MR. WEST GOES TO PHOENIX New envelope permits will help houseboat haulers
BY JENNIFER BARNETT REED Contributing Writer
In a very polarized election year, Bill
West managed to do the impossible: Pitch an idea to the Arizona legislature that they not only passed, but passed unanimously. West, owner of Laketime and
Houseboat Management Services in Page, near Lake Powell, spearheaded a two-year effort to fix what he and other Lake Powell houseboat haulers believed was an unfairly burdensome problem: State transportation rules that required them to fill out a separate Class C permit application each and every time they wanted to haul a houseboat a few miles from the marina to facilities in Page. As the houseboat hauling industry around Lake Powell has grown, so has the amount of time and money West and other similar businesses spend on permits. West’s company alone moved houseboats 670 times in 2010, for a total of $67,000 in fees — plus West’s staff time, which he estimated at a value of $25 per permit. “We’re having to move the houseboats,
which are 16 feet wide, just three miles on State Route 89A,” West said. “In the past, we didn’t move them much. Now we’re moving houseboats 500 to 600 times a year. The permit cost wasn’t an issue years ago when we were moving them once a year. Now we need a separate permit for every move, and we have to put the exact time of moving, the truck and trailer number … it’s so burdensome it was ridiculous.” West estimated that his operation is
the biggest of about 20 similar companies on Lake Powell. Laketime owns the unsold shares in 36 timeshare houseboats, and Houseboat Management Services takes care of the day-to-day operation of the boats to move them to and from the lake and get them ready for each group of share owners. West said the company moves each boat
Arizona Trucking Association 2012 Yearbook
Houseboat owned by Houseboat Management Services travels the short route from the company’s facility in Page, Ariz. to Wahweep Marina at Lake Powell.
about 40 times a year from a launch ramp at the lake to its “turnaround” facility in Page. The houseboats that West’s company
hauls are timeshares, and Houseboat Management Services takes care of cleaning the boats between each user, doing maintenance work and getting the boats ready for the next group of vacationers. Most of that work is done in nearby Page rather than at a Lake Powell marina, West said, and with a permit cost of $100 each way, they were paying $32 a mile for each 3.5-mile one-way trip. That’s in addition to the $17,699.62 in state fuel taxes he paid in 2010, which West pointed out are supposed to go toward improving Lake Powell’s marinas and marina access.
West said he knows the main concern
about houseboat hauling is wear and tear on the roadway, but the trucks he uses have three axles, which spreads the weight out and minimizes the impact on the road surface. Lake Powell is in the Glen Canyon
Recreation Area and is the most popular houseboating lake in the country, West said. The industry of moving houseboats into Page for repair and maintenance has become vital to the local economy, but West said the permit fees for moving and hauling them — which are passed along to customers — was threatening that. He said he’s seen houseboat owners leaving Lake Powell because of
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