· Sounding Article Promotes “Carolina Tough” Boats
·
BIG Program Finally
Moving Ahead
·
One Step
Forward – NonPoint Pollution Issue
·
Coastal
Boating Guides Flying Out the DOT Door
·
Sales
Training Set for March - 16 Hour Marine Industry Certification
·
Sell
It to the State/Federal Agency – Marketplace 2001 Date Set
·
Corps
Pushes Manteo to File Lawsuit
·
Economic
Impact Surveys are Coming – Participate!
NMMA’s
annual report on the boating market has just come out. North Carolina is ranked
5th in the nation for “combined boat, motor, trailer &
accessory purchases”. The total is $431 million. North Carolina ranked 11th
for total boat registrations with 353,166. Overall there are 72,269,000 people
participating in recreational boating nationally and $25,629,734,000 spent on
new and used boats, motors, engines, trailers and accessories.
The
February Soundings boating magazine’s cover article is on
Carolina boats, stating “boats built here have an appetite for big water”.
The 6-page color spread serves our industry well as a strong promotion of our
sportfishing builders…and more. Soundings is read nationally in
the boating community (“Soundings reaches 256,000 dedicated boaters with each
issue”) and the businesses discussed in this cover article are a good
representation of the 70 or more boat builders in the state. The Sounding’s
web page is www.soundingsonline.com/,
the magazine is on the newsstands, and the cover can be seen through a link from
our NCMTA website: www.NCMTA.com.
After
nearly 3 years, the Boating Infrastructure Grant Program, funded by the Sport
Fish Restoration Program, is finally seeing signs of life. The program provides
matching grant funds to states to install tie-up facilities for transient
recreational boats. Some examples of approvable projects are: mooring buoys,
docks, navigational aids, restrooms, power posts, fueling stations, pay phones,
bulkheads, and recycling and trash containers. The funds are available on a
competitive basis. The first proposals are being accepted between February 20th
and May 18th 2001.
The
catch is that individuals cannot apply for the grant funding. The projects must
be state generated, in that if you have a good idea, you must get your local
government to approve it for submission to the state, and the state BIG Program
coordinator then has to approve the idea to send it on. What North Carolina is
doing with the program is not clear right now, so for further information call
Wendy Larimer (910) 962-3351 and she’ll direct you to the right person as soon
as that contact is known. In the mean time get your ideas together and work with
your local government.
Anyone
following the movement of EPA’s new “National Guidance for Marinas and
Recreational Boating: Controlling Nonpoint Sources of Pollution to Surface
Waters”, should be wary: the industry response has been that the document does
not do enough to enforce the fact that it is a guidance and should not be
adopted as a rule.
In
North Carolina we may not have to be concerned with this issue. Recently the NC
Court of Appeals ruled that a state regulation is a state regulation no matter
what regulators may call it. Basically the ruling was that a state agency must
run all guidance documents, policies, programs, and the like, through the
appropriate rulemaking channels if these items are to be interpreted as rules.
This means that if the EPA’s guidance document is to be used as a regulatory
document here, it must be adopted as a rule under the Administrative Procedure
Act (APA). The document would have to be held up to hearings and comment
periods, before it is enacted as rule. This change came out of the case Arrowood
v. NC Department of Health and Human Services (No. COA99-940). In this case the
judge interpreted the APA to say that a rule is any “limitation (that) clearly
creates a binding standard of general applicability that describes respondent’s
procedures and practice requirements”. For
more information see the magazine NORTH CAROLINA/January 2001
The
NC coastal marina guide, ferry schedule and road map is hitting a new stride in
website requests for January. Over 800 individuals (well on the way to 10,000
for the year) have requested the map in 2001 by going to the www.NCWaterways.com
website. And DOT is stuffing envelopes and mailing them to your customers as
fast as they can. Need more maps? Call 877-368-4968 to request case lots.
The
NC Marine Trades Services, NCMTA, and Stellar Sales Training, Inc. will put on a
two-day, 16-hour sales training workshop designed specifically for boat salesmen
and women. It will be held in Raleigh on Monday and Tuesday, March 26 and 27.
The hotel location, start time, and cost details will be provided in future
newsletters and will soon be available on our www.NCMTA.com
website.
This
course satisfies one portion of the national Marine Industry Certification(MIC)
individual programs being used by the National Marine Manufacturers Association
(NMMA), the Marine Retailers Associations of America (NRAA), and other marine
trade groups. For an overview of the certification program, go to the www.marinecertified.org/
website. It will be presented by Jim Kill of Stellar Sales Training who has
conducted the same training program for the Michigan Boating Industries
Association and won high praise and regard for the marine-sales content, fast
pace and energy, and dynamics of the course.
On Wednesday, May 30th
from 8am-5:30pm, the annual Marketplace contracting conference takes place in
Raleigh. Save the date for your calendar and plan to attend if your business
wants to sell its products or services to state, military, federal, or large
prime contractors. The event brings small business sellers together with buyers
from the major contractors. Look to our www.NCMTA.com
website for further information or call (919) 715-7272.
Waterfront
businesses and historic urban waterfront towns are increasingly being slowed,
thwarted, or stopped in efforts to get Corps approval for CAMA-accepted projects
that are of economic importance to the community. The latest is the Town of
Manteo, which was denied a permit by the Wilmington division. The town now has
an appeal in and is aggressively pursuing assistance through national and
statewide legislative means.
In
the denial, Col. James W. DeLony, stated “I have determined that the structure
will likely result in an unreasonable and unnecessary obstruction and hazard to
navigation”. (The structure proposed is a replica lighthouse that is to sit in
the exact same footprint and on top of an existing concrete pier that once
housed the town’s sewage disposal system). Manteo Town Manager Kermit Skinner
continues to express concern, stating that “the denial history and rationale
started with formal policy, then slipped to procedures, then was reduced to
historical precedent, then further degraded to a directive tied to an 1898 Safe
River and Waters Act. There is no navigation or hazard associated with this
project and the Corps is wrong denying this permit. The outcome of this suit
will have importance to many projects planned for urban waterfront
revitalizations throughout our coastal communities.
One
recurring theme and consensus point that came from our boatbuilding and
marina/boatyard forums at MarineEXPO 2000 was the importance of knowing
the size and economic impact of the marine trades industry of North Carolina. We
can’t stress enough the value in legislative awareness, statewide notice, and
national importance that comes from knowing how many employees you have, the tax
value of your businesses, the number of subcontractors you use and the number of
their employees, and a range of other data that singularly identifies no
individual business, but collectively provides the hard data and information
that sells the importance of our industry. Our industry needs ears that listen,
legislators that understand, and policies that are productive to the safety of
your employees and to the environment of your community. Participate when our
survey forms come in. You’ll be the winner.
The
second mailing of the Clean Marina program outline and checklist has now been
sent to all coastal marinas. At the request of participants in MarineEXPO’s
marina forum, we mailed it in January at a traditionally “slow” time so that
marina operators would have a chance to complete the program. This program is
gaining national recognition being featured in Soundings Trade Only and Marina
DockAge. Here is the opportunity to show not only local and visiting
boaters, but also regulators, that you are environmentally sensitive. With so
many rules working against the proliferation and success of marinas in this
state, we need to show that this industry is not the pollution generating
monster that it is assumed to be. If
you did not receive a package, contact Wendy Larimer (910) 962-3351.