Unalaska, AK – City council is still debating the future of the Ports Department offices. They are deciding between two options. The first is keeping the offices at their current location near the city dock and only building restrooms, showers, and a workshop down at the new small boat harbor. The second is to build new offices as well and move the center of ports operations down to Little South America. One of the major concerns is costs. It would cost about $97,000 per year to run the new office and new facilities. It only costs $40,000 per year to run the old office, but that number does not include the costs to operate and maintain the new restrooms, showers, and shop.

Council member Dave Gregory said that the cost of moving the office may not be that much more when you factor the restroom cost into the old office expenses. He said it's important to have offices and a full-time presence at the new small boat harbor.

"I think it's important to have the office down there because that's a boat harbor that, for most part, the vessels will be sitting there idle and won't have the crews on them," Gregory said. "So the harbor people will have a better chance to keep an eye on them. I think it's also important for the use and security of the bathrooms that we'll have an office there, with people around that will tend to reduce some of the problems that you have with open bathrooms and nobody to watch."

Gregory said the Unalaska Marine Center is so busy that it's less important to have the office there to look out for troubles since others already do that. Additionally, harbor officers will continue with foot patrols of all the city harbor facilities.

Council member Roger Rowland said leaving the harbor office where it is will work fine. "My initial response, when I saw the numbers, I was shocked with the price and my initial response is to leave it where it is. I've been in many boat harbors where the bathrooms are not monitored, where they're locked. I think remote monitoring can work. It works now with many of our spots."

However, he would also like to see the numbers reflecting the addition of maintaining the bathrooms in order to see a fair cost comparison.

The final decision on the matter does not need to be made by the next meeting, however most of the financial decisions do. At this point the entire Carl E. Moses Boat Harbor, including land acquisition and road construction, will cost $39,087,481. Almost $27.9 million goes towards building the floats for the inner harbor and the buildings, $1.5 million is for building a drive down dock, and $9.7 million is for the road and land acquisition.

The city already had $18.3 million set aside for the project. The council voted last night to pull the remaining $20.7 million dollars from the bank. Eight million dollars will come from the 1% sales tax fund, and $12.7 million will come from the general fund. Then, over the next 13 years, $1 million will be moved from the sales tax fund each year to the general fund to repay the internal loan.

Gregory agrees with the decision. "By using money we have in the bank, we don't have to pay big interest and I think we'll actually save money. We're going to pay ourselves back to the general fund from the 1.5 percent sales tax. A lot of fishermen pay that and this is a fisherman's facility, so I think it's going to work out well."

This was the first reading of the budget ordinance that allows the monetary transfer. It must pass a final reading at the next council meeting on March 9. The current monetary amounts might also be slightly refined, depending on the land acquisition finalization with the Ounalashka Corporation and the decision on the office move.