Boaters want fees docked

Newport Beach dock and pier builder Pete Swift remembers when rebuilding a residential dock cost about $60, but these days it can set a homeowner back as much as $6,000.

Getting approval to build on Newport Beach tidelands involves a dizzying vortex of permits everywhere from the state Coastal Commission to the city building department.

Now Newport Beach is considering raising fees on a number of services it offers on and around Newport Harbor, including permits for piers and mooring fees for boats. Local business owners and boaters say the proposed fee increases are unfair.

“It already takes four or five months to get all the permits, and then they say, ‘Well, let’s bump up the fees,’” Swift said. “We always thought we were paying our share.”

A recent city-commissioned study found Newport Beach subsidizes hundreds of dollars per unit on fees for services like permits for commercial piers and annual inspections for people who live on their boats.

Swift’s company, Swift Slip Dock & Pier Builders, spent about $70,000 last year on permits alone, said Swift, who has been in the dock-building business for the past 26 years.

“Every time they raise these fees, we get a little less — now we have to pass the cost on to the homeowners,” Swift said.

The city spent about $21.8 million on a variety of tideland services like offering tours of tide pools in Corona del Mar, commercial pier permits and investigating incidents involving sea lions between 2006 and 2007, but the fund the city uses to pay for these services generated only about $8.1 million during the same period, according to the study.

Among other price hikes, the study suggests raising fees for offshore moorings in Newport Beach to $87 per lineal foot — a significant jump from the current $20 per lineal foot.

“In the case of a few services, fees are tiny or nonexistent in spite of their cost to the city,” according to the study.

The services end up being subsidized by the city’s general fund, the study found.

But the city also gets millions from Orange County in the form of property taxes on boats in Newport Harbor, said Mark Sites, the owner of Intracoastal Dredging and a member of the local Tidelands Users Group, which has been critical of the city-commissioned study.

“They’re seeking a blank check,” Sites said. “They claim they lose so much money on the tidelands. Nothing they do will make money on the tidelands.”

Newport Beach fee increases could raise costs for Sites’ boat slip dredging business.

The study suggests raising boat slip inspections for eelgrass, a protected species, from $489 to $1,635.

“They’re going to turn a profit, but they call it cost recovery,” Sites said. “The Tidelands Users Group would very much like to sit down with City Council members and the city staff and talk about this. It really needs to be looked at more closely.”

Newport Beach City Councilman Mike Henn, who recently reviewed the study as a member of the city’s finance committee, said it has been as many as 10 years since some of the fees have been raised, and Newport Harbor generates an endless list of expenses for the city.

“It’s unlikely we will do anything with raising these tideland fees until we understand what the increased revenue would be used for,” Henn said. “It’s been a long time since these fees have been analyzed and changed. In my view, some adjustment will be appropriate, but it’s a matter of how much.”

Some of the money from potential fee increases could go to dredging the harbor, which has not been cleaned in decades and is dangerously shallow in some areas, Henn said.

City officials will study the issue before any final decisions about fee increases are made, he said.

BRIANNA BAILEY may be reached at (714) 966-4625 or at brianna.bailey@latimes.com.