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Marina business plan proceeds toward completion
By LESTER R. DAILEY
Article published on Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2007 |
CLEARWATER – These days, the marina business plan appears on the City Council agenda nearly as regularly as the invocation and the Pledge of Allegiance.
At their Nov. 13 meeting, the council members once again tried to hammer out a 5-year plan to put Clearwater’s money-losing marina in the black.
“It’s very complicated,” Margie Simmons, the city’s finance director, complained. “Every time we come up here, we get different directions and have to run different numbers.”
Like the city’s airpark, the municipal marina on Clearwater Beach is an enterprise zone, but unlike the airpark, the marina is operating in the red. Enterprise zones are supposed to generate enough revenue to cover their expenses, set aside reserves for future repairs and make payments in lieu of taxes to the city.
“We have to balance the fact that this enterprise zone needs to get healthy again with making things affordable for you folks out there,” Mayor Frank Hibbard explained to the audience.
“The health of the (enterprise) fund is what’s at stake here,” City Manager Bill Horne agreed. “That’s the reason we have to raise (prices).”
Slip rents and fuel prices are the two increases being discussed. The trick is to increase them enough to cover the financial needs of the marina without raising them so high that the marina is priced out of the market and boaters go elsewhere.
Vice Mayor John Doran suggested pegging the pump price of fuel at a 20 percent markup over cost, then giving commercial users a 10 percent discount. Horne liked the idea and suggested trying it for six months.
“The way I look at this, right now we’re charging above the average,” Councilman Paul Gibson said, fearing a price increase would cause boaters to buy their fuel elsewhere. But Councilwoman Carlen Petersen disagreed, saying boaters would be willing to pay a few extra cents per gallon for the convenience of filling up at the marina.
“We’re providing a service that is valuable and there’s a price that can be put on that,” Petersen said.
Simmons said that the city barely breaks even when it sells fuel at full price, and actually loses money when it gives a discount. The council members later agreed to conduct a fuel price survey of all local marinas in the area, not just municipal marinas.
Commercial boaters complained about the hefty transfer fee the city charges when a commercial boat at the marina is sold and the buyer wants to remain at the marina. The council members promised to explore ways to waive the fee if the original owner dies or retires and the boat is sold to a relative or longtime crew member. They also proposed scrapping the “special purpose fee” imposed on the marina’s three parasail boats when parasailing was considered new and dangerous, and replacing it with a fee based on the number of passengers the boat can carry.
When the latest revisions have been made, the plan will be brought back to the council for further changes or a final vote.
“One thing we have found out is that this is not simple,” Gibson said. “There are a lot of moving parts to this.”
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Article published on Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2007
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