Plan To Raise Docking Fee From Current $100 Has Newport Beach Boat Owners Up In Arms [View all]

[stopbush]

Newport Beach, CA, is the wealthiest city per capita in the USA. Fully 25% of residents earn over $200,000 a year, while the average home is worth over $1MM.

But residents who are boat owners are up in arms because the NB City Council is thinking about raising the fee for docking their yachts and floating cities from a flat yearly fee of $100 to a fee based on the amount of space their boat takes up while sitting at the dock. The poor, oppressed 1%!!!!

Note that these boats are docked in state-owned waters.


Newport residents threaten boat parade boycott over fee increase

City Council tonight will consider fee increase for resident dock owners in Newport Harbor; residents say increase is too high.


By DEEPA BHARATH / THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

NEWPORT BEACH – A group claiming to represent 1,200 residential dock owners in Newport Harbor is threatening to boycott this year's Christmas boat parade if the City Council on Wednesday night approves an increase in fees for dock owners. Stop the Dock Tax Chairman Bob McCaffrey said Monday that "the harbor will be dark" for the 104th annual Newport Beach Christmas Boat Parade.


"Each year, we voluntarily spend thousands of dollars to lavishly decorate our homes and boats in holiday tradition," he said.

The city is proposing to increase the rent for residential docks that use public tidelands from a flat $100 yearly fee to 52.5 cents per square foot, according to a staff report. The rent will apply to the dock and float area, waters of the internal slip and dockable or useable waters around the float. City officials have maintained that this is not a tax, but rent that is collected for the use of public tidelands. Council members have also reiterated that the funds will be used for harbor improvements.

McCaffrey said the new fee increase, in some cases, will be a 3,000 percent hike.

"This is an unncessary money grab and we can't take it anymore," he said. "The money we use to decorate our homes will have to be used to pay the new tax."

http://www.ocregister.com/news/city-378878-residential-fee.html