Garrison Bight ‘liveaboards’ protest new lease requirements

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

Angry that Key West City officials proposed a new lease with significant and potentially costly changes for residents living on their boats at Garrison Bight, the resulting complaints have convinced City Manager Jim Scholl to postpone implementing the new lease.

The new lease has already been pulled once from the Key West City Commission meeting agenda. But after Scholl met with approximately 50 liveaboards April 11, he agreed to postpone any action on the proposed lease until he could meet with boat and floating home owners to attempt to work out a compromise.

There were several issues of contention brought up by the liveaboards at the meeting, scheduled by Commissioner Sam Kaufman who represents the district that includes Garrison Bight. Of the 243 boat slips at the city-owned Bight marina, 109 are rented to people who live on their vessels.

Chief among the complaints from the tenants are new requirements in the lease forcing them to buy additional insurance – they are already required to have a liability insurance policy – covering a vessel’s hull, wreckage removal and pollution liability. Several tenants at the meeting said they had contacted their insurance brokers only to be told there were no policies available to cover those specific things.

“You can’t buy it,” said one Bight tenant. “They [insurance companies] don’t offer any property damage on the boat, just liability.”

“We obviously need to get to the bottom of this,” said Commissioner Kaufman. “If [insurance coverage] is not available, then this isn’t going to work.”

Scholl said the city was no longer going to require hull insurance but stood by the pollution and wreckage removal coverage. While state and local agencies were forced to remove dozens of sunken boats in Monroe County after the Sept. 10 storm because their owners did not take responsibility, of the 10 boats that sank in the Garrison Bight marina during Hurricane Irma, all 10 were removed by their owners, according to Doug Bradshaw, Key West Director of Port and Marine Services.

“As a landlord, we want to make sure we can properly protect the property,” Scholl said.

The city manager did make several concessions at the meeting in addition to agreeing to drop the hull insurance requirement. He said he would consider offering one-year leases to slip tenants, instead of the 30-day lease being proposed. Scholl also agreed that slip tenants should have been consulted before a proposed lease was presented to the city commission and that the “sense of urgency” in putting it before commissioners “wasn’t thought out.”

But there are other clauses in the proposed lease that the liveaboards are worried about. One gives the city the authority to take protective measures if the dockmaster believes a boat isn’t safely secured when a tropical storm warning has been issued. Several tenants at the April 11 meeting believe the clause gives the city the right to force them to move their vessels out of the marina prior to a tropical storm or hurricane.

“There is no physical way that vessels or floating homes can be removed every time there is a tropical storm or hurricane watch. A storm watch only means that the storm is possible. Why would you require that the marina be evacuated when a storm is only possible,” asked Colleen Hough, a Garrison Bight tenant.

Scholl said the language was copied from a Florida State statute that gives a marina operator the authority to take safety measures prior to a storm. But it does not mean vessel owners will be evicted, he said.

“It [language] clarifies we have the right to take protective measures if owners don’t depart [prior to a storm]. It doesn’t say we’re going to evict you and thrown you out of the marina during a tropical storm warning,” Scholl said.

Other areas for debate include a clause requiring a sunken boat be removed within seven days, which several owners said was impossible in such a short time period. Some tenants also complained about a clause requiring them to pay for a marine survey of their vessel every five years. Hough said she understood a survey would help the city ensure that all tenant vessels were seaworthy and not a danger to the marina, but it would be very expensive to tenants.

“A survey is very costly, $1,500 or more, but a [marine] inspection is much more reasonable, $200, and will give the same information for the purposes of the marina,” she said.  

The meeting ended with attendees appearing satisfied the city will at least listen to their concerns before putting the proposed lease back in front of commissioners. Tenant Marylou Lane, who has lived with her husband on their boat at the Bight since 1995, suggested that each dock in the marina appoint a representative to a working group that would meet with city officials.

“Let us work on this,” she asked. “Have this postponed. Give us a chance to come in and compromise. Maybe we can’t but give us a chance.”

“We are one of the few affordable housing options in the city,” said one woman who works at Key West High School. “We are not winter people. We are your people.”

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