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Water Ways Ray Pendleton |
DBOR really goes
overboard this timeNearly two and a half years ago, retired Maui hotel executive Bruce Curtis asked me for a favor.
He was looking for a few volunteers to help him sail his 40-foot boat from Tahiti back home to Hawaii, so he asked if I could put the word out in this column.
Much to his and my surprise, he was deluged with responses from around the world.
Who would think there were so many boaters searching the Internet for Hawaii sailing information and then discover Water Ways on the Star-Bulletin's Web site?
As I reported here sometime after his voyage, Curtis and crew made the passage back to our islands uneventfully and although he had wanted to moor his boat in Lahaina, Oahu's Ala Wai harbor had the only slip available to him.
I bring this up now because I have heard from Curtis once again and this time he's looking for answers, not crew.
It seems he received an official letter last month from the state's Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation demanding payment for a past-due amount of one cent on his boat slip account in the Ala Wai harbor.
The letter went on to state that if the balance of $.01 was not paid by the last day of that month, he would be assessed a late charge of $25 and one percent of the outstanding balance.
Now, given the financial problems DBOR has been faced with in recent years, I suppose we should applaud its efforts to go after every penny owed to it.
Still the old British phrase of "penny wise and pound foolish" keeps coming to mind.
At the very least, didn't it cost DBOR 37 times the amount it was owed to mail its request for payment?
Curtis says he called DBOR's Oahu District Manager Stephen Thompson, as it had been his signature on the letter, only to have Thompson say he was sorry and then blame his staff for not catching the error.
Not surprisingly, with years of experience in the business world, Curtis was less than mollified with such bureaucratic buck-passing.
Questions regarding accountability and authority quickly came to mind.
As it has been noted in this column before, within the Ala Wai's state-run marina alone, DBOR has allowed nearly one-sixth of its slips to fall into such disrepair that they are unusable and will be incapable of generating revenue until they are replaced.
DBOR doesn't expect to have new docks in place for at least another year.
At the current, ridiculously low rate of $4.10 per foot per month, that amounts to a loss of over $222,000.
If such a loss had occurred under private management, I'm sure heads would have rolled.
But because bureaucratic performance is not evaluated in the same manner, things like Curtis' bill for one penny will continue to be business as usual.
Hawaii's recreational boaters deserve better, but for too long, our legislators have been influenced by a vocal minority whose only goal has been to keep slip fees at a rate no longer found in even third-world nations.
Perhaps another view point will begin to emerge with the growth of an exciting new Web site at www.hawaiiboaters.org where boaters are being asked to help build its pages with their opinions and photos of marina conditions around the state.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Ray Pendleton is a free-lance writer based in Honolulu.
His column runs Saturdays in the Star-Bulletin.
He can be reached by e-mail at raypendleton@mac.com.