The Fishermen's Terminal Advisory Committee (FTAC) last Friday shot down new, more restrictive, Port of Seattle-proposed rules for live-aboards at the working marina near Magnolia.
The committee had asked Port officials to come up with "more stringent guidelines" dealing with the issue following several recent deaths at the terminal, according to Mark Knudsen, deputy managing director for the seaport.
Numerous fishermen at the terminal have argued that the deaths were the result of unsafe conditions on the docks. But the Port seemed to shift the blame for the deaths more to the victims and framed the argument for tougher rules as a way to deal with people of less-than-sterling character using the marina as a cheap place to live.
"Our moorage rates for commercial fishing vessels are 30 to 40 percent lower than other ports in Puget Sound," Knudsen said in a phone interview before the meeting. "As part of that, we expect people ... not to use [boats] as low-cost apartments."
The numbers of live-aboards has risen dramatically, and around half a dozen people living on boats at the marina are "sneak-aboards" who aren't registered with the Port, he said.
Depending on the size of the boat and how long it goes to sea, living onboard would have been restricted to 14 to 30 days before leaving port and 10 to 20 days after the vessel returned, according to the proposed rules.
Live-aboards would be allowed for up to 45 days if the boat were being repaired on its return. Living on pleasure craft is already prohibited, and no one would be allowed to live permanently on a fishing vessel, according to the proposed rules.
The real issue is rebuilding the docks and attracting more tenants, something that is more difficult to do because of year-round live-aboards, according to Knudsen. "It's hard to convince someone to bring a million-and-a-half-dollar boat to tie up next to a vessel with a couple of scraggly guys living on it," he said. "We don't think it's that complicated an issue."
But it turned out to be a complicated issue after all at the latest FTAC meeting, which got downright testy at times when a number of fishermen slammed Knudsen for his characterization in the press of some live-aboards as people who have made bad lifestyle choices.
He made an easy target. The Port's goal is increasing the commercial viability of the terminal, "not spending our time picking up beer bottles and drug paraphernalia" on the docks, Knudsen said at the meeting.
Pete Knutson - an activist fishermen who's tangled with Port officials on more than one occasion - called for Knudsen to resign and said a petition was being circulated demanding the same thing.
"You constantly demonstrate a clear bias," Knutson said of the Port official's attitude toward live-aboards. Knutson also described the proposed rules as Draconian. "It's an evasion of the real issue down here," he said of the focus on live-aboards instead of safety concerns.
Wally Dowden agreed. He owns the Long Island II, a fishing boat, from which a live-aboard crewmember fell overboard and drowned recently, along with a woman who had been visiting him. "He wasn't sub-human," Dowden said of his crewmember.
But the fisherman also saw a larger trend at work. "They're just trying to get rid of all the little boats," he said of the Port. Dowden also said he has one or two crew-members living on his boat all the time, and he complained that the proposed rules would be an economic hardship on him because he'd have to pay for hotel rooms.
A fishermen at the meeting who didn't identify himself and left before it was over said he lives on a ship at the terminal and doesn't drink or do drugs. The fisherman also said he knew the people who drowned at the terminal. "I never noticed them drinking or arguing."
Tim Cummings, who repairs boats at the terminal, believes Port officials are going too far with the proposed regulations. Beer bottles are found in Magnolia and needles are found in Queen Anne, he said in response to Knudsen's earlier comment. "I don't see the need for what I see as a Gestapo effort," Cummings added.
Not everyone at the meeting agreed that Port officials were at fault or had a bad attitude, and one fisherman described the objections to the proposed policy as "a knee-jerk reaction."
Defending his stand, Knudsen insisted that the Port only has a problem with live-aboards who aren't connected to the fishing fleet. "It's not people in the industry creating the challenges," he said.
But FTAC chairman David Harsila voiced an opinion that many shared. "This all has to do with the accidental deaths here at Fishermen's Terminal in the past year."
He also expressed doubt that the new, proposed policies would have made any difference. Besides, although it's less restrictive than the proposed rules, the existing policy on live-aboards works just fine, he said. "It looked pretty good to me."
The real issue is enforcing the existing policy, Harsila said of rules that don't include time restrictions but limit live-aboards to working or retired fishermen.
Jim Bassett, an FTAC member, agreed that the existing policy on live-aboards would work if it was enforced. However, he suggested that the language of the policy needed to be tweaked and offered to help do that.
Bassett also made a motion that the FTAC reject the new rules on live-aboards as unenforceable. "I want no part of it," he said. Instead, Bassett called for refining the existing regu-lations.
Everyone who voted at the meeting agreed with him.
Staff reporter Russ Zabel can be reached at rzabel@nwlink.com or 461-1309.
[[In-content Ad]]
