LIQUID ASSET
Community group looking to make Baddeck wharf profitable
Community group looking to make Baddeck wharf profitable.
A group of Baddeck citizens has stepped forward to see if it can find ways to stop the community-owned public wharf from steadily leaking money.
The Baddeck Village Commission held a special meeting Wednesday night to discuss options for the wharf, which runs an annual deficit of approximately $11,700. Commission chair Brian Morrison told the approximately 65 people who attended that there were three choices: continue to operate the wharf as-is and eventually recoup the money by increasing taxes; sell the wharf to a private entity; or form a volunteer wharf authority to oversee the operation and make it profitable.
Much of the early discussion centred on the physical condition of the wharf, which was last formally inspected in 1999 when Transport Canada divested itself of the structure and handed it over to the Baddeck and Area Business and Tourism Association. However, most people agreed the wharf is an important asset for the Village of Baddeck, which took over ownership from the tourism association in 2005, and 11 members of the public agreed to form a steering committee that will try to come up with solutions.
“It’s a village asset and with the formation of this new committee, hopefully that committee will take that action forward,” said village commission chair Brian Morrison.
“It comes back to if you want the wharf, then we’re going to have to work to keep it. It has to become sustainable.”
In 1999, the federal government gave the Baddeck and Area Business and Tourism Association approximately $275,000 to operate and maintain the wharf. According to an audit conducted in 2006, the tourism association had spent that money by 2005 but it transferred $165,000 in wharf revenues it had collected over those six years to the village when it assumed ownership. From 2011 to 2017, the wharf generated about $22,000 in revenue — the vast majority from annual wharfage fees paid by
recreational boaters — while it cost about $34,000 to operate. As of March 29, there was just under $47,000 left in the wharf’s operating account.
“We looked at what’s left in that account and you’re lucky if we have four years left before it becomes a major financial responsibility of the Village of Baddeck,” said Morrison.
Committee member Stuart Germani’s boatyard and marina business, Baddeck Marine, is located next to the wharf. While many people attending the meeting said a structural assessment should be the first order of business, he said they really need to map out a strategy that will make it profitable.
“Certainly, there’s that, but first I think we have to establish a short-term and a longterm plan, something to keep it going over the next several years, anyway, while we still have a little bit of funds left and determine exactly where we’re going to go from there in the long-term. But certainly, the condition of the wharf is a big concern.”
Committee member Peter Patterson, who also operates a boatyard, Bras d’Or Boatworks, said the wharf is a key asset, no matter what condition it’s in.
“I don’t agree with the consensus of the meeting that that was the first and most important thing because regardless of the condition of the wharf, it’s still a key and vital asset,” he said. “If it has to be upgraded, if we find that it’s in worse shape than we hope, then it’s a bigger project, but the project is just as important either way.
We can’t allow the continued deterioration of the asset.”
Patterson said it would be a mistake to look at the wharf as one entity instead of a part of the overall waterfront.
“This should not be a committee that studies the future of the wharf, we have to be a committee that studies the future of the waterfront,” he said. “The wharf is a key and vital component of that, but it’s only one. (Kidston) Island, the harbour, the yacht club, the piece of property we’re standing on now, they’re all part of that same discussion. The Baddeck waterfront, when you come down here, whether you’re local or a tourist, if you park your car, you park your car on fire department property, you walk out onto the village wharf, you use the yacht club bathrooms and you take the Lions Club boat to the island, and they’re all sort of different entities, but to the person, to the consumer, it’s all the same.”
The committee is expected to meet soon but no date has been set.