October 23, 2024 By Carol Britton Meyer
Harbormaster Kenneth Corson is proposing mooring permit fee increases for 2025 and beyond, presented for select board consideration this week by Head Assistant Harbormaster Joseph Driscoll.
The proposed increases will be posted on the harbormaster webpage at Harbormaster | Hingham Police Department, MA.
Members of the public wishing to comment or ask questions are encouraged to email harbormaster@hpd.org. The harbormaster’s office will also notify mooring permit holders by email.
After allowing time for public input, Select Board Chair Joseph Fisher said, the board will discuss the proposed increases at an upcoming meeting.
Mooring permit fees are deposited into the Waterways Improvement & Maintenance Fund. Anticipated and future harbor-related expenses include a planned dredging project in 2029, wharf repairs, and harbormaster department salaries.
‘Dredging costs are going up’
The harbor was last dredged in 2019. “Dredging costs are going up significantly,” Harbor Development Committee Chair Marco Boer said. “The anticipated increase in cost probably warrants [a mooring fee] increase.”
The Town of Hingham collected boat mooring/docking fees for approximately 31,900 feet of vessel length amounting to $287,100 for fiscal 2024.
By raising the fee by $1/foot to $10/foot, mooring revenues would increase to roughly $319,000 for FY2025, or $246.52 per vessel. By raising the fee by $2/foot to $11/foot, mooring revenues would increase to about $350,900 or $271.17 per vessel, according to a memo to Town Administrator Tom Mayo from Corson.
To help raise revenues toward the anticipated expenses outlined above, Corson is proposing to increase the boat mooring/docking permit fee from $9/foot per year to a fee of $9.50/foot for 2025 and to increase the fee each year by $.50 for three years — reaching $11/foot in 2028.
He is also proposing to increase the World’s End mooring/docking annual permit fee from the current $650/year to $750 in 2025 and to further increase the fee each year by $100 for three years, reaching $1,050 in 2028.
Boer noted that the proposed significant increase from 2026 to 2028 in World’s End mooring fees is much higher than the increase for the other mooring fees. Also, be said, “Paying $1,000 a season for a mooring you can’t anchor on overnight seems high. The Town of Hull charges significantly less.”
Corson is also recommending increasing the short-term transient mooring rental fee in World’s End from $50 a day per boat to $150/day but allowing up to three boat rafts.
Plan floated to increase short-term rentals
He is also recommending that the harbormaster be permitted to propose and pursue a plan to “increase short-term rentals in the Inner Harbor mooring field by incorporating launch and other services to better accommodate mariners and to attract more boaters.”
Driscoll shared a chart listing the mooring fees charged in a number of surrounding communities. “Our [proposed fee increases] are fairly comparable to neighboring towns,” he said. “Some are a little higher, and some are lower.”
These include: Scituate at $8/foot plus a $125 waterway user maintenance fee for all boats; Marblehead, $9 to $10/foot; Plymouth, $10/foot; Hull, $8/foot, with plans to increase the fee to $9/foot for 2025 and $10/foot for 2027; Duxbury, $10-$15/foot; Cohassest $9/foot; Rockport, $11/foot; Marshfield, $6/foot; and Manchester-by-the Sea, $12.50/foot. In some cases, there are also other fees attached.
Some communities offer more services that others related to mooring fees paid.
“I think what you’ll be hearing from all three of us [referring to the select board] is an apples-to-apples comparison,” Fisher said.
The waiting list for moorings is “quite long,” Driscoll said. “There’s a very slow turnover.”
In other related business, Corson is also in the process of revising the town’s mooring, anchoring, and town pier regulations initially adopted in Oct. 2011.
Also at the meeting, Max Goldstein and Anthony Melendez were appointed as assistant harbormasters.