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
