With federal and state agencies at odds over the future of Gloucester's fishery — fighting over $13.4 million in earmarked aid and the meaning of "relief" for the fleet — the city begins this week the process of seating itself at the negotiating table.
"We need to think and plan for ourselves," said Mayor Carolyn Kirk.
Together with council President Bruce Tobey, Kirk hosts a special workshop Tuesday night on the future of a harbor which, since the 18th century and until recently has been the city's economic propellent and the home port of the oldest continuous fishery — of the Gulf of Maine and the off shore banks — in the nation.
"Gloucester can regain authority over the harbor only if we take back the dialog about what we as a community want for our harbor," said Kirk.
The city's statutory power is limited by the federal government and the state's assertion of authority over public waterways, and their aggressive management of the fishery, which continues to kick off sparks.
The workshop will include the city's Planning Board, and recalibrate the problem for new councilors. They will be briefed on the history of state and federal regulation of the harbor, the official but unratified rewrite of a 1999 harbor plan, and two grassroots initiatives written locally as alternatives, according to Kirk and Tobey.
Today, with the fishing fleet cut to a fraction of its former size, the harborfront stands far too static, according to the elected local leaders, property owners and advocates of the city's economic revival, such as Chamber of Commerce executive director Michael Costello.
"Do we dare dream of an historical turning point?" Costello said last week.
He has been near the center of the plan writing by harborfront property owners, meeting privately for months last year.
Their work — which advocated dramatic loosening of zoning to allow non-fishing related businesses to fill some of the vacancies and put empty parcels back to use — has been elevated to coequal status with the rewrite of the harbor plan, delivered to the city by Boston consultants in July 2006.
Kirk has also introduced to the mix the work of private citizen Richard Rosenfeld, who proposed a novel concept of public access granted voluntarily by private property owners to get freedom of use in the uplands.
Kirk criticized the official harbor plan document for the "outsourcing'" of thinking that went into it — delegating the writing to consultants from the Urban Harbors Institute of the University of Massachusetts at Boston. The state financed the work — which reflected the state's view, and, according to Kirk, told the city "what we should or shouldn't do."
Kirk said one thing she learned from the mayoral campaign last year was that "what the citizens of Gloucester want for the harbor is very different than what the harbor plan calls for."
The vision of the harbor contained in the text was predicated on the assumption that the fishing industry will be making a comeback after the successful intervention by the federal government to protect stocks until they recover.
"The viability of many businesses on the Gloucester waterfront remains tied to the health of the commercial fisheries," the drafters wrote in the executive summary. Thus, they wrote, the wisdom of maintaining "the services and infrastructure" of a full-service hub port was that "the city will be in an ideal position to capitalize on the predicted recovery of the fish stocks."
The flexibility of use proposed in the plan for the harbor was extremely limited.
Indeed, it was in frustration with the plan that the waterfront property owners began meeting last summer. The most significant proposal to come from their work was a concept to ensure that existing commercial dockage remains and even expands as a proportion of newly created recreational dockage.
That idea — that recreational boating interests can coexist with commercial fishing — is alien to the philosophy of the Coastal Zone Management Office, the federally financed state authority over the Designated Port Area.
In Gloucester, the DPA bisects the entire harbor, leaving uplands in local control but keeping the waterfront for the state. Dennis Ducsik, the lead official of the office, told the city in 2006 the state maintains an "abiding" interest in the "land and water resources of the DPA (and) wouldn't even entertain boundary changes."
The funding for Ducsik's office comes primarily from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has taken possession of a $13.4-million fishing relief earmark of the two U.S. senators, Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry.
Notwithstanding the expressed desire of the senators to see the bulk of the money released in direct aid to the groundfish boat owners of the state, NOAA's John Oliver — the acting administrator and thus the top federal authority for fisheries — has written that the money should be used in large part to buy out the fishermen to reduce the size of the fleet.
"We believe capacity reduction, such as buy-outs, is as the core of transitioning to a more stable fishing environment," Oliver wrote to Paul Diodati, director of the state Division of Marine Fisheries, in February.
Oliver wrote that the money could be processed and released "quickly" if the state agreed with NOAA's plan for using the emergency relief earmark to further reduce the size of the fleet.
Tobey described the federal vision of a smaller fleet and the state's vision of a harbor frozen in place until the fishery recovers as a sign of the dysfunctional outside management of the harbor.
Kirk said she expects it will take most of the year to reach consensus on the best future for the harbor, even as events intrude. A week after the harbor workshop, the state's Seaport Advisory Council convenes for a full meeting in Gloucester. And two days after that, Diodati's Division of Marine Fisheries holds a public hearing here to gather advice on how the state should respond to NOAA's informal initiative on the use of the $13.4-million earmark.
Kirk said the Seaport Advisory Council, which advised Gov. Deval Patrick on policy and funding for the major ports, is prepared to "partner with us" to make the case with the state "to put the working port back to work."
Robert Keogh, a spokesman for Diodati, said he does not intend to make public the counter proposal he intends to take to NOAA for the final divvying of the earmarked aid.
The hearing in Gloucester will follow similar hearings on the preceding two days to be held in New Bedford and Plymouth.
