Posted on: Monday, July 9, 2001
State harbors sinking in mismanagement, some say
By Tanya Bricking
Advertiser Staff Writer
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| From left, boaters like Troy Richards, Janet Mandrell and Katie Thompson will see the Ala Wai small boat harbor change drastically if it becomes privatized.
Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser |
For Navy retiree Ron Beach, the Ala Wai small boat harbor has always been the marina for the common man.
It costs him $300 a month for a slip for his 31-foot sailboat in a marina with the backdrop of spectacular sunsets and the Waikiki skyline.
But he says his days at the Ala Wai are numbered because of the threat that Hawai'i's largest state-run marina will go private and exceed his price range.
"I live on my retirement," said Beach, 59, an on-again, off-again live-aboard since 1978. "I can't live here anymore. Gotta go. I'm a sailor."
Bureaucracy is changing the boating lifestyle at O'ahu's state-run harbors because it has created a broken system with an uncertain future.
Three generations after the Ala Wai and Ke'ehi public harbors were built to serve the bulk of Hawai'i's boaters, state Auditor Marion Higa says the boating division is operating in crisis mode.
A backlog of repairs at state harbors amounts to more than $130 million. The latest audit — the third critical one since 1993 — says the boating program is mismanaged, its marinas are falling apart, and the Ke'ehi harbor is so neglected that 64 of its 338 boating slips are closed because they're deemed too dangerous.
State officials are zeroing in with their own solutions for the harbors. Gov. Ben Cayetano wants the Ala Wai and Ke'ehi marinas to be among the first operations to be contracted out under a new state privatization law. The state Department of Land and Natural Resources' Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation wants to move ahead with public hearings about whether to increase slip fees and other charges that could mean up to a 300 percent jump in costs for Ala Wai boaters. Higa wants the state to clean up the boating program's mismanagement.
Hawai'i's recreational boating community sees a turning point on the horizon. Decisions made in the next year will decide whether the state marinas will keep sinking or be revitalized, said Janet Mandrell, Beach's neighbor down the dock.
Cayetano, who has called Ala Wai boaters "rich" and "demanding," wants them to pay higher mooring fees to bring in money to maintain the harbors.
But Mandrell, an X-ray technician who lives with her cat, Kasha, aboard a 37-foot sailboat cruiser called "Kaizen," said she'd like to see the public harbors remain affordable to recreational boaters.
"There are going to be a lot of losers if this place goes private," she said. "This place will empty out. It will become as expensive as the really tony places."
Trend of going private
Aboard the "Aphrodite," a 42-foot trimaran at Ke'ehi harbor, Scott Haley can see a whole row of boat spaces deemed too unsafe to use. Haley puts up with an uneven parking lot and a marina with no shade trees or park benches. That's part of the price of living on his boat.
"Now, you get to the point where if you complain, they condemn your dock," he said. "If they fixed up the docks, they could charge double and still keep people."
There is money to be made in the boating business.
"That's the amazing thing," said Kate Thompson, a boater at the Ala Wai harbor and commodore of Hawaii Women's Yacht Racing team. "This place should make money."
While audits have found the state system can't collect delinquent fees or account for how much money it takes to maintain its harbors, marina management companies have the answers.
Ko Olina Marina, a 43-acre private marina with 270 slips and everything from state-of-the-art floating docks to a laundry room and deli, opened in March 2000 and is close to 75 percent full.
Boaters have held Ko Olina up as an example of how the state should run its harbors.
The reason is that Ko Olina is as concerned with customer service as with the bottom line, said Edward Schoerner, the marina's general manager.
"The problem that the state has, and it's more of a dilemma any municipal or state-run facility has, is that it has to try and serve too many masters," Schoerner said. "The trend on the Mainland is that more and more municipally run marinas are being put out to bid to be run by private companies."
Even he admits his is not the kind of marina for everybody. It is more expensive and has stricter standards than state-run harbors. It has 29 live-aboards, but it also has more rules about how big and how tidy their boats must be.
Ko Olina also is too far out on the Leeward Coast for Jeff Thomas, who likes the convenience of Ke'ehi harbor being near his airport job. For Thomas, 36, the price is right living aboard his 20-foot sailboat, "Kai Hawanawana."
He'd like new piers at Ke'ehi, but "I'd like to keep paying my $200 a month," he said.
Wanting a say
Mandrell has been so concerned about the future of her floating neighborhood at the Ala Wai harbor that she formed a group called the Makai Society and paid a consultant to come up with a revitalization plan.
She has gone boat-to-boat to find out her neighbors' concerns and has written the attorney general asking that the boating community have a bigger voice in how the boating program is administered.
State Rep. Galen Fox (R-21st, Waikiki, Ala Wai) shares the Makai Society's concerns about privatization draining money from the Ala Wai harbor for state spending elsewhere. But Fox and his constituents haven't settled on how best to repair the money management system.
The governor's 2002-03 budget includes a request for money to meet requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act, a start on a long list of repairs.
In the meantime, signs warn of uneven piers as the waiting game continues.
Mandrell likens the plight of the boaters to being the only people paying into a bank account the state keeps using without taking responsibility for its spending.
Three audits should be enough to prompt the state to improve its management, she said, without ripping off the boaters and selling them out to big business.
Reach Tanya Bricking at tbricking@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8026.
