Newport Beach council to consider harbor moorings fees proposal
The Newport Beach City Council on Tuesday will consider a proposal to reduce fees related to harbor moorings, which could end years of contentious debate between city leaders and boaters.
In February 2015, the City Council cut the cost of residential pier fees and tasked the Harbor Commission with assessing harbor moorings as well.
Mooring holders, who were still troubled by fee increases approved by the council in 2010, had hoped the conversation would result in a fee reduction that would put their costs on par with those of residential pier owners.
After several months of public meetings, where topics such as cost, transfer rules and other issues were robustly discussed with officials and mooring holders, the Harbor Commission recommended the council more than halve the city’s annual permit fee for offshore moorings from $55.43 per foot of a boat to $25 per foot.
However, the council in June 2015, voted instead to direct staff to craft a resolution that would reduce the fee to $35 per foot of a boat. Onshore mooring fees would also be reduced from $27.21 per foot of a boat to $17.50 per foot under the plan. Onshore moorings are typically less expensive because they are intended for smaller vessels, according to a staff report.
The council will consider that resolution on Tuesday. If approved, the city would see roughly a $700,000 reduction annually to the tidelands fund, which pays for capital improvement projects inside the harbor, according to harbor staff.
The cost and availability of moorings, which are considered to be a more affordable way for people to take advantage of boating in Newport Beach than marinas, has been a hotly debated topic among boaters for more than five years in Newport Beach.
In a controversial vote in 2010, the council decided to nearly triple the cost of mooring fees, which had not been increased since 1996. The move came three years after an Orange County Grand Jury investigation determined that the city was allegedly mismanaging the mooring process and that the moorings on public tidelands weren’t readily available to the public under the city system.
Among the specific findings, the grand jury said the city hadn’t assessed the moorings’ fair market value since the mid-1990s.
At that time, the council voted to peg moorings at 14% of the average Newport marina rent, which raised the fee incrementally over five years from about $20 per foot of a boat to about $55 per foot. That increased the annual mooring cost for a 40-foot boat from about $800 to about $2,200.
The city’s 2010 ordinance also ended the practice of private mooring transfers, instead allowing mooring holders to transfer the permit twice until 2020. After that, transfers would be prohibited except when exchanged between immediate family members or with another mooring holder.
However in 2015, the Harbor Commission recommended that the council should allow unlimited transfers with the maximum of one mooring transfer per year. The cost would likely be about 10% of the sale price for the mooring.
The council will consider altering transfer rules at a meeting, likely in February or March, according to Harbor Resources Manager Chris Miller.
Miller said changing the city’s municipal code related to mooring regulations outside of fees will require several months of staff time, which is why it’s not being addressed next week.
“We wanted to take care of the rate adjustment now and come back with the rest of the regulations at a later meeting,” he said.
If the council approves the new rate, mooring holders will see it adjusted on their annual bill as early as Wednesday.
The council meeting will begin at 7 p.m. at 100 Civic Center Drive in Newport.
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Hannah Fry, hannah.fry@latimes.com
Twitter: @HannahFryTCN
