Notes, Guemes Island Ferry Committee

Working Meeting of 9 April 2005

Meeting Commenced: 7:30 PM

Committee Members Present:

Carl Cady
Glen Veal
Marilee Fosbre
Victor Garcia
Steve Orsini

Additional Attendees:

Agenda Discussions:

General discussion about the fall 2005 ferry outage schedule.

Should we poll islanders to determine what would cause the least impact? Ian Woofenden will have his annual energy workshop which involves 25-30 students from October 7th -30th. On the 14th there will be about 100 in attendance. The GIFC plan is to await the County’s feedback at our meeting on 4/15/05. One alternative to reconsider is to have two outages if the new engines are not received by a reasonable date.

Discussed possibility of beach landings, proposed by the county, and the impact of tides on access to the passenger boat. We have not had response from the county on providing temporary dock facilities when the terminal draw bridges are out of service for repair during the outage.

Discussed issue of some ridership stopping payment to Island Express for car ferrying service when the MV Guemes was not operating. We are concerned that the private actions apparently taken by some individuals to stop payment may affect future availability of these services. We agreed that both Island Express and the Pintail ownership should be contacted to determine: 1) who did not pay?; 2) what were the companies doing to recoup payment?; 3) under what conditions would service be provided in the future?; How could the Ferry Committee be supportive of private ferry business to provide service during emergencies? Vic will contact Island Express and Marilee, the Pintail.

It was also brought forward that at least one islander feels that the county signs a contract with each individual that buys a car/driver ferry ticket. “The county has agreed that car ferry service will be provided for each scheduled ferry run”. If the car ferry is not available then the county will reimburse that ticket holder to have their car taken to or from the island at the county’s expense. The GIFC unanimously felt that this position could not be supported and that there was no basis in past practice to do so, with this ferry service or any other transportation services.

4th crew member still being used. The county told the GIFC that they would return to a three person operation but appear to be using four persons during the last part of each day. This does not follow the procedure described the county press release on February 24th 2005. Hopefully there will be some explanation at our April 15th meeting of the roundtable.

April15th Roundtable meeting. We have submitted a list of topics to Public works but have not received their meeting agenda. .

Ferry Maintenance. There was much discussion about the status of the recent ferry outdrive repair. Marilee was concerned, when she heard that currently, the engines were not being operated at normal speed due to ongoing mechanical problems. We will try to determine the situation with the county at the 4/15 meeting. Carl pointed out that the new ferry operations manual has a maintenance section provided by the Coast Guard which is general in nature and mostly focuses on safety issues. However the preamble states: The Coast Guard inspection program “is tied directly to our preventive and predictive maintenance program”. We will request that the county’s program be included in the manual and available for review.

Ferry Committee Financing. We have an outstanding bill to pay for our mail box at the store. Our funds are insufficient so the ferry members donated what was needed to pay the bill and leave some extra in the account. Glen will deposit the funds and inform Dixon to pay the bill.

Emergency ferry shutdown notification. Marilee has developed a proposed procedure for notification of ferry users. There is also a notification procedure in the ferry operations manual but its focus is to obtain passsenger ferry backup and start vessel repair. It was suggested to work with the county to combine the lists.

Meeting Adjourned: 9:15 PM

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