April 4, 2014 — It won’t be easy for all of the stakeholders in Gloucester’s waterfront to prioritize the 40 recommendations in the city’s port recovery and revitalization plan. Amid the plan’s estimated $12.2 million overall cost, is the need for financial assistance for fishing boat owners and crew, and a proposal under which NOAA would employ idle fishing crafts to be used as research vessels.
Yet Harbor Planning Director Sarah Garcia is right to noted the need to craft a short list – a “two-pager,” she noted — in pressing for state and federal funds to convert the proposals on this document into reality.
For it’s essential that the city and and the other groups who have developed this important proposal drive home the point that the needs of Gloucester, its fishing industry and its other waterfront businesses must be addressed now — not at some point down the road after state officials weight all of the 40 recommendations and decide which are or are not worthy of financial backing.
Chief among those, amid the plan’s estimated $12.2 million overall implementation cost, is the need for transitional financial assistance for fishing boat owners and working crew, through a series of grants and loans, along with Gloucester water- rate subsidies, loans and technical aid for shoreside businesses that, lest we forget, have also been ravaged by the fishing industry’s federally recognized “economic disaster.”
And not far behind is an extensive proposal under which NOAA or state officials would hire out currently idle fishing craft to be used as research vessels under a cooperative research effort to allow fishermen and NOAA scientists to re-evaluate the stock assessments.
Read the full opinion piece at the Gloucester Daily Times