The city of Kenai discussed changes to boat traffic safety along with increasing the fee for boat launching and parking at the November 20 2014 Kenai dipnet work session.
Kenai City Manager Rick Koch said overall he felt the newly implemented no wake zone proved very positive and the city plans to implement that continuously during 2015’s fishery.
The administration does however plan to meet with the U.S. Coast Guard to discuss safety.
Koch: “There is unregulated traffic, huge volumes of unregulated traffic of boats of every size, shape, description you can imagine. We had an accident last year in which three individuals were injured and went to the hospital, they were in a small plywood boat that was powered by two electric trolling motors and they were run over by another boat.”
Koch said they would like to see a Coast Guard presence for the heaviest traffic times of the personal use fishery and will also discuss what the city’s jurisdiction is to increase safety.
As for fees, Koch said the dock facility is the most labor intensive area of operation during the dip net season.
Koch: “It creates a fair amount of revenue, it creates far less revenue in comparison to what the expenses are as other parts of us, North Beach, South Beach and it needs to be fair. Those fees should be commencerent for what it cost to manage the boat launch, so right now the boat launch free to launch a boat, to park vehicle and trailer cost $25. My proposal in the spring will be to increase that to $40, we charge $15 dollars for just a vehicle to part at the boat launch. My proposal would be to increase that to $20 dollars which would make it the same as all the other parking lots during the fishery.”
According to the city’s assumption that the number of transactions in 2015 would equal the number of transactions in 2014 that increase would bring in approximately $59,295.