A
monument stands on Sucia Island: a wooden plaque chiseled with the names
of several dozen yacht clubs and boating groups. Forty years ago, the
organizations listed pooled resources to buy much of Sucia Island and
donate it to Washington State for use as a marine park.
On a summer afternoon, perhaps three
hundred people will pass within a few yards of the marker. Some will
be running, babbling children reveling in the joyful anticipation of
discovery. Others will be mature adult couples, strolling hand-in-hand
through a sunny season where the routine and familiar becomes novel
and miraculous once again. Most will notice the monument, some will
note its purpose, and perhaps a few will pause to read the names.
As the eye sweeps along the list of organizations,
it becomes apparent that a significant portion of the groups have foundered
and disappeared, or merged with other groups. For many of the listed
clubs, the marker on Sucia is a tombstone. For others, and for any group
or individual depending upon waterfront access for business or pleasure,
the stone is significant as well. It is a warning, and a hopeful promise.
The
insidious effect of these sales is the increase in taxes for
surrounding property owners and the very direct increase
in costs to boaters for moorage.
Some of the extinct clubs fell victim to altered economic and social
dynamics. Within the span of two generations, we have changed from a
culture where people eagerly joined fraternal and special activity associations
to one where individualism is often valued more highly than participation
in a group. Social organizations of all types are struggling to recruit
members. In cases where a declining membership is required to sustain
waterfront properties subject to non-stop doubling and trebling of property
taxes, the individual tax burden per dues-paying member eventually becomes
ridiculous.
The yacht clubs are merely the canaries
in the coal mine, and their predicaments are not so very different than
the challenges faced by all waterfront businesses, marinas, and the
boaters who depend on them. There is a practical limit to the amount
of income that a business or social group can generate through dues
or increased prices. Our waterfront real estate, particularly in the
larger metropolitan areas, is in frantic demand. As condominium developers
compete for shoreline plots surrounding Seattle's Lake Union, property
owners are being offered prices that exceed the "present value"
of real estate rented to marinas and boatyards by (in some specific
cases) many millions of dollars. It is easy to understand why property
owners often say "Yes!"
We live in a free society, and it would be inconsistent to restrict
the right of waterfront property owners to sell to whomever they please,
for as much as they can realize. The insidious effect of these sales
is the increase in taxes for surrounding property owners and the very
direct increase in costs to boaters for moorage as well as goods and
services purchased from waterfront businesses. Each time a mega-million
dollar condo complex displaces a funky little boatyard, the County Assessor
is required by law to increase the valuation of the land under nearby
businesses and marinas accordingly. Ka-ching!
Like
farmland, real estate used to sustain boating businesses and organizations
serves a valuable social interest.
Tenants, customers and waterfront businesspeople forced to labor for
lower profits ultimately absorb the costs. All the while, the Department
of Natural Resources prices Aquatic Land Leases using a formula based
on the assessed value of the adjoining uplands. Ka-ching! Ka-ching!
One solution would be the creation of
Marine Enterprise Zones. Waterfront real estate could then be taxed
at a level justified by its use for boating-related activities (rather
than at some value that would only be realized if the boating facilities
were swept aside, and five or six stories of million-dollar condominiums
built instead). Much of the vacant farmland in the Puget Sound region
enjoys a similar tax designation, with the land taxed at values consistent
with farming rather than the values that would exist if the pastures
and fields were converted to subdivisions and strip malls. The tax relief
preserves farmland, as those owners with no interest in selling to developers
are not forced by skyrocketing tax evaluations to do so. When a plot
of farmland is sold to a developer, the buyer then pays the local taxing
authority the retroactive equivalent of several years' increased taxes.
Boating and waterfront activities are
difficult to move. Like farmland, real estate used to sustain boating
businesses and organizations serves a valuable social interest. Marine
Enterprise Zones could be created by our elected representatives at
the county level, or perhaps by the State Legislature. Much like the
clubs and organizations that combined forces to purchase Sucia Island,
a concentrated lobbying effort by boaters could result in the creation
of Marine Enterprise Zones.
We cannot rely upon waterfront condominium
developers to provide moorage. Condo residents are likely to object
to "those boat people" accessing the docks through condominium
grounds, and a fair portion of the well-to-do landlubbers might very
conceivably complain about how their "waterfront view" is
blocked, by of all things, boats! Some condo projects may include some
moorage, but in many cases it will be restricted to residents of the
adjoining building.
Marine Enterprise Zones would help forestall
the day when boaters will be forced to buy an overpriced 1,200-square-foot,
1.5-million-dollar condominium in order to rent an overpriced $1,500/month,
40-foot slip. Such a deal. 
