First of two parts
A little over a week ago, the Baker-Polito administration announced the award of $3 million in grants to coastal municipalities to enhance the state's maritime economy.
There were nine grants in all, spread among seven communities: Beverly, Dartmouth, Dennis, Fairhaven, Gloucester, Mattapoisett and Salem. Mattapoisett and Salem each got two.
The largest grant, $1 million, will be used to replace the sheet wall at the Union Wharf in Fairhaven. And the smallest, $64,000, will pay for a study assessing the demand for, and financial feasibility of, a new small-boat marina and dock facility at Dias Landing in Dartmouth.
For a long time, I have proudly lobbied for a non-profit that works to improve the health, safety and economic security of commercial fishermen, Fishing Partnership Support Services, www.fishingpartnership.org
I'm in synch with the thinking behind these grants -- not because they will do anything for FPSS but rather because of what some of these grants may do to preserve working waterfronts and prevent their conversion to luxury housing and other uses preferred by the wealthy: fancy hotels, spas, restaurants, boutiques and the like.
I am not against wealthy people nor am I against their using their money to enjoy life as they see fit. I just don't want them enjoying it in exclusive, monochromatic enclaves that have supplanted outworn, outdated or faded enterprises, which, because of their unique geographic situation, could have evolved industrially, saving and creating solid blue-collar jobs. Build your enclaves elsewhere, I say.
A couple of years ago, I and a few others were in a conversation one morning with a top official in the Baker-Polito administration on the need for incentives to optimize the redevelopment of dilapidated properties in the state's 14 designated port areas. Those incentives, we averred, should favor projects that preserve marine industries or reconfigure them to meet new needs in commercial fishing and seafood processing.
Rightly playing the role of devil's advocate, this official said he heard similar arguments all the time from persons in local government and local chambers of commerce who want the state to offer incentives to developers of projects in depressed downtown business districts.
He asked us, "How are those downtowns any different from fishing ports or fishing communities? If we are going to do something for you, how do we not -- why do we not -- do something for them?"He didn't have to mention that state resources are limited and that somebody has to get aced out.
Now, I'm one of those guys who always knows what to say later...after the crucial moment has passed. In response that day, I said something to the effect of "people will always be selling stuff" in the cities and towns of Massachusetts, but local people "won't always be catching fish in our oceans if we don't have good, local port infrastructures." The conversation then moved on.
It bothered me that I hadn't been persuasive, that I hadn't made the impact I wished for in that moment. So, the next day, I sat down in my office and typed up a personal letter to that official, a man I greatly admire and dare to think I might be able to make an impression upon on a good day. I still have a copy of it in my computer. In part, that letter says:
"Had I perspicacity, I would have said something like this: The coast is finite, while the human appetite for being by the ocean is infinite. But, unlike someone who purchases a condo by the sea, a fisherman must be on the coast. Once our fishing ports are given over entirely to residential, recreational, hospitality and other non-marine industrial uses, local fishermen will not be able to operate there. Local fishermen will have to give up their trade and their time-honored, independent way of life.
"When the groundfish stocks off Massachusetts have fully rebounded, as they will, corporately owned fishing fleets will harvest those fish if our local groundfishermen are no longer around. Corporations will reap the benefits of the enormous sacrifices made by our indigenous blue-collar workforce during the previous four or five decades!
"There will always be the possibility of establishing new enterprises and new, desirable uses in down-turning downtowns that benefit those disadvantaged and left behind by our economy, but there will never be the possibility of re-establishing local, independent, small commercial fishing businesses in our coastal communities once they've been made over with marinas for recreational boaters, yacht clubs, million-dollar estates, condos, apartments and high-rent mixed use developments.
"We have a 'Sacred Cod' and a 'Holy Mackerel' hanging in the chambers of our legislature at the State House, * not a sacred retailer!"
*There are models of these fishes atop the House Chamber (cod) and Senate Chamber (mackerel) -- reminders that fishing was the founding industry and an early generator of fortunes in the Commonwealth.
NEXT: A look at some of the facts and interesting details of latest maritime economy grants.
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