By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
WALDPORT – The Port of Alsea board voted Wednesday to end the lease of a small shop it rents to a commercial sand shrimp processor, saying it needed the space for its own operations.
But the board gave Shrimp Daddy’s owner Mike Gatens of Waldport until March 31 to move — six more months than originally proposed. It is a compromise in a once-heated issue that had inflamed some in the fishing community as it inadvertently got mixed in with a separate controversy over crabbing areas on the Port’s new marina.
The board’s vote was 4-1, with Chuck Pavlik voting no. Pavlik wanted to give Gatens until May 1.
The board and Port manager Roxie Cuellar last month suggested a two-month notice to cancel Gaten’s lease. The Port went to a month-to-month lease with Gatens in March 2021 and had been trying unsuccessfully to meet with him to discuss ending it.
Although the end of the lease comes during Shrimp Daddy’s busiest time for pumping, cleaning and distributing sand shrimp to 50 fishing bait customers in the Northwest, Gatens promised “to work with you guys” to make the move.
“I respect your decision,” he said. “I respect the port. I respect the board.”
Throughout a monthly board meeting attended by at least 40 community members, Port commissioners and Cuellar said they are trying to cut expenses and make a little more money so it can eventually help pay to dredge sand-filled Alsea Bay.
But the board was not willing to compromise with another Waldport resident upset with 1-year-old rules that keeps recreational crabbers on their own platform in the new marina and away from boats using slips and docking platforms.
Before the marina was rebuilt in 2020-21, there were constant conflicts between crabbers and boaters on shared platforms. The new rules have crabbers on a handicapped-accessible platform and a long 10-foot wide crabbing deck at the east end of the marina.
At the port board’s July meeting, Kurt Saindon asked the board to fire Cuellar because she refused to change crabbing rules, and threatened a recall campaign if they didn’t. Saindon has filed paperwork with the Lincoln County Clerk’s office to collect signatures to possibly hold a recall election, but has not completed paperwork with the state to get the county’s final approval.
On Wednesday, board members again told Saindon that they had spent a great amount of time before the marina was rebuilt working out designs and rules to keep crabbers and boaters apart. Board chair Rob Bishop reiterated that again.
“We think it’s best to separate the motorized boats, kayakers and crabbers,” Bishop said. “I’m not flexible on that.”
“Should I re-file my recall petitions?” Saindon asked.
“Do what you’re going to do,” Bishop replied.
“We’re not going to operate under your threats,” Pavlik said.
Unlike July’s more contentious board meeting, there was little vocal support Wednesday for Saindon’s complaints.
The port meeting was moved from its small meeting room at the port office to the Waldport Community Center and meeting time changed from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. so more people could attend. After several board members encouraged audience members to attend their monthly meetings – no one usually does — several speakers in the audience of about 50 asked for the board to meet in the evening after they got off work.
“I will work with you guys”
Gatens is a longtime Forest Service firefighter who also has a retail shop called Shrimp Daddy’s on Spencer Street that sells crab, sand shrimp and other bait, and fishing and crabbing gear. He also operates a commercial sand shrimp operation with two employees out of half of a port-owned building adjacent to the marina parking lot. The two employees pump the shrimp from Alsea Bay that Shrimp Daddy’s sells to bait shops around the Northwest.
Controversy over the lease issue was also clouded by public comments in July by Cuellar and some board members over suspected drug use in the shop or marina bathrooms by Gaten’s workers.
Gatens disputed that Wednesday, telling the board that he hires people with records or past addiction issues in an effort to provide jobs and rehabilitate them.
“I know their past and what they’re trying to do,” he said.
Gatens said both his workers took drug tests Aug. 12 and results came back negative for a wide range of narcotics.
“This is not correct,” he said of the allegations of drug use.
While Shrimp Daddy’s is in one half of the building, the Port uses the other half for storage and to repair boats from Dock of the Bay, the retail business in another Port-owned building adjacent to the crabbing platform. The Port purchased Dock of the Bay business in 2021 after its owner died and after the two men who inherited it didn’t want to own it. One of those men, Robby Hensen, is now a Port employee running the business and doing other marina work.
The Port rents a shop to weld crab rings used by Dock of the Bay and make crab measuring sticks that it sells along the coast. To save money and consolidate operations, Cuellar and the board want to stop paying $150 a month rent there and move to the shop it already owns.
Gatens pays the Port $350 a month. But the Port pays all property taxes and utilities, Cuellar said, and after expenses nets about $150 a month.
“We’re trying to operate the Port in a self-sustainable way,” said board member Jan Power. “We can’t operate in the red. We’re trying to develop revenue that will sustain the Port for the next 20 years.”
Several commissioners said the Port wants to build up a reserve so it can match any state or federal grants it seeks to eventually do more dredging in Alsea Bay, which is becoming choked with sand.
“It’s not that we don’t support what you do,” Powers told Gatens. “It’s a management and business decision.”
Gatens asked that he be given until May to move because that’s when his business slows as fishing around the Northwest tapers off. Power suggested Dec. 31. Cuellar said the Port needed to begin refurbishing its rental boats in April, and suggested March 31 “as a reasonable compromise.”
“I will work with you guys,” Gatens said.
- Quinton Smith, a longtime Oregon journalist, is the founder and editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com