This letter is regarding the article “Port of Port Angeles suggests floating homes” (PDN March 5-6.)
This article states that the Port of Port Angeles commissioners eye replacing “little-used boat houses and slips” with “floating homes.”
Do they realize that the boat houses are privately owned?
Their owners pay moorage fees and leasehold taxes to the port whether they house a boat or not.
And the port increases their moorage fees occasionally, so the boat houses are a cash cow for the port.
Boat house owners also pay annual personal property tax to Clallam County.
So the port would have to purchase each boat house from its owner, then move each one to a place where they would be demolished, and the debris hauled away to somewhere.
The port would have to install a very expensive underwater sewer system to connect to each new floating house and tie into whatever nearby sewer line is located on land.
The port would have to build the floating houses either on-site or elsewhere and tow them into the marina. Environmental permits from the city, state, and federal governments would be expensive and time-consuming.
The port already has a major project in progress, slowly cleaning up the old mill site to make a new marine industrial business park.
Why not concentrate their efforts on that instead so businesses can move in and employ some local workers?
Steve Schmidt
Port Angeles