How do you figure what to charge an out-of-town company for the use of a town’s public dock to buy lobster? It’s an old story and problem still seeking solution. Two years ago this paper carried a story about dealers parked on the Stonington Fish Pier buying lobster at a price higher than local dealers could offer. This year four Mount Desert Island [MDI] dealers in Bass and Southwest Harbors complained about the same dealers that still park on the Stonington Fish Pier and on the public, town-owned docks at Manset (part of Southwest Harbor) and Bernard (it and Bass Harbor are part of Tremont), paying token fees for using the public docks and taking business away from local long-established dealers.
The private dock owners argue that because they own waterfront property, their taxes reflect that. (Each owner pays between $15,000 and $27,000 annually in property taxes.) In addition, each private dock owner pays between $10,000 and $15,000 per year for dock maintenance and repair. (This does not include employees.) They feel the dealers who buy lobster from the public docks owned by the towns should pay a higher, more appropriate fee for the use of the public docks. Private dock owners say that dealers on the public docks can pay more for lobsters since they don’t have the costs associated with running a private dock.
All public dock lobster dealers but one pay $1,250 per year to the Town of Tremont (one pays more because he uses more dock equipment) and $1,000 per year to Southwest Harbor.
Bass and Southwest Harbor’s Harbor Committee chairmen (the committee recommends dock fees to the selectmen) claim not to know an appropriate fee to set, but have decided to “revisit” the question of fees, according to Southwest Harbor’s Town Manager Robin Bennett and Harbor Committee chairman Kenneth Hutchins. Bass Harbor’s Harbor Committee Chairman, John Crossman, a lobster fisherman, who admits he sells to one of the public dock lobster buyers, claimed that the $3.25/lb. one of the old established dealers, Thurston’s, was paying was, “A perfect example that these docks can pay more money. If he’s buying lobsters for $3.25 and making a profit, then the other docks can do the same thing,” though Crossman admitted in the next breath that, “This year there’s a kind of price war going on.”
“Fishermen cannot support their families on $2.50 [/lb],” Crossman said. When that price was reached, he said “A lot of fishermen had no choice…they went to the owners at the dock and said, ‘Look…you’ve got to pay us more. You’ve got to cut your profits and pay us more or we’re going to leave’.” Assuming that private dock owners had a choice, Crossman said when the owners, “Chose not to [pay them more], “a number of the guys left. If the economic situation with the price of lobster was what it was two or three years ago,” he said, “these guys wouldn’t have left the [private] dock [dealers].”
But both MDI and Stonington lobster boat prices two years ago, in September 2007, were over a dollar more: fishermen earned a minimum of $3.65/lb., and many did leave the established private dock owners for the higher prices offered on the public docks.
In September 2009, fishermen also left fourth-generation-waterfront-tax-paying lobster buyers Jeffrey Rich, of C. H. Rich & Co., Michael Radcliffe, of F. W. Thurston Co. Inc., of Bass Harbor, and Sam Beal, of Beal’s Lobster Pier, in Southwest Harbor, as well as Timothy and Sheryl Harper of Southwest Lobster Co. for buyers on the public docks.
Radcliffe, who feels that since each town pays for repair and maintenance of its public dock with local taxes, said, “Nothing could or should prevent a harvester from landing his own catch at a public facility and using his own means to transport that product to any buyer he chooses. What I, and other folks who have made an equity investment in owning waterfront access, object to is the creation of a tax payer-subsidized facility that can out-compete us by not charging fees that match the true cost of access to the water.”
To which, Ronald Doane, of Trenton, who owns Atlantic Sea Tanks and RDR Lobster, a subsidiary of Canobie Seafood, Inc., replied, “The [established] docks need to market their lobster to the end user, not the local wholesalers who sell up the lobster chain.” He explained, “As the business changed and the economy worsened, the docks did not market lobster directly. They sell their product to local lobster dealers. They put their lobster into the lobster market chain. Sorrento Lobster and Trenton Bridge also buy in Bass Harbor and Southwest Harbor. They [all] pay the docks the same price I pay my boats. That’s the problem.”
“Both Thurston’s and Beal’s do more direct end consumer sales than Ron,” replied Radcliffe. “He can pay more for product because he pays less for access to buy, not because he changed with the times or is a better businessman than the rest of us. He does have a ‘better business plan’ than we do,” Radcliffe said, “simply because he takes advantage of local communities using taxpayer money to subsidize his operation.”
Other public dock buyers include Anthony (Cubby) Pettegrow, of Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound and Kellie Carter, of Bass Harbor’s Island Services and Kellie’s Crabmeat.
Mark Nighman, Cranberry Isles Co-op’s manager buys his catch at the co-op’s dock on Little Cranberry and uses Southwest Lobster’s dock on MDI to sell his catch. Nighman said his out-of-state buyer pays Southwest Lobster a dock fee of $3/crate and said, “That’s $16,000 a year for half my product, for the use of its dock.” He explained, “That’s just a fee to go across his dock because I’m using his hoist, I’m using his power, I’m using his forklift, I’m using his ice machine.”
Nighman said public dock buyers “Should be paying a fee equal to what it costs for local businesses to run a dock. Which averages between 30 and 40 cents per lb. for lobster. I mean,” he said, “we have to have a crew, we have to pay the taxes, we have to maintain the facility.
Nighman also said that maintaining the co-op’s dock at Islesford costs between $10,000 and $15,000 annually.
The low fees to use public docks allow lobster buyers to pay more than private dock owners and that, the owners fear, will drive them out of business. Beal’s place has been for sale with no takers, as has Thurston’s because, Beal said, prospective buyers look at cash flow. Southwest Harbor Committee chairman Hutchins said he and others feel Beal invested too much money in a huge eating-place that can operate only a few months a year. But Thurston said his restaurant has been keeping that entire business afloat, and Beal said his restaurant has, too.
A huge bone of contention lies between Doane’s point of equal access, which nobody argues in these cases, and the dock owners’ point about competition. “Nobody can stop public access to the docks and that’s what they’re trying to do, from Kittery to Fort Kent, and haven’t been able to yet where federal money was used to build a dock,” Doane said. But private dock owners believe if federal money was used, the law forbids competition with existing businesses, such as Beal’s, Southwest Lobster, and the Cranberry Isles Co-op in Southwest Harbor where federal funds were used on the Manset Town dock. The answer would appear to lie in how the law is read.
Both Tremont and Southwest Harbor private dock owners, who pay high property taxes, want their public dock users to pay a reasonable fee to, as they say, level the playing field between the public docks and privately owned ones. Most dock owners think 35 cents per pound of lobster purchased would be fair. (Doane says the Manset Public dock pays for itself with user fees.) But when Sheryl Harper suggested a fee per pound she said a selectman asked, “Who’s going to do the paperwork?” then said, “No. We’re not going to change anything.” Harper said, “The town has let us down; it’s left the established businesses to hang out to dry. It’s not backing up the business owners.”