Board to develop strategic plan for non-motorized boaters

The effort marks the first time the marine board has invited boaters to help develop a plan to guide the agency's future. The board traditionally serves powerboaters.

"We recognize that we serve that constituency, and we also recognize that we're not very good at it and we're trying to improve it," a marine board policy analyst, Randy Henry, told the Mail Tribune newspaper in Medford.

Agency leaders are reaching out through social-media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, as well as through its website and at a series of public meetings.

The agency was formed in 1959 to help the public access waters of the state, to begin an education program to promote boating safety and create a registration system to track and manage motorized watercraft in Oregon.

The board's roughly $17 million annual budget is paid through user fees, federal grants and motorboat fuel taxes. The agency receives no state general-fund money through the Oregon Legislature.

Registered boats were all motorized boats and sailboats over 12 feet long, but registration of those crafts peaked in 1999 and has slowly declined, while non-motorized boats like kayaks and canoes have increased dramatically.

Non-motorized boats do not require registration or fees to pay for the facilities that paddlers use, or the law-enforcement efforts to keep them safe.

The only fee these boaters have paid is a one-time, $5 fee used to fund a new program shared with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to battle non-native invasive species that can be transported between waterways on boats.

Henry said boaters have told the marine board they would like to see more boat-cleaning stations to help them curb the transport of aquatic plants and animals on hulls and in bilge water.

He also said the plan is not a way of trying to register the estimated 100,000 nonmotorized boats 10 feet or longer in Oregon or requiring their owners to pay fees.

A draft is expected to be completed in the next legislative session that starts in January.