The Wrangell Port Commission Thursday approved new moorage rates for Meyers Chuck and a new storage reservation fee for the Marine Service Center.
The new fees still need to be approved by the Wrangell Borough Assembly.
Meyers Chuck, a small community between Wrangell and Ketchikan, has never had moorage fees before. Wrangell took over the Meyers Chuck dock from the state last summer, and the fees collected there will go toward a new dock for the community.
The proposed Meyers Chuck moorage rates are half the cost of Wrangell’s. Transient moorage will cost $0.20 a foot daily. Monthly moorage is $1.75 a foot, and annual moorage is $12 a foot.
Port Commission Chairman Clay Hammer said he does not know which Meyers Chuck resident will be responsible for sending the fees to Wrangell.
“The idea right now is to go with the honor system, and that would be something like a cash box there. They still have to figure out amongst themselves who is going to be the person there to be in charge of the money,” Hammer said.
The Port Commission also proposed a $100 fee for boat owners wanting to reserve a long-term storage spot in the Marine Service Center. The fee’s purposed is to deter boat owners from reserving space and then backing out at the last minute.
The commission was considering raising work space rates in the boat yard, but Hammer said the proposal was not popular with some community members.
“We had some workshops and discussed it, and there were quite a few members of the public that came out and voiced some concerns about it. [They questioned] whether or not there was really the need for it,” Hammer said.
The work space rate increase was proposed so the harbor department could hire an additional boat lift operator to keep up with rising demand. Instead, the department is rescheduling hours for existing employees to expand boat lift availability.
Harbormaster Greg Meissner said increasing work space rates would also discourage people from leaving their boats in the Marine Service Center for too long. He said it could free up more valuable space.
But Hammer said the port commission will revisit the issue and will try to better justify the increase.
“It’s kind of a fine line between being competitive and pricing yourself out of work, and we certainly don’t want that. We don’t want to drive people out of the yard,” Hammer said. “But at the same time, we want to make sure our financial needs are being met so that we can stay edgy.”
If the borough assembly approves the new fees, they will go into effect July 1.
