NEWPORT BEACH : New Mooring Fees Prompt Objections

Some boat owners are angry about a new city formula for calculating mooring fees, saying it could force them out of Newport Harbor.

For years the annual fee has been based on the length of the boat: $20 a foot.

The new system will charge for the size boat that a mooring can accommodate, rather than the size of the vessel actually moored there.

“Why are we charging based on what they could put in there? Because that’s what everybody else does,” City Manager Kevin J. Murphy said.

For about 100 of the 600 boat owners who use the offshore moorings, which consist of ropes and chains tied to weights, that means no change.

Those people’s boats are already the maximum size that their moorings can handle.

But for others, it means paying anywhere from $20 to $1,300 a year more for the same spots that many have held for more than a decade.

“With the stroke of a pen, the city has changed a policy that has been in place for 15 or 20 years,” said Lido Island resident Carter Ford.

Ford, who keeps his 20-foot boat at a 60-foot mooring, has been paying $400 a year. Under the new formula, he will pay $1,200.

He and two dozen other boat owners complained to the City Council that mooring fees are being used to finance activities other than boating in the tidelands, which the city maintains as a public trust.

But acting marine director Tony Melum said the new formula brings individual mooring costs into line with corporate fees.

The city for years has charged the Newport Harbor Yacht Club and the Balboa Yacht Club by mooring capacity, he said.

Also, it will curtail what Mayor John W. Hedges said is in effect a black market in moorings.

County statistics show at least a 20-year waiting list for moorings, so it is not uncommon for space holders to transfer their moorings to other boat owners for tens of thousands of dollars, he said.

The city, which in its 1995-96 budget projects $653,208 in revenue from about 750 moorings, gets none of that additional money.

But critics argue that the new policy overcharges people who have boats at the harbor but live farther inland.

“Most of the people who have moorings don’t have the affluence to live in Newport Beach,” G. Lamont (Monty) Snyder said.

“The City Council is looking for ways to enhance the coffers,” Snyder said. “It seems unfair to me that you would turn to people who live inland and bring their families down here.”

Others said that the higher fees may force them to take their boats elsewhere.

George Stivers of Huntington Beach said his cost will go from $400 a year to $1,200 under the new formula.

“I can rent a dock in Huntington Harbour for $208,” he said. “For that I get water, power and a place to park.”