home

B

oat owners are a step closer to having to pay more to register their boats in NC. The North Carolina Senate on Monday night gave its final approval to Senate Bill 58 which spikes the fees on more than 350,000 boats statewide. That’s part of a plan to raise 6 million dollars a year to dredge inlets in a handful of ocean-front counties.

The version passed by the Senate on May 6 would raise boat fees to $25 a year for boats under 26 feet and $50 for those over. While that represents an increase over the current $15 per boat per year, it’s not as much as called for in the original version of the bill — which called for fees of up to $150 per year.

Numbers for boats will cost more.

While SB58 was altered in the past month to scale back the amount of the fee hike, the version passed Monday night still contains a provision that could affect federally documented vessels.

If SB58 gets through the NC House in its current form, documented boats that remain in NC for more than 90 days would also have to pay NC registration. They’re currently exempt from that.

Sanderson Sponsors SB58, Then Votes Against SB58

Pamlico Senator Norman Sanderson (R. – Arapahoe) initially co-sponsored the bill, along with Senator Harry Brown (R. – Jacksonville). However, in votes last week and again Monday night, Sanderson voted against SB58 on its final two readings in the NC Senate.

It would appear that the outcry among his constituents changed Sanderson’s view, though that could not be confirmed as Sanderson did not return a call made to his office seeking comment for this report.

Sanderson’s sponsorship of the bill back in February perplexed many constituents here, since it appeared none of the projected six-million dollars in dredging funds could be used in Pamlico County. Some of the dredging could be done in Carteret County, which he also represents.

Here, though, individual boat owners objected to the original plan to hike the fees by as much as 10 times over. And Pamlico County marina operators – who aired their complaints with Sanderson in a meeting this spring — had their own concerns about how SB58 could cut down on transient business at their slips.

Ashley Erwin of Whittaker Pointe Marina predicts that if SB58 becomes law, fewer boaters from other states would remain in NC for long stretches, because of having to pay $25 or $50 registration if they stay longer than 90 days. On a similar score, he says, stays in boatyards might be shorter, too.

Dredging Concerns: A Few Inlets Benefiting

While much of the opposition to SB58 has centered on the hike in boat fees, the bill’s title focuses more on what it says it would finance. SB58 is officially entitled, “An Act To Provide Additional Funding For Dredging Of The State’s Shallow Draft Navigation Channels.”

The bill calls for this fund to provide 50% of the cost of dredging, with local communities coming up with the other 50%. It is, however silent on exactly which inlets could be dredged with these funds.

It says only that the inlets to be dredged are “(i) a waterway connection, with a maximum depth of 14 feet, between the Atlantic Ocean and a bay or the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway; (ii) a river entrance to the Atlantic Ocean through which tidal and other currents flow.”

The final version of the bill that went to the Senate floor for votes in recent days also included a line that said “other interior coastal waterways” would be included in the list.

However, an aide to Senator Harry Brown, the chief sponsor, who is from Onslow County, said that despite that late add-on, “the focus is along the coast.”

(While SB58 doesn’t name names, another bill, HB 983, the so-called Gamefishing Bill, identifies Shallow Draft Navigation Channels that could be dredged. According to that measure, the potential beneficiaries of the dredging fund include the ICW and its side channels, Beaufort Harbor, Bogue Inlet, Carolina Beach Inlet, the channel from Back Sound to Lookout Back, channels connected to federal navigation channels, Lockwoods Folly River, Manteo/Shallowbag Bay, Oregon Inlet, Masonboro Inlet, New River, New Topsail Inlet, Rodanthe, Rollinson, Shallotte River Silver Lake Harbor and the waterway connecting Pmalico Sound and Beaufort Harbor.)

SB58 does not state who will decide which projects will be eligible for this dredging fund, and get the fund to pay for 50% of a dredging job. Communities with more money would be more likely to have the funds to pay for their share of the dredging than would poorer communities.

Boat Fee Hike Alone Can’t Raise All Of The $6M Dredging Fund

The original SB58 proposal of slapping fees of $50, $100 and $150 (for registering boats that were longer than 20 feet,26 and 40 feet respectively) has gone. In its place, this latest version of SB58 has a two-tier system: $25 for boats under 26 feet and $50 for those over.

That would bring in less than the $6 million a year that the bill’s backers say is needed for dredging in those handful of barrier island counties. To make up for that shortfall, this latest iteration of the bill would tap two other sources.

The Shallow Draft Navigation Channel Dredging Fund would siphon off approximately $2.3 million dollars a year (1/6th of 1%) of the hiway gas tax. (Another 1/6 of 1% already goes from the gas tax to the existing Boating Account administered by the Wildlife Resources Fund)*

Another new funding source in this latest version of SB58: fishing boats. Commercial fishing boat owners would have to pay a boat registration fee, which like that of all the other boats, would go to the Wildlife Resources Fund’s Boating Account (with 45% of it going to the dredging fund. (Fishing vessels are currently exempt from paying this boat fee – though fishing boat owners do pay a registration fee administered by the Division of Marine Fisheries.)

(Click here for the current exemption that would be repealed according to SB58.)

Under the bill, which the Senate approved Monday, virtually every boat owner in NC pays for the dredging.

• The version of SB58 that passed Monday night says 45% of the monies collected from the boat registration would go to the dredging fund, and $3 from each registration would – as it does now — go to the Wildlife Resources Fund’s work on boating access and maintenance (such as the Wildlife ramp at the end of Midyette Street in Oriental.) The rest of the money raised by the hike in boat fees, would go to an existing Boating Account within the Wildlife Resources Fund.

SB58 now goes to the State House of Representatives.

Here’s what the current version of SB58, which passed the NC Senate on May 6, looks like.The yellow highlights indicate changes from the previous versions of the bill.

Posted Tuesday May 7, 2013 by Melinda Penkava