Hey, I ran into Butch Frangipane in the post office today. He told me that the state approved those new and reconfigured floating docks in the river at The Black Cow and the second set and that they are in the river.
Remember this issue? Six months ago, city councillor Larry McCavitt was fighting approval of this tooth-and-nail, saying that the docks were in violation of the state's Chapter 91 regulations governing public access to waterways.
Frangipane, who runs the Karp docks/marinas, muttered something about times being hard and them needing the extra docks to rent out. OH NO! Times are hard for billionaire Stephen Karp?
I told him I no longer worked for the Current, he shrugged and said he didn't care about those things, then asked me what a blog is (after I told him I had a blog).
Well that settles one thing: HE won't be Newburyport Development's official blogger.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Finally, an opening to talk about the river.
First, let me state that I *hate* the current view of the river from the boardwalk. My peaceful winter-time view is now cluttered with lumps of white plastic. The basic concept of the boat as anything other than necessary transportation across water completely escapes me. I once was given a ride out of Grand Bahama on a huge private yacht; it was mildly interesting for 10 minutes, very boring after that, and something I never need to do again. One of my sons has a more normal-sized boat; he gave me a ride around Sebago Lake; it had the same result.
Enough ranting. Here's the real question. Do we (Newburyport) actually make any money from all that plastic? Do we somehow tax all those floating docks? Who gets to use those ugly white balls in the middle of the river, and who do they pay? And, come to think of it, how do they get to their plastic? Is there a taxi service?
Landlubbers want to know.
re: "all that plastic" - only via an excise tax, Dick. I do not believe the docks are taxed.
Those ugly white balls are attached to moorings, which are supposedly owned by the city and which the city (via the Harbormaster) is supposed to rent out on a first-come, come-served basis. I wrote a whole story about this right before I left the Current (and pissed off the mayor and the Harbor Commission).
What is actually happening is that they "lease" moorings in bunches to private marinas (state does not approve of that) and some of those marinas are not paying their bills to the Harbormaster.
At the last meeting of the HC that I attended, they were supposedly amending their rules to be more in line with state regs - but the mayor had also scheduled a "social event" with him, the HC and the marina owners.
I have not read a word about it since then (not surprising, since I was the only one writing about it). I offered to follow up on these things for the DN, but I was told that Stephen & Katie are "constantly looking for stories" and that using me as a correspondent would be "stepping on their toes."
Anyway, usually dinghies are ussed to get out to the plastic balls, but I imagine the marinas do have some type of service since I don't see an abundance of dinghies moored out there when the boats are in use.
Post a Comment