The Marina Small Craft Harbor is proposing a 31% fee increase after a relocation plan was rejected. Boat owners say their fees are already the highest among 36 Bay Area harbors and have risen repeatedly over 15 years, with charges covering trash and restrooms that benefit the public.
It's about to get way more expensive for boat owners at Marina Small Craft Harbor to keep their boats there. The Small Craft Harbor has recently been operating at a loss, and the hope was to bring in new fees collected from hundreds of vessels that were gonna be brought over from the nearby Gas House Cove while Gas House Cove underwent remediation from its former days as a PG&E gas plant site. Except that plan was recently shot down by the Board of Supervisors because of immense pressure from homeowners in the area to keep those boats out of the Small Craft Harbor. So operators of the harbor need to implement a 31% increase in fees to keep the harbor running. Boat owners obviously oppose this and claim that fees they pay are already the highest at the harbor among 36 harbors in the Bay Area, and current funding is apparently adequate to meet budget needs. Plus, fees have already gone up multiples over the past 15+ years, and a lot of these fees are used to cover trash cleanup at the marina and public bathroom maintenance, which should be shouldered by the general public because it mostly comes from tourists and park visitors, not the boat owners. Let me know what you think in the comments. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
