COQUILLE — Wait till next year.

The mantra of many a sports fan was adopted by the Coos County Board of Commissioners on Wednesday as it continued deliberations on a land use application for a marine terminal on the North Spit.

Submitted by the Oregon International Port of Coos Bay in April and discussed at a public hearing in September, the application has been discussed by the commissioners for three weeks. The first week of December, they tentatively approved the application. Last week, they agreed on 15 conditions of approval. On Wednesday, the commissioners decided they wanted more time to review findings submitted by the port.

The board will reconvene at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2008, in the Coos County Courthouse, ostensibly to formally adopt the application.

Chairman John Griffith said the county received the port document at about 5:20 p.m. on Tuesday. That didn’t provide enough time to review the document before the board’s meeting, said Commissioner Nikki Whitty, who requested the continuation.

“I don’t feel I’m ready today,” she said. “I’ve read it, but I need time to absorb it.”

One member of the audience began to boo as Whitty and Griffith voted to continue the meeting to Jan. 2. Commissioner Kevin Stufflebean was absent.

The findings are the last document needed to adopt the application. More than 23,000 words long, the findings provide further justification for approval of the project. A total of 1,336 words alone are used to address concerns about the benefits of the marine terminal, an issue raised by the county’s hearings officer.

Anne Corcoran Briggs recommended the application be denied the last week of November. In her report, she said the port failed to provide sufficient evidence that the public would benefit from the project. She also indicated that the terminal would disrupt fishing and recreational use of the spit.

Planning Director Patty Evernden disagreed. She wrote a separate opinion supporting the project. The board agreed with her logic, noting that a marine terminal would improve the area’s industrial potential while inconveniencing a small number of estuary users.

The draft findings specifically list what some of those benefits will be.

“The Board finds that the proposed Marine Terminal will provide a substantial public benefit by generating significant economic development activity in Coos Bay and Coos County, increasing the local tax base, and by helping to prevent further congestion at other west coast ports by providing berthing that cannot be accommodated elsewhere,” a draft copy reads.

Fewer people were in attendance at Wednesday’s meeting than the week before, when nearly 80 people crammed into the Courthouse Annex’s conference room. Though smaller in number, the group was just as upset that a final decision wasn’t reached.

But unlike at the last meeting, the commissioners stayed afterward to answer questions about the process.

“It’s not unusual to have to carry things over with land use issues,” Griffith said. “It’s a very user-unfriendly process.”

Whitty said staff would e-mail copies of the port’s findings to anyone who requested it.

Still, some people were unsatisfied, including John Jones, manager of Camp Myrtlewood in Bridge.

“We understand we can’t comment,” he told the two commissioners, “but we still want to show our opposition.”

“We know you are opposed,” Whitty responded.

Jones said he thought the smaller turnout for Wednesday’s meeting was due to the holidays. He predicted another large crowd come Jan. 2.

“I hope we have 500 people,” he said. “From a moral perspective, it’s a horrible decision to site this terminal there.”