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KEY WEST —
City port officials will ignore a city commission resolution passed in
1993 to limit the number of cruise ships parked at a pier behind the
Hilton Hotel to help recoup money lost from the closure of the Outer
Mole Pier on the Truman Waterfront.
The Outer Mole
Pier will be closed to large commercial vessels for several months while
the Navy dredges the harbor's shipping channel to increase its depth to
34 feet. The closure will begin next week. The city will lose thousands
of dollars in disembarkment fees, Port Operations Manger Raymond Archer
said.
The city of
Key West charges $10.63 per cruise ship passenger stopping in Key West.
At Pier B, the city receives 25 percent of the $10.63, or $2.66. With
ships that anchor offshore, the city receives $2.63, Archer said.
"We are trying
to recoup some of the losses," Archer said.
Most cruise
passengers prefer to step from ship to shore, rather than be shuttled to
a pier from a cruise ship anchored offshore, he said.
The city is
slated to divert many of the ships that would have docked at the Outer
Mole to the privately owned Pier B. Some of the ships are too big for
the city-owned Mallory Square Pier, Archer said. The change comes as
cruise ship numbers are dropping and as the busy season is winding down,
he said.
There will be
eight ships at Pier B and one tendered offshore next week, the city's
port schedule shows.
A resolution
passed in 1993 states "a maximum of seven cruise ships a week will be
permitted to disembark at the cruise port (whether or not the passengers
are disembarked at the cruise port or are ferried to the cruise port)."
The resolution
was passed three years before cruise ships began docking at the Navy's
Outer Mole Pier.
The recent
change in policy did not go before the city commission.
The schedules
of some ships were altered after it was brought to the city commission's
attention that the city had violated the resolution on two occasions
last year, and was expected to violate it two more times late last year
and early this year.
"The
resolution was passed to protect residents who didn't want a lot of
cruise ships crowding that area," said Elliot Baron, board member of
Last Stand, a local government watchdog group. "The resolution was
passed before the Outer Mole Pier was being used by cruise ships. The
fact that it is closing now for several months is not a legitimate
excuse for the city to violate the agreement.
"This is the
only limitation on cruise ships there is. This is really a slap in the
face to any concept of fair play," Baron added.
Cruise ship
traffic has almost tripled at Mallory Square Pier and doubled at the
Outer Mole Pier in recent years, city records show. In 2002-03, 329
ships docked at Pier B, compared to 136 at the Outer Mole and 60 at
Mallory Square.
tohara@keysnews.com |
