Seward's harbor proposes higher travel lift rates and passing card fees to customers

Seward Harbormaster Tony Sieminski proposed Wednesday raising the city's travel lift rates by 10% plus inflation in both 2027 and 2028 and passing the harbor's credit card fees on to customers next year.

He laid out the proposals at a City Council budget work session. The council took no vote.

He said he worked out the changes with Finance Director Sully Jusino to bring the harbor's revenue in line with its expenses. Wharfage rates, which are adjusted every other year under a 2016 resolution, won't change in 2027 but will in 2028. Slip fees aren't part of the increase.

Lift maintenance has been hard to keep up with since the pandemic and recent inflation, Sieminski said. The cable on the 330-ton lift used to cost $10,000 to $12,000 to replace.

"At the end of last year, it was $35,000 to replace the cable, and we do that every 3 years," he said.

The harbor now plans to stretch that to four years to get more life out of each cable. It also skipped inspections for a few years after the pandemic and is now paying for repairs, he said.

Council Member Lori Draper backed passing on the card fees. "That's a lot of money, $76,000," she said. The harbor budgeted about $76,600 for card fees this year and nothing for 2027.

Customers haven't been told yet. City Manager Kat Sorensen said the city is switching credit card processors and will notify them once that's set up.

Council Member Robert Barnwell asked whether pricing at the Seward Marine Industrial Center is competitive with Kodiak and other yards. "Yes and no," Sieminski said, adding that comparisons need to be apples to apples.

Seward runs its own lift and does all its maintenance, he said, while Kodiak contracts its lift to a vendor and Homer's is privately owned. Other operators may charge less for the lift but make money on storage and vessel work.

Sorensen said the harbor and the industrial center carry expensive equipment and projects, such as the breakwater, and "the two funds are not generating enough revenue to cover those depreciations," a non-cash cost. State or federal grants usually fill that gap, she said.

The city wants both funds to move toward "greater self-reliance," Sorensen said, but not this year, because it expects grant money tied to the Coast Guard and port infrastructure programs.

The city's budget presentation shows the harbor fund short of cash each year from 2026 through 2028, by about $407,000 in 2028, after surpluses in 2024 and 2025. Another speaker at the session suggested the city's parking fund pay the harbor rent for the lots it uses.

The council's budget work sessions continue Thursday.