Maybe the true duty of government is to stir up the populace, not run the city efficiently. Maybe it is a moot point whether the city makes money, collects trash, fills pot holes and runs the buses on time. Those are not the subjects that ignite the public's ardor.
The water surrounding Key West— and its adjacent coastline— are the "commons" of our Keys. Who should use them? For what? It must be a public purpose, must provide a shared benefit.
Want public involvement in the political process? Bring up any subject involving waterfront, dockages or mooring before the city Commission and there will be passionate public policy debate. On Tuesday it was about a change in the way liveaboard dockage will be charged at Garrison Bight, and the construction of a mooring field north of Key West.
Is "income for the City of Key West" more worthy than "affordable houseboats for our workers" or "attractions and watersports that draw tourists" or "clean water" or "awe-inspiring view"?
Garrison Bight, originally a working marina, has become Charterboat Row and Liveaboard City. But rents haven't gone up in six years, not since City Manager Felix Cooper successfully argued the City should make money on the facility, and should not unfairly compete with private, tax-paying marinas by offering bargain-basement dock rates.
This time City Manager Julio Avael sought an increase in the fees paid by double-wide vessels, and those that hog up to three boat slots.
So are they just going to charge them two or three times what they are paying now? No— that would be simple and hard. Instead they will charge them $25 per extra foot above the 15-foot standard boat width. But since some people's rents will be doubled or even almost tripled overnight, the City is offering to "phase in" the increase over the next two or three years to those most affected.
The Commission heard from Port Advisory Board member John Williams, who justified the increase as being in keeping with other marinas. They heard from boaters who said that private marinas offered facilities that are lacking in Garrison Bight. Some people compared marina affordability favorably against the rents in public housing; boaters unfavorably compared Garrison Bight bath facilities with those offered at private marinas.
Nancy Butler-Ross noted that residents of Porter Place don't have to pay a mortgage on top of their rent, or make their own home repairs. Boaters also volunteer for clean up and landscaping the Bight, she said. Michael Suib said the affordability of liveaboard housing would be hurt by the increase, and George Claing pointed out that in a similar situation, "a Volkswagen and a Lincoln Continental" are charged the same for use of a parking space. "They are not charged by car size." Former mayor Sheila Mullins affirmed the comforts, payments and amenities of boats are "not comparable" with public housing. She said the liveaboards deserved a break.
Guess what? Many of these issues will come up again— and again— after the mooring field is in place, when boats of various kinds will be charged by the day for anchoring in the Seaplane base area. But the City, for some strange reason, has decided it wants the dubious pleasure of controlling the offshore liveaboards. Maybe the Commissioners already miss the decades of futile, heated, headline-hogging debates over Houseboat Row. Nine rookies joined KWPD this month. Maybe we have an excess of police officers and law enforcement boats, and need some new job to keep them busy.
This should provide fodder for innumerable KWTN articles in the future, as boaters complain first about being herded out of the area like a bunch of Eritrians while the installation takes place. Then they will complain about high rents, bad service, crowded dinghy docks, inadequate bathrooms, the inconvenience of the mandatory pump-out facilities, the City's lack of contingency plans for a hurricane, noisy neighbors, and transient rentals in their neighborhood (inevitably). The City will be pressed to provide some kind of high-speed ferry service every half hour to bring its new "tenants" in to Garrison Bight from the far reaches of the mooring field, since that trip could take an hour by rowboat.
There will be complaints about certain moorings being battered by storm-force winds out of the north in winter. There will be lawsuits over moorings that break or malfunction, resulting in damaged vessels. There will be problems with parachute jumpers, with seaplanes, with jetskis, with fishermen, with uninformed boaters trying to roar through the area and causing wakes and tearing out their props on City-owned moorings (or various floatsam attached legally or illegally to those City moorings).
The State of Florida, mistakenly believing that the City is making money on this "commercial" venture, will want a little yearly something for the state coffers. There may be challenges to the City's right to control this area which lies beyond the 600-feet jurisdiction recently claimed by the City. I predict this innocent-looking minefield (I mean "mooring" field) will cost the City a million dollars!
Someone (it might have been Assistant City Manager John Jones) noted that the alternative is to double-dock vessels in Garrison Bight, line `em up end to end "like Hong Kong." The Chinese had a hundred years to consider the alternatives, and that's what they came up with. Sounds cheap and efficient to me!
Commissioners, voters: Do you really want to take on a City Anchorage? The $80,843 you approved on Tuesday to install the mooring buoys is only the beginning of our boat debates.
Stay tuned.