Clean Weblockers and Social Equity. A really big deal!

Yesterday, I took in a Port of Bellingham meeting. The room was packed, as the Port Staff were presenting a final recommended Moorage Rate and Policy Plan for the next four years. The plan was passed by a unanimous commissioner vote, 3-0.

There were plenty of kudos to go around. The Marine Advisory Committee had worked hard. A subcommittee on key details had really done a great job finding compromises all could agree on. Staff had facilitated the whole process admirably. Warm fuzzies and smiles were flying back and forth.

Then the matter of web lockers came up. Just what is a web locker? Well—apparently for a significant number of Bellingham fishermen, web lockers are a place for fishermen to store significant quantities of critical fishing gear—like pool tables, artificial palm trees, old sofas, dead runabouts, unused hot tubs—at rates less than half of normal commercial storage unit spaces, subsided mostly by recreational moorage users, and to a lesser degree, by the tax payer.

Big deal? Fishermen are needy souls, aren’t they? Suffering along with the tribes due to reduced salmon runs? (I’d like to hear more about the record runs of Chinook this last year, and the absence of Korean salmon boats just outside the 200 mile offshore territorial  zone).

Commissioner Robbins drew significant ire at his proposal to raise weblocker rates from 0.15 cents per ft square to 0.30 cents. His case in point? In the last couple of months, a Bellingham fisherman docked his boat in another port because local web lockers were all taken. Full. Not available. He needed one, and since Bellingham was “full”, he went elsewhere.

 Up to $60,000.00 in repair and maintenance revenue went elsewhere, as this fisherman drove several hours each day from his Bellingham home to the distant port.

Big deal? Bad Dan Robbins? Why not overlook these “small” matters? Why rock the boat? (Pun intended).

I would like to commend Commissioner Robbins for the guts to speak up and take some heat for bringing up unenforced weblocker rules, and for proposing a change that might help ease enforcement.

It is the little “holes” in the hull that ruin the cargo. It is the little barnacles that waste fuel and time.

Would I want for a coach on my athletic team who ignores breaches in teamwork and personal discipline, or the one who runs a “tight” ship?

I hear a lot about “affluenza”. The market place is bad. We need to unstring the bow and let the younger generation “take it easy”. Common core curriculum is good because the children learn to value people over mathematical accuracy. It is okay for public officials to make back room deals and break transparency laws because it is for the “common good”. Restrictive State and Federal Constitutions are advisory, outdated documents that need to be tossed out. Just chill out!

Really? Little compromises don’t count?

Dan Robbins was “put in his place”. I can understand the odious nature of confronting recalcitrant, sloppy fishermen who are” out of town”. But then, why not create public policy that promotes clean, properly used weblockers? Maybe a larger weblocker fee increase would ease staff workloads and bring in business for other waterfront entities. Common sense is not initially common.

Little holes very quickly turn large gains into large losses. “Socially equitable” public policy destroys the common good, and the self worth of the very businessmen it is supposed to move ahead.

Clean, purposefully rented weblockers count! Think about it.  JK