their vessels, and pay moorage based on the length of their boat, rather than the slip size.

The discrepancy, he added, likely came as a result of more length-appropriate slips not being available at the time of the tenant’s arrival and the rates charged at first were never corrected.

“It wasn’t like it happened in the dead of the night; it was something that was done knowingly. What we’re missing, though, is there was no policy created that addressed what happened over time,” Berg explained. 

At the Port’s previous workshop Aug. 12, the executive director proposed a phased approach to bring “grandfathered” tenants up to the going rate for their length of slip.

Berg’s plan was to alert tenants that starting
Jan. 1, their moorage would be increased to half of the higher rate, with the other increase to follow six months later.

District 1 Commissioner Pam Petranek proposed the idea of giving tenants the opportunity to be put onto a “switch list” for a more appropriate slip.

And as long as they would be willing to relocate should one become available, the tenant could continue paying the grandfathered rate, she suggested.

“They have to be willing to move,” Petranek said. “That could at least give boat owners a little bit of motivation to either step up and pay the bigger rate or be on the list to move.”

Berg said that of the 70 or so boats that have been grandfathered in, the size discrepancy means a variation of between about $10 and $50 monthly for the tenants, with the largest jump coming in at about $120 for a boat that is 12 feet shorter than its assigned slip.

“You would pay for a 35-foot slip and if you want to put a 25-foot vessel there because you want more wiggle room — that’s up to you,” Berg said. “But you pay for the slip ... It seems like the people who are in this category have really gotten a great deal for a decade. It’s difficult for me to understand the rationale for why there would be two-tiered pricing.”

Berg said he intended to send out notices for the proposed rate changes to the affected tenants this week.

“To the extent that we can just treat the tenants that we have on the same level playing field, is really what I’m advocating for,” he added.