Bitter personal politics could sink the Moss Landing Harbor District.

The guy vanishes behind a rotting old boat and then pops up around the corner. I find him in the shade of a cypress tree at the lonely end of the Moss Landing dry storage yard. He looks like Jerry Garcia. He''s round and bearded, wearing black teardrop sunglasses, a floppy bush hat and a green T-shirt that says "Here Fishy, Fishy, Fishy." He''s got a can of Natural Light beer in one hand and a dog leash in the other. Attached to the far end of the leash is a mottled Shar-Pei with a wrinkled mug.

I don''t know it yet, but he''s an important man around these parts.

The dog stays at the full length of its leash. The Garcia lookalike does too. He doesn''t seem to feel like talking.

We are standing at Ground Zero in a war over the future of Moss Landing. This dry-storage yard is set to become an RV park. On its own, an RV park might not have been a big deal here. But it''s just one piece of a complex multimillion dollar development scheme for the harbor at Moss Landing. Some folks around here believe that if the plan is not handled right--if one piece of the plan is left out--the Harbor District that manages the place will collapse into financial ruin. Others, especially old-timers, see the plan as an extravagant scheme. At the helm of that scheme they see an arrogant outsider.

A few of the vessels stationed in the dry-storage lot look like they wouldn''t necessarily sink. But this fenced compound is largely a maritime graveyard. It''s meant to be a place where fishermen can hang up nets and gear, but it looks like maybe a decade or so ago, more than one guy backed up his trailer, got it square with the fence, unhitched and drove away. Forever.

Over closer to the Harbor District office, there are newer RVs clearly in use. There are also some rigs that look abandoned, until you see the yellow extension cord snaking through the dust and into an open window vent. It''s an illegal arrangement that people are living in here hooked to the modern world by little more than construction-grade electrical cords, but here they are. In front of a battleship-gray bus, a metal ''70s-era radio is on, tuned to the BBC news. No one is around to listen.

Garcia''s twin says he''s a commercial fisherman and has lived on a boat in the harbor for six years. But the fishing is lousy these days, so he''s been putting a roof on a house somewhere inland. He says he isn''t interested in talking to the press. He won''t give me his name. I ask questions anyway. Over the next 15 minutes, he makes clear his belief that the Moss Landing Harbor District is a poorly managed mess.

Task Master: Jim Stilwell, the strictly efficient general manager and harbormaster of the Moss Landing Harbor District, narrowly escaped a move to fire him on Monday, July 9. The District''s Board of Commissioners may try again on July 18.

He tells me about some guy whose boat tipped over around six years ago, spilling 150 gallons of gasoline all over the yard. He says diesel, oil, acids and sewage have been dumped here for years and left to soak into the earth. In June, the five-member Moss Landing Harbor District voted to lease the dry storage yard to a Monterey developer named Michael Groves, who originally wanted to put a hotel in Moss Landing, but turned his attention to building an RV lot. Garcia seems to believe the development is being used to pave over the poisoned ground in the dry storage yard.

"The county could close it down for everything," Garcia says. "They''d just close everything down and we wouldn''t have anything."

He says the Harbor District can''t even run the dry storage yard correctly. Not too long ago he walked through and counted 98 parked objects. He reckons that for each boat, trailer or camper, the district could be collecting $50 per month--close to $5,000. He has reason to know for a fact that the district only collects $2,500, and spends $2,000 a month in upkeep. "That sounds like bad business to me," he says.

The RV park plan is just one of 17 projects the Harbor District has in the works; too many irons in the fire, he says. "I''ve seen shopping centers go up faster than this. I mean I''ve seen big shopping centers go up faster than this," he says. "They''re not getting anything done and they want to start another project."

We exchange a few more words and part ways.

The Harbor District board meets this very night, Thursday, June 28. I get there around 7pm to see the five commissioners sitting around tables set in a horseshoe shape. One, I notice, is wearing a green T-shirt that says "Here Fishy, Fishy, Fishy."

"Wow," I think to myself for a second, "that must be a popular T-shirt around here." Then I see that the guy has a beard and is wearing the same chinos and brown work shoes that the guy from the dry-storage yard was wearing.

Jerry Garcia turns out to be Moss Landing Harbor Commissioner Dennis Garmany.

Along with two other commissioners on the five-member board, Garmany is about to shake things up in Moss Landing. The first thing they are planning to do is to try and fire the guy who runs the place.

On the Waterfront

The Santa Cruz Cannery building sits on the opposite side of the harbor from the dry storage yard, on "the Island," a spit of land that separates the harbor from the ocean. From behind the cannery, nearly all of Moss Landing is visible. The harbor''s inlet, the thicket of masts and spars of the parked boats, and the steady zipping of cars up and down Highway 1 all tuck into a narrow strip measuring a quarter-mile by a mile-and-a-half at the foot of the towering power plant owned by Duke Energy. The distance across the harbor is so short, the smokestacks are so looming and the perspective is so flat that it looks like the action here is being played out on a movie screen.

I''m standing back there gaping at all this when a black Dodge Durango wheels around the corner. It''s Jim Stilwell, the general manager and harbormaster, and his arrival feels like the sheriff showing up. Mike Rodriquez, the harbor district''s lawyer, rides shotgun. Both have ties on, and Stilwell wears aviator sunglasses just like Garmany''s. A former supertanker captain and member of the Monterey County Republican Central Committee, he''s an imposing, confident man. The district hired him four years ago to scrape the collective rust off Moss Landing, kick out the deadwood, and get the place ship-shape. The way he''s done it has pissed off just about everybody in town.

Still sitting in the Durango, pointing through the windshield, Stilwell tells me that he has just gotten word that Duke Energy wants to dredge 60,000 cubic yards of sludge from the bottom of the harbor to facilitate the cooling of its turbines. Stilwell says he''s hoping to piggyback some work out of it, to have the dredge do some touch-ups in the district waterways. He explains all of this with the nonchalance of a man who is used to giving orders and having them carried out.

Even though plenty of harbor people fear and loathe Stilwell--the "live-aboards" who complain when he hikes rates and fees, the commercial fishermen who gripe that he''s put the district in debt, and the longtime locals who say he has zero "people skills," and the three district commissioners who want him out--he nevertheless gets credit from all of them for pulling the harbor out of a dangerously bad spot.

When Stilwell took over four years ago, the harbor was choked with mud. After a series of floods in the mid-''90s, it was so badly clogged its very existence was threatened. It took two years to scoop out 300,000 cubic yards of sediment that contained pesticide residue runoff from farms in the Salinas Valley. Due to new regulations prohibiting ocean dumping of DDT-laced mud, it had to be hauled to upland dumps. At a time when the district budget was only $1.5 million, it got stuck with an $8 million dredging bill.

Thanks to Stilwell, most of this has already been paid off, with the help of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The district is still waiting to be reimbursed for about $200,000 by FEMA.

For Stilwell, that was just the beginning of a big job. He was hired by a Harbor Commission that pushed for development and improvement, and that''s exactly what he tried to deliver. He shepherded 17 new projects, all aimed at bringing in much-needed revenue.

Since it can''t raise taxes, the district must rely on fees from harbor users, the bulk of which have traditionally been commercial fishermen. Stilwell and his supporters believe the district can no longer rely on commercial fishing to support the harbor. With such a restricted stream of revenue, the district had to seek loans and grants to pay for the millions of dollars of projects.

The three commissioners concede that Stilwell has done some things well. But they don''t like him. Each has his own gripes.

In some cases it''s a matter of personal style. His brusque, quasi-military manner chafes them. For others it''s the ambitious development plan he pursues with businesslike rigor. And they bitch about some of the details of the plans.

Garmany says the district is getting burned on the RV park. The developers plan to improve the property for $1 million, creating 35 rentable spaces, and they look to make almost $30,000 per month when it''s completed. According to its just-approved preliminary budget, the district will collect only $1,800 a month. Garmany had voted against the plan because he thought the district should be making more from its land, but finally went along with it.

The remodel of the cannery building is a much bigger deal. It will cost the district $2.5 million, and when complete, will include 16,000 square feet of offices for commercial fishing companies who are already lined up. Before the tenants can fully use the building, the $2 million improvement to K Dock must be completed, providing a state-of-the-art wharf. Together, the finished projects are expected to bring in $200,000 in rent per year.

Critics like Garmany complain that the projects have moved at a glacial pace and their timing means rent can''t be collected from either until they''re both done.

In the North Harbor, the district plans to pave a parking lot, blaze recreational trails, widen boat ramps and renovate two restaurant sites.

The total price tag for the projects is $8 million. By 2005, the district expects to be bringing in $2.7 million a year in revenue. But right now the district is $2.5 million in debt. That scares Jack Compton, who is the president of the commission and has served for almost 14 years. He complains that it''s too much too fast.

Debt and Taxes: Jack Compton, the Harbor District''s president, is concerned about $2.5 million in loans and rising expenses.

"We''ve had a tradition in the district of staying in the black and not borrowing a lot of money," Compton says. "I don''t want to borrow more money than we can pay back."

Two years ago, apparently fearing that the former board of commissioners--Stilwell''s allies--were digging the district into a big hole, an anonymous harbor resident called the Monterey County Grand Jury and asked for an inquiry. After an investigation, the Grand Jury found that the books were in order and that "proposed capital improvements are covered by projected revenues." Its report noted that berthing fees are low compared to the Monterey and Santa Cruz harbors.

Stilwell points to the report as a source of vindication, but it might not be enough to assuage his critics.

Death of a Small Town

Maps and aerial photos cover the walls of the Moss Landing Harbor District office. All show how geography has determined Moss Landing''s fate.

To the west, the floor of the Pacific Ocean drops fast, forming the vast Monterey Canyon, the second-deepest underwater canyon on earth. It''s so deep that the Navy wanted to put a base here so subs could return from sea patrol and sneak back to land by riding up the canyon. The deep water has attracted elite ocean research facilities with their own submarines.

Immediately to the east, the Duke Energy power plant spreads out in an industrial jumble. The two 500-foot smokestacks cast long sundial shadows in some of the photos.

Boats arriving in Moss Landing enter a channel formed by two jetties. In the North Harbor, recreational uses dominate; South Harbor is home to most of the commercial boats, some recreational vessels and research ships.

The vast voting district for this tiny harbor area includes 155,000 residents, from Salinas to the Santa Cruz and San Benito County lines. About 300 people live in Moss Landing.

Although the town''s motto is "Serving the Fishing Industry since 1947," motorists entering the harbor from the south run a gauntlet of antique shops. On the corner of Sandholdt Road sits a café called the Haute Enchilada where tourists disgorged by buses and locals sip lattés. It''s not unusual to see a new Land Rover or BMW in this community, which has always been known as a gritty industrial fishing harbor.

Just down the road from the Haute Enchilada is a soon-to-be-replaced one-lane bridge over the slough and out to the Island. Dominating the island and blocking any view of dunes and ocean is the massive 70,000 square-foot Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), a nonprofit oceanographic research center built in 1995. One hundred and eighty researchers, engineers and mariners work there. Just south of MBARI, California State University operates another big marine lab.

Boats of all sizes crowd the harbor--from MBARI''s big, tricked out oceanographic research vessel, the Western Flyer, to moth-balled rustbuckets like Rumrunner III, which is tied up to a junk pier known as "death row."

Out on the northern end of the island, just short of the beach access, there''s a watering hole known as the Bear Flag. A layering of road signs and other detritus armor the exterior of the building. Tattered banners, including a Maryland state flag, whip from a flagpole.

It''s happy hour at the Bear Flag, and "Tangerine," by Led Zeppelin, is playing on the jukebox. A dark-haired young man with gaps in his teeth sits quietly at the bar, sipping a bottle of Budweiser he bought with a pocketful of dimes.

April Akins, the owner, veers out of the back office with a stack of photos from a NASCAR race she went to the weekend before. They''re big NASCAR fans at the Bear Flag.

At the corner of the bar, a Latino in a tie is drinking cans of Tecate with a woman who prepares her beers by pouring a ring of Tapatio hot sauce around the rim. One guy is telling another guy jokes he says he heard in prison. At the other end of the bar a pool game is on.

April, a stout strawberry blonde, is a generous soul who talks fast. She says she''s the daughter of a CIA agent, and describes herself as a "45-year-old renegade." She had a heart attack last year while hunting deer, and the guys in the bar make fun of her about it.

Besides running the bar, she does home construction with her husband. She also owns a fishing boat called the Jigalo. She''s had the bar for 12 years and lives in a room in the back. Over a dune, it''s the Pacific.

She says the current regime in Moss Landing is making things difficult for her regular customers, but she seems sanguine about it.

"The live-aboards are being pushed out," she says. "If you''re not productive, you''re out. If you want to be in this harbor, you can''t be stagnant."

Akins and another woman at the bar go through and count the familiar names of men who have fallen off boats and who''ve died from drink. Photos of bar patrons and locals hang on the walls of the bar. She points out the deceased, taking an unofficial body count.

"In this collage alone, 11 are dead from fishing and alcoholism," she says.

A silent man in a baseball hat named Bob comes in and sits in the corner, but no one is behind the bar so April yells to him, "Bob, you know how to get your own shit." With that, Bob, with his head down, gets up, walks around the bar and pours himself a cup of coffee. The guy who bought his beer with dimes asks April if he can have a beer for his birthday. She gives it to him.

Dave Goldbeck, a former editor of the Pacific Grove Beacon who works as a bartender at the Bear Flag, has lived on a boat there for five years. He tells me that the locals who frequent the bar feel that the district is out of touch with Moss Landing''s tradition--that Stilwell cares more about the research facilities than he does about the people who''ve lived and died in the harbor, and that he''s trying to balance the books on the backs of the fishermen.

"It''s hard to criticize those that want to move forward, but on the other hand, it''s been a little heavy-handed. It''s more of an attitude than anything else," Goldbeck says.

No Fishing

Dempsey Bosworth, a commercial fisherman who''s worked out of the harbor for 30 years, wears a Rage Against the Machine T-shirt that reads, "We have determined that your whole system sucks."

Standing in the back of his boat, a 50-foot troller called Beticia, Bosworth carves up an albacore for a middle-aged couple waiting on the dock. He cuts off the head and pulls out the guts with a few strokes and pushes the waste into a kettle. "You want it cut in half?" he asks.

Once the fish buyers go away he starts dragging bucket after bucket of albacore down the deck from another boat to pack them in ice in his below-deck cooler. Fishing is a tough business. Prices drop and expenses are never low. In the past year, the cost of ice has doubled and he needs lots of it to keep the fish cold. "Everything is going up because of the energy crisis," he says.

As he works with another grubby fisherman weighing and packing the fish, a polished yuppie-looking guy with a colorful duffel bag and a nylon parka walks down the dock, stops and tries to be friendly. "Those albacore?" he asks. The well-dressed guy gets no response so he says, "Good to see you again," and keeps going.

Each time Bosworth drags fish back to his boat he passes by a hugely bright catamaran parked on the other side of the dock. It''s a whale-watching boat called the Princess of Whales. It looks brand new. It gleams very white. It towers over everything in this corner of the harbor. Unlike some boats around it, including the Beticia, it''s rust free.

"They had 150 passengers yesterday," Bosworth says as he goes back for another bucket of fish, which he drags, hunched over, underneath the stern of the Princess.

The shiny new neighbor doesn''t seem to ruffle Bosworth but some of his colleagues do complain about the two research facilities, which look like well-scrubbed relatives of the Princess. They claim the labs hurt them because the more the scientists find out about the fisheries, the less fishermen are allowed to fish. And they see Stilwell as a friend of the labs, and therefore an enemy.

Smoking a cigarette at the gunwale, Bosworth tells a story about how research has hurt him personally.

Three years ago, he got a gig to help some researchers find rockfish so they could study the fishes'' habits. He got paid $500 a fish to haul them up to be electronically tagged. He usually gets $5 a fish at the dock so the rate was hard to refuse.

"It was something I couldn''t turn down," he says. "I made good money doing that, but it backfired on me."

In a draft proposal from the Department of Fish & Game, the spot Bosworth showed the researchers has been proposed as a no-fishing zone. If that fishing spot, known as Soquel Canyon, is designated off-limits, he''s hurt. That''s where he goes in the winter when he can''t go farther out to sea. "It''s 90 percent of my income for half a year," he says. "I''ll just have to go further out which is more fuel and a lot more time and expense."

Though it was once Moss Landing''s sole focus, commercial fishing is no longer. The fishermen blame maddening regulations and fishing-area restrictions for the decline of their business. The South Harbor, where the Beticia and the Princess are docked, has 300 boat slips, all of which used to be occupied by commercial craft. Now only 115 commercial boats are left.

The July issue of San Francisco magazine touts the "former fishing village" of Moss Landing as the best place in the greater Bay Area to buy antiques.

Donna Solomon used to sell live rockfish off of K Dock. But when construction on the new wharf began, her huge fish vats were relocated to the parking lot in front of the harbor office. One night she found kids poking her fish. Another time they had fishing rods.

Now, at the June 28 harbor district meeting, she''s asking the commissioners for help. She''s getting sunburned at the new location and her fish are getting molested.

"I want shade, I want permission and I want it in writing," she says. "I need security around my equipment."

The meetings always start off with a public comment period, and locals use the time to air grievances and ask questions. After Solomon made her appeal, Terry Lucas, a live-aboard, rises to accuse the district of hassling him over his broken down boat. "How come some people don''t get charged? I got charged $3,400 for not running my boat. Why?" he asks.

The meetings have become an unofficial source of entertainment in Moss Landing. They are run by board president Jack Compton. Apparently, in his decade-and-a-half on the board, he has not quite mastered the trick of running a public meeting.

When he gets lost in the agenda, it''s painful to watch and his bumbling tests the patience of his fellow board members.

Rounding out the board, with Compton and Garmany, are Peggy Shirrel, who lives nearby, Tom Villa, who used to live in the harbor, and Russ Jeffries, the former mayor of Salinas.

Stilwell was hired by a different board. In November, a charter fisherman named Tom Jones was replaced by Garmany. Many people recall that Garmany ran on a platform of getting rid of Stilwell, but if you ask him, he won''t admit it.

"That''s a good rumor," he says. "That''s what a lot of people asked me to do."

Compton, Garmany and Villa are decidedly against Stilwell, for various, often personal reasons. Stilwell and Jeffries complain that the three commissioners lack vision.

"It''s amazing the potential I see in Moss Landing to service a whole lot of individuals," Jeffries says. "Some of my colleagues on the board feel it''s for commercial fishing and there''s no room for anybody else."

Jeffries complains his colleagues don''t bother to keep up on the details of the district''s business.

"I do expect that if you''re going to be on a board like that, you do read the agenda and the information that''s supplied to you," Jeffries says. "I don''t see that on the board except for Peggy Shirrel and myself."

Stilwell says the financial survival of the district is at stake, and that it is dependent on the projects he has spearheaded. If the district votes against a piece of the plan, the ongoing loans will still have to be repaid, and that they can''t be repaid without the revenue from the projects.

Bait and Switch: Dempsey Bosworth has been fishing for a living for most of his life. He still sells fish off his boat, but he faces rising costs for mundane supplies such as ice.

"Certain of the board members want to reexamine the feasibility of some of the projects," Stilwell told me. "They''re intertwined such that the district''s success depend on the continued investment of time and resources into these projects."

At the very end of the June 28 meeting, Compton tries to get a special closed session scheduled for July 2. He won''t tell the board what he wants to discuss, just that the meeting has to happen fast.

"My question is, what''s the urgency?" Jeffries asks.

"I''ll get back to you on that, but are you available on [July] second?" Compton replies.

"I need to know what it''s about," Shirrel asks.

Stilwell, who as GM, has to set the agenda, confronts Compton: "Tell me what the agenda item is and I''ll put it on there." Compton won''t budge except to say it was requested for the agenda by Tom Villa, who left the meeting early.

Finally Stilwell says to Compton, "You know damn well what the item is."

Within the week, a meeting is scheduled to "discuss the possible dismissal of the general manager."

The stage has been set for Stilwell''s ouster. A few days later, the meeting is rescheduled for July 9.

With a 3-2 majority likely to vote for his removal, Stilwell appears to be a goner. But he believes he has an ace up his sleeve. On separate occasions over the preceding days, he and Jeffries each urge me to check out the criminal histories of the commissioners.

The name of Commissioner Thomas Villa shows up on the register of sex offenders at the Monterey County Sheriff''s Office. More than 20 years ago, Villa had been convicted of "rape, by force or fear."

During a break in the June 28 meeting, out in the parking lot, he cops to the charge without blinking. "It was a mistake," he says. "It was my stupidity as a younger person."

He says he served at least five years in prison. He sees the tip to the press for its political value. He tells me I am being played as a pawn to publicize his past, thus unseating him from the commission.

"If I''m gone, there''s a two-two vote and he stays," Villa says.

Villa has resigned from the commission before. In 1993, he had used the word "nigger" during a public meeting and quit after being roundly criticized. But he ran again in 1998, and won.

The day after I asked him about the rape conviction he said that he would leave the commission if his past crime was revealed, and then changed his mind and said he wouldn''t.

On Monday night, July 9, the Moss Landing Harbor District holds the special meeting. There are two agenda items set for closed session: consideration of the district''s "significant exposure to litigation," and discussion of " personnel matters... public employee dismissal/release."

It is no mystery that the public employee in question is Jim Stilwell. Last fall, the former board stipulated that his contract could not be reconsidered until the new board was in power for 180 days. July 9 marked day 189.

Before the closed session begins, Stilwell gets in his Durango and leaves. I ask President Jack Compton to tell me which commissioner put the matter on the agenda. He says "I haven''t even read it, to tell you the truth." It''s a lie. He later admits that he himself put Stilwell''s dismissal on the agenda.

Within 20 minutes, shouting can be heard on the other side of the door. Forty minutes later, Mike Rodriquez, the district''s lawyer, opens the door and allows the public to reenter. He announces that no action was taken on either item. Since it''s a personnel issue, the commissioners can''t discuss it. Both closed session items will be revisited on July 18.

Last week, when Jim Stilwell talked about the possibility that he would be fired, he was matter-of-fact and businesslike. It sounded like he was talking about someone else.

I asked him how he felt about the situation. "The district is bigger than an individual," he said. "I am not the district."

He says he has approached his harbormaster job guided by the principles that his maritime predecessors have followed for the past thousand years, which he embraced while working as captain of oceangoing ships.

"The master of the vessel serves at the will of the owners of the vessel," he says. "If the owners don''t want the master, they dismiss the master. I carry that philosophy forward to a job like this."

He says he loves his job, even though it''s been made harder than it had to be.

"I''m not going to be bitter and say a lot of things that express emotion on it," he says. "That''s just the way life is."