Council work session endorses sending proposed harbor user fee ordinance to council for public hearing

Councilors and staff at the Aug. 12 city council work session discussed a draft ordinance to create a harbor user fee charged per passenger on charter and transient vessels, and agreed to send a revised ordinance to the full council for public hearings. Kim (City staff) presented the draft and explained options for fee calculation, exemptions and use of proceeds. Participants discussed whether the fee is intended to fully cover the harbor deficit or to contribute toward it, and asked staff to produce underlying numbers before finalizing rates.

The group agreed to add an explicit use-of-proceeds line permitting auditing and enforcement costs to be paid from fee revenues. Councilors debated the per-passenger amount, moving from a $1 placeholder toward $2 as a starting point; several members argued the fee should be easy to implement and later reviewed in the budget cycle. Councilor Fran questioned exemptions for vessels owned by nonprofits and whether research trips should be exempt; staff indicated the charter operator would still collect the fee per passenger and could bill researchers.

On penalties and delinquency, the council settled on drafting language that applies interest at 1.5% per month (compounded in ordinance text), which the group discussed as a reasonable enforcement/encouragement mechanism. They also directed staff to account for merchant processing fees and to consider returning a small percentage of collections to operators to cover administrative costs (staff suggested aligning the admin allowance with the city’s transient-lodging practice, roughly 3–5%).

Councilors asked that passenger counts be the fundamental reporting unit (headcount per trip), with operators required to retain rosters for audit but not routinely submit names to the city. Kim said passenger lists can be confidential and produced for audits under the city’s chapter exceptions. The council generally supported quarterly reporting and separate accounting so harbor receipts are credited to the harbor fund.

Next steps: staff will revise the draft ordinance with the agreed clarifications (auditing/enforcement as an eligible use of proceeds; per-user calculation clarified to headcount; penalty language using 1.5% per month; admin/processing allowance to be specified) and present it to the council for a public first reading and public comment. No final ordinance adoption occurred at the work session; the item was referred to the regular council agenda for public hearings.