Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies

The wait for boat slips just got shorter

Safety Harbor leaders okay changes in marina rules, preventing sellers of boats to pass on municipal boat slips to the buyers of their crafts.

SAFETY HARBOR - Some of the most coveted space in town is not on dry land.

It's down at the city marina, where some people wait up to six years for one of the 44 boat slips.

But Monday night city commissioners approved a change to reduce the wait for the 126 people on the list.

Commissioners changed a rule that previously allowed boat owners to transfer their docking permits along with the sale of their vessels.

It's a change that critics say could reduce a boat's value because slips are disappearing from Pinellas County at an incredibly fast clip.

Too bad, some commissioners said.

"Maintaining the value of your boats is not my job," Commissioner Kara Bauer said. "Maintaining the marina is part of my job. The slip is not yours to sell. You rent the slip. You don't own the slip."

Bauer went on to say that Safety Harbor is a community of 17,800 residents who don't have full access to the marina, "and they pay for it."

The city spends between $10,000 and $12,000 per year to maintain the marina.

Safety Harbor residents pay between $87.50 and $102.50 per month, plus tax, to lease a slip. The four nonresidents who rent slips pay $25 more.

With the change approved Monday night, the nonresidents already at the marina will be allowed to stay, but no one else who lives outside the city will be allowed to lease a slip.

After a passionate discussion, interim Mayor Andy Steingold made a motion to prevent new slip-holders from transferring their slip when they sell their boat.

For the next six months, current slip-holders will be able to transfer their slips when they sell their boats - as long as they sell the vessel to a Safety Harbor resident whose name has been on the waiting list for a year.

After that, he said, the slips will no longer be transferable to the purchaser.

The motion passed 3 to 1, with Bauer voting no.

"We knew going in we weren't going to win," said Patrick Whelan, a member of the boat club and owner of the 24-foot-long pontoon boat Hooligan. "They made their positions very clear when we talked to them individually."

He said Bauer was under the impression that the boats were being sold at a premium because buyers were after the slips, "but that has not happened."

Whelan said turnover at the marina is just very slow and that "only 19 boats were sold in the last 5½ years."

But he said he did admire Steingold's compromise.

"That was an indication that he understood our problem," Whelan said.

Eileen Schulte can be reached at schulte@sptimes.com or (727) 445-4153.