Fishermen speak out against hike in harbor rates

Mike Tozzo

March 9 , 2006.

At the City Council meeting on Monday night fishermen stepped forward to speak out against the raising of the harbor rates.

Bob Nilsen, a long time fisherman in Petersburg said he is very concerned about the harbor rate increases. “I was under the impression there would be a 28% increase with two 6% increases following,” said Nilsen. “My wife and I left in December and when we came back we had a 78% increase.”

According to Nilsen, Petersburg has the second highest moorage rate in Southeast. “I would think in the near future that you’re going to lose a bunch of boats in that harbor,” said Nilsen. “I have talked to people who say they are going to leave.”

Nilsen said he would like the city to take a look at the ways that some other cities fund their harbors. According to research done by Nilsen, Kodiak uses 1% of their sales tax to help fund the harbor, which reportedly brought in $1 million last year. The big issue mentioned by Nilsen was using some of the raw fish tax to benefit the harbors. “I personally am opposed to any of the rate increases and I voted no on the harbor rate increase,” said Dennis Lewis, City Council Member. “As far as the raw fish tax goes, I did get something, I got anything over $500,000 to go back to the harbor, this last year equaled out to about $120,000.”

According to Lewis there is a 6% sales tax charged to the harbor enterprise fund for stall leases and that 6% goes back to the general fund. “This is the only enterprise fund that gets taxed and there might be something we can do to help that,” said Lewis. Melinda Hofstad, a local fisherman, said that one of the reasons we are in this position is because the state transferred the harbor over to the city. “All of a sudden we not only have to maintain it but we have to put aside for deferred maintenance and for future expansion,” said Hofstad.

Some of the fishermen have put together a petition and according to Hofstad they have about 90 signatures so far. “We’ve gotten 90 signatures when people are out fishing so I believe that we can get 95% of the fleet to sign this petition,” said Hofstad. “We have taken a 78% increase this year and we can’t afford to take another hit next year.”

Hofstad said that this hits the big boats the worst. “We bring a lot of economy to this community, we have local crews, we bring a lot of taxes to this community from the fuel and we pay the raw fish tax,” said Hofstad. When the state had control of the docks, Hofstad said that there wasn’t a fisherman unhappy about the raw fish tax going to the community. “Now it’s time to bring some of that money back and maybe there are other creative ways but I want to ask the council to rescind this awful increase.”

“I just feel that we supposedly had all this extra money and then all of a sudden we are $600,000 in the hole, I don’t understand it,” said Nilsen. City Manager, Bruce Jones, said that this $600,000 is something that has been built up from operation and maintenance costs over a number of years. “I can show you a budget message I wrote to the city council about four years ago that says the harbor better address this.”

Hofstad says she appreciates the steps the council has taken to repay the indebtedness to the harbor but thinks the first step is to rescind the increases. “It’s not right and it’s not fair, I blame myself because I didn’t go to the meetings,” said Hofstad. “I would have been at every meeting if I had any inkling it was going to do this.”

Councilor Paul Anderson added that all we have heard from 80% of the fishermen out there is that they want the services that are intact right now. “We haven’t had the participation at the meetings, we’ve had the harbor staff here and the financial staff here at all the discussions and after the fact, now we have the fishermen,” said Anderson.

“We know everyone here is concerned about the harbor rate increase and we know about the electrical rate increase and we know that garbage and water is going in that direction,” said Lewis. “I encourage all the citizens in the City of Petersburg, when these next rate increases come about, because we are going to have to deal with them, I encourage everyone to come and voice their opinion at the first and second reading prior to the time these readings are passed.”

“There’s no doubt that people would like to see the harbor rates reduced, myself included, if we can come up with a reasonable method of financing it,” said Dan Hickman, City Council member. “It costs this amount of money to do business.” Even though it is after the fact the council has agreed to take a look at their options. “Hopefully we can come up with a scenario that would get some reductions and get what the public wants.”

Bruce Jones announced in his city manager’s report that the council will be having a work session on March 8 at 7 p.m. in the council chambers to discuss the rationale behind the purchase of, the renovations and the costs associated with the purchase of the OMNI Building.