Posted: December 15, 2009 - 12:10am
By PETER GUINTA
In six to nine months, St. Augustine Marina will begin operating three boat mooring fields -- with 80 spaces in Salt Run and 178 spaces in the Matanzas River.
The City Commission on Monday unanimously passed a Harbor Management Plan that permits charging "affordable" fees to secure transient, live-aboard and wet-stored boats to better monitor safety and environmental cleanliness of the waterways.
Jim Piggott, St. Augustine's director of general services, said the plan has been in the city's sights for five years.
Construction would cost $588,500 in city reserves and require hiring two more marina employees.
"With a 3 percent interest rate, we'll be able to pay the city back in seven years," Piggott said. "By the third year, we'll make a profit."
He said local residents would get a 40 percent discount on the price of mooring, with another 30 percent off for boats in wet storage.
"The longer you stay in a mooring field, the cheaper it will be," he said. "Our prices are extremely competitive."
For every week, a boat owner gets a free day. For every month, a free week. For every year, a free month.
Commander Barry Fox of St. Augustine police said the city sees an average of eight "wrecked, junked or dismantled" boats a year, many of which leak oil, fuel or sewage. The city and the St. Augustine Port, Waterway & Beach District must pay thousands of dollars per year to remove derelict hulks.
They believe that monitoring a vessel's seaworthiness can prevent this problem.
But many boat owners and Salt Run residents said this plan would harm Salt Run.
Rik Erkelens, a retired Army colonel, pointed out that the Harbor Plan mandates vessels staying in the mooring fields to have $300,000 worth of insurance.
"Ninety percent of boats don't have $300,000 worth of insurance. They're not worth that," he said. "A policy costs $4,000 a year."
City officials later said the Harbor Plan's language should have said a boat needs $300,000 in liability insurance, not hull insurance.
Erkelens said the commission's job is to "promote boating. They bring in a lot of money. This city was founded by a boat."
That was echoed by St. Augustine activist Ed Slavin, who said Pedro Menendez sailed through Salt Run on his way to founding the city in 1565.
"Preserve the vista of that historic waterway," he asked the commission. "And ban those really offensive wave runners in mooring fields. They don't mix."
Frequent city critic B.J. Kalaidi said the the 80-space mooring field in Salt Run was too big.
"That's like trying to fit a whale in water only fit for minnows," she said.
City Commissioner Don Crichlow said a problem -- where will some boats go when they are displaced by the mooring fields -- needed to be addressed. After they leave city waters, they essentially are not subject to pollution enforcement.
Mayor Joe Boles said that the marina has to prepare for growth.
"If we think people are not going to come here, we're naive," he said.
Vice Mayor Errol Jones made the motion to approve the ordinance.
"Salt Run has already changed," he said. "I don't know whether this will change it again. (But) those waters are everybody's waters. It's a better solution than doing nothing. This is very proactive on our part. Delay is really to stall it out. This may not be the perfect answer, but (boaters) have been getting (anchorage) for free. Now they're going to have to pay for it."
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