LAKEPORT, Calif. – Lakeport City Council members met early on Tuesday in order to check out new docks that are being considered for Library Park.
The afternoon walking tour took the five council members, city staff and a few community members out to the lakeshore, where several of the new docks – constructed with polyethylene – had been temporarily assembled.
The city included $200,000 in its capital expenditures budget in the current fiscal year for new docks, City Manager Margaret Silveira told Lake County News.
The council will consider the dock purchase in the upcoming fiscal year, she said.
Public Works Superintendent Doug Grider said that the city's current docks are about 30 years old, and have been rebuilt twice in the 10 years he's been with the city.
“The goal is to replace everything we have here,” he said, looking across the existing docks on Tuesday afternoon.
Maintenance of the existing docks has become increasingly challenging, with the underside floats now obsolete, said Grider.
He said Public Works staffers have been trying to keep them patched while also resurfacing the docks with treated wood, which he said doesn't last very long.
The city's original estimate for fully replacing the docks was in the ballpark of $800,000, said Grider.
Noting that he had a problem with such a huge price tag, Grider started researching other options.
In the process, he came across Clearlake Oaks businessman Wayne Chatoff, who has been a marine contractor for 42 years and is a master distributor for Missouri-based EZ Docks, www.ez-dock.com .
Chatoff, who was on hand along with Grider to introduce council members to the new docks, said the docks have an eight-year warranty but tend to last far longer. As an example, he has installed them in Paradise Cove, where they have been in use for more than 20 years and still look good.
Lakeport resident Tom O’Rourke, who attended the tour, said his homeowners association installed the same docks some years ago and noted they have held up well. He encouraged the city to acquire the new docks.
The docks stay cool even in hot conditions, and offer the city the ability to configure them in a variety of ways thanks to a number of add-ons.
Available modules and configurations include slides; docks for boats, jet skis and kayaks; swim platforms; boat lifts; benches; gangways; ramps and more, based on the EZ Docks catalogs Chatoff provided.
The docks are made in Monett, Missouri, said Chatoff, who has them trucked out to Lake County.
He's sold the docks to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and even to the National Science Foundation; to fulfill that latter order, Chatoff had the docks shipped to Ventura County and then flown to Antarctica.
Besides the benefit of having a local contractor and an American-made product, Grider said the docks Chatoff offers are more economically priced.
Grider, who is still working on a full purchase proposal for the city, hesitated to give a specific estimate until he has finished crunching the numbers, but said the purchase price is expected to be well below the $800,000 the city originally had anticipated spending on new docks.
The EZ Docks also can be used with the city's existing dock piling system, Grider said.
“That saves a huge chunk of money,” said Grider.
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