Sheriff Ramsay backs immediate register option
to deal with derelict vessels in county waters
BY TERRY SCHMIDA
They lurk like sea monsters beneath the waves, waiting to pounce upon unsuspecting boaters.
They pose a serious threat to maritime navigation, and carry the risk of both property damage and serious bodily injury.
They are the derelict vessels of the Florida Keys, a growing problem that have cost the county tens of thousands of dollars to deal with, in the past year alone.
On July 1 Sheriff Rick Ramsay and a delegation of other county government representatives attended a Tallahassee meeting convened to discuss ideas to deal with the issue.
A number of solutions were proposed at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC)-sponsored gathering, including a few Ramsay would like to see codified in state law – or failing that, in county ordinances.
Of the blizzard of suggestions heard at the summit, one holds particular appeal to the Keys’ top lawman, for several reasons.
“I like the idea of requiring the boat’s owner and the buyer to both go to the tax collector’s office at the same time, and registering the boat in the buyer’s name right away,” Ramsay said. “It might be a little more inconvenient to the seller, but this way the county will know who owns these crafts immediately, and who it is we have to contact, should the need arise.”
The sheriff added that such a move would circumvent current regulations that make it easy for owners to dispose of unwanted vessels by signing them over to people with no interest – or ability – to provide for their upkeep.
“Some owners will find a homeless person and sell their boat to them for 10 bucks,” Ramsey said. “They write up a contract on the back of a napkin, and that’s the only paperwork they have to show us. It’s never registered, and when we have to deal with it, the seller tells us he sold it. With the Tilly boat, [which sank in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary in 2014,] they knew the guy they sold it to had no ability to take care of it. Then there’s the sales tax not being collected with those kinds of transactions.”
Ramsay’s next best recourse would see the buyer required to obtain a notarized copy of the bill of sale.
“It isn’t as strong as the first option, because a lot of people are notaries, and trying to track them down doesn’t always work,” Ramsay said. “The notary might not remember the transaction. That was a secondary option for me, with some legal basis to focus on. If we went with the [immediate registration] requirement, we wouldn’t need the second one.”
Other ideas thrown out at the Tallahassee get-together, such as empowering FWC officers to restrict an owner’s ability to transfer a title once a boat has become derelict, didn’t make sense to the sheriff.
“To me that one was a waste of time,” Ramsay said. “By the time a boat is deemed derelict, no one’s going to be buying it, or transferring the titles. It’s already going to be causing and issue for law enforcement, navigation, or taxpayers. I don’t think the hard-working men and women of Monroe County should have to pay more than they already are, to deal with this problem. I’m just not on board with that.”
Looking ahead, Ramsay will be watching for the FWC to pursue the issue further, possibly at the state legislature.
“At the end of the day there will be another meeting, to try to narrow down the options, and try to put to put together a bill that will pass,” he said. “[The FWC] just need to decide what they’d like their representatives to bring forward.”

 

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