Dana Point Boaters Association

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June 1, 2015

Looking Back and Looking Forward

The leadership of the Dana Point Boaters Association loved beautiful Dana Point Harbor, long before it was decided to re-purpose it following a study almost 20 years ago. Here we're not referring to the report published by the harbor stakeholder group back in 1998; the report often referred to as the "12 Guiding Principles". Instead we're referring to a whole series of decisions made behind closed doors by local and regional elected officials, along with commercial development special interests during the period from then until the first public airings of the harbor revitalization in 2006.

That's when we first learned that our harbor had been targeted by those in power to become a major tax generating commercial center, since then often referred to as "Disneyland South". According to many published documents, it was to become "regional visitor serving", sort of a code-word phrase that The County still loves to use today - as if that's not exactly what it already is now.

We remember like was it yesterday how those plans called for about half of the all the 2409 boats in the water today to leave the harbor (over 80 percent of the boats 30' or less) to make way for commercial vessels and those extremely large mega yachts owned by the top one percent. The term often being locally used back then to describe the boats that would remain was "eye candy".

We remember too that the family friendly and affordable Dana Marina Inn was going to be torn down and boater parking in the East Basin, Cove Side was going to be eliminated so that a new resort hotel and convention center could built on, or perhaps overhanging the water. This project was to be quite massive, with a dedicated adjoining parking structure, altogether consuming several times more the land surface area. Features included multiple restaurants, plenty of private meeting rooms plus significant convention style exhibit space.

According to the public presentations to boaters and others at that time, since there was going to be less boats in the water, there was going to be less need for dedicated boater parking. Visualize the Disneyland Hotel. In a real stroke of irony, it was even going to have tennis courts. The net result was to be that the east cove basin would no longer be used for any public recreational purpose. Instead Dana Point Harbor was going to repeat the very same permanent planning errors previously made in Marina del Rey!

Well, after nearly ten years of intense and effective push back (with countless re-planning delays costing tens of millions of dollars) these plans have changed a lot, and almost without exception, for the good. For example, neither are those boats leaving the harbor (the stated goal is now zero and shall shall not exceed 155 by law as is necessary to comply with ADA guidelines), nor is the resort hotel and convention center going to be built in the foreseeable future. Our website has dozens more examples.

But that's enough looking back. We were contacted by reporter Parimal Rohit of The Log this week and asked to look forward and comment regarding the future of recreational boating advocacy. Below is our unedited email response, This email explains by example why recreational boater advocacy is still critically important, It also describes our plans for the future and notes our specific next steps on behalf of the recreational boaters of Dana Point Harbor.

Note that in Sacramento, recreational boaters have the well-funded Recreational Boaters of California (RBOC) to lobby for their interests. Locally, boaters have the Dana Point Boaters Association (DPBA). Please ask how you too can help in the continuing fight to protect the best interests of affordable water recreation right here in Dana Point Harbor.

Best regards,

Rodger Beard, President, Dana Point Boaters Association

Rodger Beard, President

For The Officers and Directors,
Dana Point Boaters Association

________________________________________________________________

Please Remember, to keep Dana Point boaters voice strong, we need your support.

Please make a donation to your Dana Point Boaters Association by Clicking Here.

Email to: Parimal Rohit, Staff Writer / Reporter, The Log

5/29/15 10:04 AM

Parimal,

Recreational boater advocacy has been and continues to be a significant issue and a very real need. Our website is up to date and I believe it explains our role pretty well. So it's perhaps a bit repetitive to say here that we are the completely volunteer, entirely uncompensated lobbyists for a special interest group, the several thousand recreational boaters of Dana Point Harbor.

"Lobbyists" and "Special Interest Group" - these two terms sound kind of unsavory don't they? We don't think so! It is a fact that the boaters of Dana Point Harbor are consistently ignored by fellow stakeholders... the merchants, marina operators and other commercial and government sales-tax-promoting interests that call most of the shots in Dana Point Harbor.

Take a look at the latest Orange County Fund 108 budget and plan (not yet approved) for fiscal year 2015/2016. It's on our website too, but I've also attached it here for quick reference. If you scan the document you'll see the words "boat" , "ocean" or "dock" are mentioned exactly twice in seven pages. This seems really odd at first blush, because Dana Point Harbor is after all, a harbor, "a place for boats" according to all the dictionaries I've read.

Mentioned only twice? Really? Yes!

The first time one of these three words appears is on page one, in a sentence regarding the County's strategic goal of "Facilitating recreational boating, effective communication with various stakeholder groups, and harbor commercial opportunities." (By the way, we're not certain what this sentence really means, either in general or specifics.) The second time one of these three words appears is on page four. There the word Boat appears in a sentence regarding The County's planned re-purposing of existing marina surface area for an already approved commercial parking structure, and therefore the need for an approved CDP (coastal development permit) for a proposed boat barn. According to The County's current redevelopment plans, building this boat barn is also necessary in order to get the parking structure built. Note that this is the officially sanctioned, 32+ million dollar alternative to continuing to use the surface area where over 500 boats are stored today. Note also that over 90% of boaters we've surveyed don't want and won't use a boat barn.

Above clearly illustrates our point, but that said, it's really not The County's fault. Their priorities and interests are clearly focused elsewhere. Regardless, this fact also remains quite clear: the Dana Point Boaters Association fills a huge void.

The boaters we present are paddlers, kayakers, fisherman, cruisers, power boaters and sailors. It doesn't matter whether these boaters have a boat in the water, a boat in dry storage somewhere, or perhaps they just enjoy and care about recreational boating. We seek their input and direction on an ongoing basis and we try very hard to represent their best interests. Our goal is this: to be effective harbor management and redevelopment planning stakeholders. Our operating agenda is this: to always be at the table when decisions are being made about the operations and future of our beautiful harbor.

Our view is that Dana Point Harbor should first and always be a wonderful place for boating. All other priorities, while important, are secondary. What this means to us is that we must stay engaged and make sure that the needs of all Dana Point boaters are understood and fully appreciated by other stakeholders. Further, that a fair and appropriate value is always placed on addressing these needs.

Our consistent focus is fixed on working with those local, regional, state and federal government agencies, as well as the various private parties who directly and indirectly contribute to the harbor decision making process. We're recreational boaters too, who became alarmed by the draconian plans for harbor redevelopment that The County made public for the first time in 2006. Since then, dozens and dozens of quite significant changes have been made to the harbor's redevelopment plans and the direction here has been decidedly for the good. However, our job will never be done. Recreational boaters will always need their spokesman, especially during the next few years ahead.

During the review cycle for the Commercial Core Reconstruction CDP that was approved by The County, Dana Point Planning Commission, Dana Point City Council, and then the California Coastal Commission last fall, we cited a long list of well documented boater issues. (To read click here) Both the sponsoring and approving government agencies acknowledged the vast majority these issues were entirely valid (and therefore would require mitigation during the project) but somehow they also decided that these issues were (just) "operational in nature" rather than relevant to planning. We of course strongly disagreed, but we lost that battle. So we are now engaged to address prior to and during the upcoming commercial core reconstruction phase. We anticipate success here, as we have an cooperative working relationship with OC Dana Point Harbor (the government agency on point in the decision making process), but it is still too soon to discuss our results in specifics.

Rodger

Thank You

At the Dana Point Boaters Association, our mission is to advocate for the preservation, enhancement, and expansion of affordable recreational boating. We strive to improve the family-friendly atmosphere and breadth of water-oriented activities we all enjoy in our harbor. As Dana Point boater advocates, our strength comes from your support and participation. We are proud of the achievements we've made together on behalf of our boating community, and we won't give up. But we can't do it without you.

Questions should be directed by email to (Officers@DanaPointBoaters.org). Or call us at (949) 485-5656 and leave a voice mail and we'll get back to you soon.

Dana Point Boaters Association
P.O. Box 461
Dana Point, CA 92629 http://www.danapointboaters.org

Mission Statement:

The Dana Point Boaters Association advocates the preservation, enhancement, and expansion of affordable recreational boating resources. We work to improve the family friendly atmosphere and breadth of water-oriented actives we all enjoy in the harbor. We serve as the watchdog by ethically protecting the rights of all boaters and representing them when collective action is most effective. We actively gather information and communicate our views to educate boaters, external interests, and public officials. We build and maintain constructive, working relationships to achieve common goals with other harbor stakeholders. We will pass on our harbor to the next generation of recreational boaters in better condition than it is today.