[Bboa-members] Waterfront Commission Meeting

[Paul Kamen]

On 3/9/2006 at 9:19 AM Janet Cobb wrote:

>A small addition:  The houseboat community has paid into the 
>Marina Fund for forty years now.  They have helped pay for 
>maintenance, repair and  replacement of docks throughout the 
>Marina.  

*All* the berthers have been doing that for forty years. I don't 
see anything special about the houseboat community compared to 
the live-aboard community or the boat-berthing community at 
large. Maybe we don't have a marina-specific constitutional 
"equal protection" clause, but the principle applies. In fact 
for many years the floating home owners were paying less than 
a live-aboard sailboat of the same length. 

>They paid for their own sewers; they pay their own electrical 
>and on and on.  

The sewers are worn out, so that investment has pretty much 
lost its value. Also, remember that only the floating home 
owners need dedicated sewer lines in the first place. This has 
become an extra burden imposed on marina infrastructure 
maintenance by the floating homes, and not the other way 
around as you suggest. (There is a pump-out station on 
G-dock, so that requirement does not justify the sewers on 
H and I. And besides, pump-out station sewer volume is "a drop 
in the bucket" compared to sewage from floating homes.)

On electricity: All berthers pay for their own electricity, 
whether via meter or via an estimated flat rate. Nothing 
special about the floating homes here. I don't understand your 
point at all. 

>They do not go cruising and pay half fees for their slips to 
>be held. 

What does half-rate have to do with this? Except that the 
marina usually comes out ahead on the deal when a half-rate 
berth is assigned temporarily to another boat. 

>They sit and pay each and every month:  a dependable source 
>of revenue.  

Just like every other berther in the Marina.

>Yes, they pay property tax, which goes up town into the 
>general fund, in addition to the fees that go into the Marina 
>Fund. 

I pay property taxes to Berkeley too. Every boat owner pays 
property tax on their home to one city and county or another. 
But marina services still come out of the Marina Fund and from 
my berth payments, even though I think my property taxes to the 
City and County should cover some of this. It's just as 
"unfair" to me as it is to you. Really, this line of reasoning 
can be carried to absurdity, but the point is that we all pay 
taxes and not all of it is spent on things that we actually 
use. 

>They are 13 slips out of 1100, a fact that should be kept in 
>mind.

I keep this very much in mind. The special interests of 13 
floating home owners should be taken into account, but only in 
proportion to their numbers. 

>The most important fact out of this meeting is that several
>commissioners allowed as how they don't know anything about 
>the docks.  It makes it so much easier to make decisions when 
>you don't know anything!  

That statement was made in the context of the technical 
decisions about dock materials and design/contracting 
procedures. 

Remember that some of us on the Waterfront Commission have 
considerable professional experience in closely related 
fields. What I see as the big problem with the H-I rebuild 
as originally bid is that the dock configuration is very 
different from what would be designed without accommodating 
the floating homes, and this is likely to be very expensive 
over the long term as lost revenue. 

For starters, the new proposed berths are too big and 
misplaced. There is whole row of new downwind 40-ft berths 
in Emeryville, for example, still vacant 15 months after the 
coming online. Our market in this size is mostly sailboats, 
but these new 40-ft berths have been proposed for one of the 
shallowest spots in the Marina, requiring dredging now and 
likely to case a shoaling problem a few years down the road. 
The market peaks in the 30-40 ft size range, and in view of 
our shoaling problem outside the marina entrance, Berkeley 
will become less attractive to 40 and over and more 
attractive to 35 and under as time goes by. 

All the other new proposed berths are 48' and 52', placed 
near or between floating homes, and these have historically 
been difficult to market. There have been unsold vacancies 
on H and I docks for all of the eight years that I've been 
reviewing the vacancy reports, this despite waiting lists 
for other docks. It has been asserted that this is because 
the H and I berths are cross-wind. But crosswind didn't 
seem to be that much of drawback on the old F and G docks, 
which were also crosswind. Some of us have been around long 
enough to remember the old F and G docks, and to have 
sailed in and out of them. Sure an upwind or downwind 
orientation is better, but the fact is, most prospective 
marina berthers in that size range would rather not place 
their yacht in the middle of a houseboat community. To 
assert that this problem will go away with a change to 
upwind-downwind configuration is pure conjecture. Sure, 
there will be a small improvement, but we will still have 
a large number of new 48' and 52' berths between floating 
homes that will be difficult to market.

Bottom line: The configuration of H and I as originally 
bid is a substantial give-way to the floating homes. I can 
understand why you want it: The value of those homes is 
significantly enhanced by new docks that are designed 
to optimize floating home berthing. I'd push for it too if 
I were in your position. But it will have long-lasting 
negative impact on the Marina Fund's balance sheet, and it's 
not fair to the rest of the marina berthers who will pay the
freight.  

>Per their request, I'm going to give a walk through to a 
>couple of Commissioners.  I suggest that others may want 
>to do the same, or perhaps we should coordinate a Boat 
>Owner's Association tour of the docks.  Please advise.

>Janet

We all recognize that docks H and I are in poor condition. 
But I have to wonder about your cleat pull-outs, Janet. 
Those docks were designed for boats having maybe one tenth 
the crosswind "sail area" of a large floating home, and in 
your case, didn't you just make your entire boat one deck 
higher? 

I think when a large high-windage box of a floating home 
is put into a space designed for a yacht, some burden of 
responsibility falls on the floating home owner to upgrade 
the attachment points at their own expense.  

Is it really fair to the entire community of Berkeley boat 
berthers for the City to have to go the expense of putting 
in extra pilings just to hold your oversized floating home 
in place?  

---------
Paul Kamen
Chair, Berkeley Waterfront Commission
510-540-7968  510-219-8106 (cell)
pk at well.com   www.BerkeleyWaterfront.org