For years, Fort Myers Beach Vice Mayor Jim Atterholt has been pushing town staff to get the operation of the mooring field to a break-even point. This week Finance Director Joe Onzick told the Anchorage Advisory Committee the town has been subsidizing the mooring field every year other than one.
Onzick made public financial numbers that the previous Town Manager Roger Hernstadt would never share with the Anchorage Advisory Committee or the community. In several slides Onzick laid out how much the mooring field has cost taxpayers through the years and what it would take to get the operation to break even. By state law, the mooring field is not allowed to turn a profit. However, it is allowed to break even.
The mooring field is now open to 77 boats. Six mooring balls were taken offline. It appears the reason for that is because the Coast Guard told the town they were installed in the wrong place. The charge per mooring ball is $410.00 per month. Boaters are allowed to stay on a mooring ball for up to 6 months. The town says the benefit of having a mooring field is to be a town friendly to boaters, and, because boaters spend money at restaurants bars and retail shops on the island. Boaters do not otherwise pay any taxes to the town.
In this first slide Onzick showed the committee how much taxpayers have been subsidizing the mooring field over the years. Onzick said, “We’re far from break even, if you take into consideration what’s going back in for capital improvements. The town has had to subsidize the mooring field every year but 2021. We’re putting more into the mooring field than we’re getting out of it.”
The year 2022 was brutal for taxpayers as the town dumped $428,534 into the mooring field to upgrade the facilities which wound up costing taxpayers over $262,000 after calculating revenue and expenses. And those 2022 figures are before Hurricane Ian. The town’s fiscal year begins on October 1st.
We submitted a public document request for the previous 5 to 10 years worth of revenue and expenses but have not yet heard back from the town on that request.
Onzick says a revenue replacement bridge loan from the state back in April of 2023 is helping to cover some of the recent revenue shortfalls for the mooring field. And, if the Governor signs the state budget on July 1st, money from $15 million the state is sending to Fort Myers Beach will also be used.
Onzick then laid out the 2024 $414,431 mooring field budget which is detailed in this slide. He said it was his “best guess” for operating expenses.
Back in 2022, what Onzick called a normal year, the town had 70 mooring balls operating and charged $312 per month. The occupancy rate was 93%. From those 70 balls, about $245,000 was generated from user fees. That’s about $3,500 per mooring ball.
Onzick then tried to project revenue for 2024. The town now has 77 slips and charges $410 per month. If 93% of the mooring balls are in use for fiscal 2024, user fee revenue would come out to about $368,553. That would result in a $47,000 revenue shortfall taxpayers would have to cover.
If the town were able to get those 6 mooring balls back online, that the Coast Guard flagged, and add another 6 (which is the plan) there’s a potential to have the operation break even. But that does not include any capital expense money the town might have to put into the mooring field, if there is any. Onzick’s calculations are based off of revenue and budgeted expenses.
It’s also important to note that the previous Town Manager and Town Council purchased a $2 million piece of property behind the old town hall that they planned to build an upland facility on (bathrooms, laundry, etc) for the mooring field. Tropical Shores Way residents organized and squashed that idea. That piece of property has never been used for anything other than a storage area for town vehicles.
The town recently parted ways with Harbormaster Austin Gilchrist. Operations Manager Frankie Kropacek says the town is close to hiring someone to fill the position. He said the town conducted an extensive search with a focus on someone from outside the area.
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