City Council - Regular Meeting

All right. Good evening, everybody. Welcome to our Monday, June 1st, a regularly scheduled city council meeting. Jim, would you call the roll, please?

Councilor Henry. Here. Councilor Goler. Here. Councilor Dome. Here. Vice Chair Champagne. Here. Councilor Schwan. Here. Councilor Gray. Here. Chair Palumbo.

Here. All right. Thank you. Guys, I want to talk about the rules of decorum a little bit, but I'm going to approach it from a different direction. They are in effect. We say this every meeting. Last meetings have been great, both for counselors, for staff, if you're in attendance. We treat each other with civility, listen to each other, even though they might have a different opinion than yours. But a little different direction. Last Monday we had a beautiful – I call it beautiful, but a meaningful Memorial Day service. Was it a Monday? I can't remember. I apologize. But one of the things I heard there kind of resonated with me. A million Americans have given their lives defending this country, over a million. Ten percent of them are immigrants. But that doesn't include those who were wounded, those who came back, those who were left with physical and emotional scars. None of this happens if not for these people, this, the fact that we get to sit here and they give me a gavel and we have name badges, and you elect us to make decisions for you. None of this happens if not for the sacrifice. Those Americans paid the ultimate sacrifice. We can never give thanks. All we can do is treat what they what they died for in honor, treat this system with honor. So when we see these rules of decorum and we see this meeting, I feel blessed that I live in a country where we can have these type of proceedings. I know we have a few veterans in the room. I'm not going to ask you to stand. One sits next to me. One runs the city. You'll have your day in November, is it right? But until then, we appreciate everything you did for us, the fact that you are willing to lay down Your life, possibly, for the country is a debt that we can never be thankful enough for. So thank you. We appreciate you. All right, invocation. Tonight, Reverend Timothy, and he cannot make it, but Al Bismonte is going to do the invocation on his behalf. Al, come on up, please. If you're able, please rise.

Please bow your head. Almighty and merciful God, creator of heaven and earth, we thank you for the opportunity to live in this beautiful city that you have created. We thank you for your love, your mercy, and all the blessings you have given us. We thank you for the members of City Council and all city employees for their dedication and unselfish services. Guide them so that they can perform their own duties faithfully and efficiently. We thank you for the men and women of the police and fire department who daily risk their lives performing their duties to keep our city safe so we can live in peace and harmony with each other. Always protect them so that at the end of the day, they can go home to their families unharmed. God bless America. God bless our city. And may God bless us all. We ask this in your most holy name. Amen.

Amen. We're not going to have any of the school kids do the Pledge of Allegiance due to summer being off, so we'll see them back in August. I'll certainly let it as today, and then we can rotate it around each meeting per the counselors. So if you'll all join in with me. I pledge allegiance. Guys, we're on item number five, approval of the agenda. I see no changes, no light signs. Can I get a motion to approve the agenda?

No move.

Consent agenda?

Nope. This actual whole agenda?

All right.

Go ahead. So do you want to make the second, Vice Chair? Yes. Okay. So we have a motion by Councilor Schwan, second by Vice Chair Champagne. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Anybody opposed say no. All right. The ayes have it. Item 6 will be approval of the minutes. We'll start with the interview workshop, city council manager interview workshop from May 11, 2026. Any changes to those, councillors?

Move to approve.

Can I get a second?

Second.

We have a motion by Councillor Henry, second by Vice Chair Champagne. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Anybody opposed? The ayes have it. All right, 6B, the approval of the minutes from the May 18th regularly scheduled city council meeting. Councilors, any changes? Councilor Gholar, I see your light on. Do you have a change for?

No, no. It's just for the next one. Okay, very good.

Can I get a motion to approve?

I'll move to approve. I'll second it.

Motion by Councilor Dome, second by Councilor Gholar. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Anybody opposed? All right, the ayes have it. Item seven, approval of the consent agenda. Councilor Gholar, you're up. Do you want to remove something?

Mr. Chairman, I would like to move A, for discussion. I have a couple questions for Mr. Petit about this item.

Okay.

And that would be all. The rest I have no issues with.

Councilors, anybody else want to remove? Councilor Gray, I see you're up. I'd like to also remove B, ID 265432. All right.

Councilors, anything else? All right. So A is now going to become 16A, and B is going to become 16B. Can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended?

Motion to approve. Second.

Motion by Councillor Henry, second by Councillor Schwan. Jim, will you call the roll for this, please?

Councillor Henry? Yes. Councillor Schwan? Yes. Vice Chair Champaign? Yes. Councillor Gray? Yes. Councillor Goeller? Yes. Councillor Dome? Yes. Chair Palumbo?

Yes. All right, consent agenda C through F, approved 7-0. Proclamations and presentations. Guys, tonight for the Employee Service Award 8A, the employees are not here tonight. So we're not going to present that. They're going to have a little private ceremony amongst their divisions for Hector Rozelle and Francis Crowley, but both with five years. So how about a little round of applause for them? Casey, did you want to take a moment under this also for?

Yes.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair and city councilors. I would like to introduce our new finance director, Marsha Solo, who is two seats down from me. And she joined us about a month ago. She was doing starting just remotely doing a lot of the online training, getting used to our software. And then she started officially in the office last week. And we are very grateful that she's here. Our new finance manager, Chase Calloway, has also started. So we have a new leadership team in finance, and they're off to a really strong start. I also just want to take a moment for the public to introduce our interim police chief, Joseph Bilardo. He was sworn in last week. A lot of people were able to be there, but for those of you who were not, I wanted to make sure you have a chance to see our interim police chief. Thank you. A big round of applause for him.

Everybody, welcome aboard. We're looking forward to working with you. We know some of you, some of you are newer. If we could do anything to help, please let us know. We're all on the same team. All right. Lee County Electric, item 8B. Tricia, where are you? Come on up. Folks, this is Tricia Dorn. She's for LCEC. We see her every year, and we love when we see her. Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening, Council. My name is Tricia Dorn. I am key account executive with LCEC. In March of 2026 this year, our Board of Trustees approved an equity retirement, also known as equity distribution. This distribution was made available to current and former members who have received service from LCEC in 2001. And that's the important part to remember here. After each calendar year, LCEC reviews finances to determine the amount of excess revenue after the operating expenses. Those excess dollars are then allocated to each member based on their usage. So we are proud to have returned over $350 million to our members over the years. And today I'm here to give you guys a check for $887,814 for the City of Marco Island Utilities. Well, we appreciate that.

Guys, light signs if you have any questions. I always have one. Patricia, first of all, thank you for the presentation. Always great to see you. Every year we talk about it. When you show up, we say, underground utilities. How many cities do it? How many don't? We're always divided as to the level of saltwater, the benefit that they were resistant to the wind but fatal to the water. Any thoughts?

Well, it's a very great question because LCEC is reliability neutral. And what I mean by that is, yes, sometimes when we have very windy storms like a Wilma, then you're dealing with the overhead infrastructure. Then you have the wet storms like a Milton. Then your underground becomes compromised. So it's really been changing over because of the recent storms versus the dry storms and the weather. So LCEC, we remain neutral. So it's really aesthetics. And our rates are based on overhead infrastructure. So of course, similar to Marco Island, when you did the underground utilities on North and South Collier Boulevard, that's back when the city collected a franchise fee to underground those facilities. And then once that was done, the city stopped collecting the franchise fee. So every city is different. You guys are an island, and I know there's always very passionate discussions around our six-county territory about it. So it's really up to each individual city.

Well, thank you. You led me to the next question, the franchise fee, which is available for this. It's available for anything, but this specific need would certainly be something we could look at if we ever address possibly going underground with the utilities. Last thing I'll say is just thank you. The first responders, we love them. They get a lot of the recognition in a hurricane. But Department of Public Works, LCEC, when you're out there, you're our favorite people to see. Not just air conditioning, but life-saving necessities, everything that keeps our homes going and our families. So we appreciate you. Thank you so much.

Well, thank you. And I will pass that along. Thank you so much. And you get a check for your first meeting of $87,000. That's great.

Thank you. Thank you. Jim, when we get there, how many people are signed up for public comment, or is anybody?

We have two people for public comment.

Okay, we're going to hold off on that then. It won't get us close. As we're going to move past item nine, citizens' comment for items not on the agenda, if you would like to make any comments, there's slips in the back of the room. You can fill them out. Give them to staff over here to my left. And we'll get you on there at 6 o'clock or as close to it as possible. So item 10, city manager report. Councilor's light signs if you have any questions for Dr. Lucius. Casey, anything for us?

I do have one update for the council and the public. It's not in my written report. But actually, our finance director and myself, we had a meeting last week with the CLA, our auditing firm. And we had originally announced some late June dates for report outs of the audit to the audit committee and the city council. We're shifting those dates. So the new date to brief the audit committee will be July 9th and to brief city council will be July 13th. Tomorrow, our city clerk will send out the meeting cancellations for June and then meeting notifications for July. Thank you.

Very good. Thank you. Councilor Schwan.

Yes, thank you. I just wanted to thank the city manager for including in your report what we're doing on the island for bike and pedestrian safety with the new bike lanes coming in, the new shared use pass, and also the two new crosswalks for pedestrians. So thank you for pointing that out.

Very good. Thank you. On to item 11, we have nothing on this particular agenda for the city attorney report. Any questions for our city attorney? Alan, anything you need to add?

No, sir. I do not.

All right. Thank you. Moving right along. Item 12, departmental reports. Councillor Henry, I see you're up.

I just wanted to give a shout out to Jeff Poteet and the Water and Sewer. There's a lot of items on the consent agenda. And your proactive email, doing a lot of explaining, was great. And you're always ahead of the game in trying to explain things, as you're asking for a lot of money. So I just want to thank you for doing that. Everybody's reports are so thorough. And I encourage the public to read them, because there is a lot of information. When people think they're surprised, they're not. It's posted, and there's information there. So I highly recommend for everyone to take a look. But thank you very much.

Councillor Henney, I might just add, I always say quite often when you see us approving something of that magnitude, just with a simple consent agenda, we've been well-versed beforehand. And all of our department heads do an excellent job, but Jeff's always proactive in reaching out and keeping us in the loop. So thank you. I echo your sentiments.

Councillor Gray. Thank you. Public Works, one question. I noticed that the aeration project is teed up. I don't know if we've gotten that started yet. And one other question, because I do have this idiosyncrasy to be focused on noise. The generation is, I think, attached next to a residence. Are we sure that the decibel levels will be in compliance with city standards?

Thank you for the question. Justin Martin, Public Works. As a matter of fact, today the lab was out there and they'll be conducting the first water quality tests starting tomorrow. There's a program that's outlining the protocol for that project to take us testing all the way through the end of September during the warm water months. And regarding the noise level on the compressor, we're in contact with code enforcement. We'll be going out there and taking decibel readings since they're the ones that have that equipment. But, yes, that's something that we're looking into. And when we put together the specifications for that, we actually specified the noise levels. So what we're going to do is just to check and make sure that they're within those limits.

Thank you for that great response.

Councilor, is there anything else? All right. Jim, how many signed up now?

We still have just two for this time.

All right. It runs me a little too close to that. I hate to put them after 13A, but we're going to have to. So we're going to move on to item 13A, and that is a quasi-judicial public hearing. Alan, I think you have some work to do, and Joan's going to have some work to do here.

So let Joan go ahead and announce the item, and I'll come back to you. And if you could read that into the record, please.

Yes, certainly. I'm reading Resolution 26-25 by title into record, a resolution of the City of Marco Island, Florida, approving variance petition VP26-000020, providing for a variance from Section 4-321 of the City of Marco Island Code of Ordinances to allow for sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages at the property located at 989 Winterberry Drive, Marco Island, Florida. which is located less than 500 feet from a place of worship, providing for findings and conditions of approval and providing an effective date.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Chairman. So since this is a quasi-judicial matter, there are two things that we need to address first. The first is council members need to identify and tell the public any ex parte communications. So that would be communications that you may have had with the applicant or other members of the public regarding this matter. But you do not have to announce any comments or questions with city staff. So we usually go from the start of the dais and move to the end.

I attended both planning board meetings that this was presented at, and I've had correspondence with the applicant.

Same. I had the correspondence with the applicant, and I attended the planning board meeting.

I received an email from Mr. Kramer and just responded that I have been briefed on it, and that was the extent of it. Thank you.

Watched the planning board meeting, reached out to Chairman Bailey on planning board, met with the applicant, returned a few emails, and that's about it.

Attended the planning board meeting and no direct communications with the applicant.

I attended both of the planning board meetings and no direct communication. I did receive a campaign contribution when I ran for election from the representative of the applicant.

Council Gray? I attended both planning meetings on the topic. I did receive an email and made a brief response, but I've had no direct communication and I have driven past the site.

And thank you. So then if anyone who intends to testify, they must be sworn in. So if you would, just raise your right hand. Whoever intends to be speaking, you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help you God. Thank you. And if you come forward to the microphone, if you would just announce that you were sworn in for the record, we would have that on the record. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I turn it to you. Very good. Please.

Good evening. Excuse me. Good evening, Council. For the record, Josh Oyman, planner with the Growth Management Department for the city. What's before you today is a variance to the 500-foot limit of the sale and onsite consumption of alcoholic beverages. And in this instance, it's within 500 feet of the Jewish Center of Marco Island. There was an April 3rd planning board meeting where Basically the planning board wanted to hear from the actual Jewish congregation on the matter. So it was continued at April 3rd. And then there was a second planning board meeting May 1st. And during that meeting, there was back and forth discussion. Mr. Kramer here, the applicant, he did present a private agreement between him and the Jewish congregation. The Planning Board did make a motion to approve the variance, but it did fail four votes to three. So based on that motion, the Planning Board recommended forwarded a recommendation to City Council to not approve the variance request. I have the applicants here if you have any questions.

Councilor, there's light signs for questions. Councilor Henry, you're up first.

Thank you very much. Thank you to the planning board for reviewing this. I thought the conversation was excellent and stuff like that. Unfortunately, I disagree with their vote to deny. I live really close to the Catholic Church, but they don't advise me when they're serving alcohol. I also go to the Center for the Arts, which I don't think advises anyone when they're serving wine. The synagogue agreed, making a non-issue. And correct me if I'm wrong, if this was being built as a full-fledged restaurant and not as a café and was going to be 100 and some seats, it would have been part of the original application and they could have had a full liquor license. I believe is how it would have been. So I guess I just looked at it that they're serving beer or wine to complement their venue. It's harmless. It's a cafe. It's not a nightclub. So I'm fine with it.

Thank you, Counselor. Counselor Golder.

Thank you for being here, Mr. Kuhnmark. Nice seeing you again. I attended both planning board meetings, and I agree with the planning board. And here's the reason, because we were talking about what was 85% of variance adjustment? 90? Yeah, I cannot. That's just, when are we going to stop? 90%, what's going to be next, 100%? So no, I will not be in this application.

Councilor Gray.

Thank you. I have a slightly different perspective. I really don't think that the Jewish congregation should have been put in the middle of this conversation. I think that the code should have done its job and honored the variances or honored the setbacks that we've identified. And while I respect the request, I want to decline and accept the recommendation of the planning board.

Vice Chair Champagne.

I accept the recommendation of the planning board and the staff. I will vote against it.

See, no other light signs. I'll weigh in. I had a detailed conversation with Chairman Bailey from the planning board. I respect his opinion. He's my appointee, just to put it on the record. I told him I'd be mentioning this. He said it's okay. He said his exact words were, I'm not opposed to this. I was opposed to the process of which it came to us or the way it was presented. If I was sitting here, I'd probably vote for it. Councillor Henry asked a question just to be clear. Mr. Kramer could do a 120-seat restaurant with full beer and liquor and does not need our approval. Is that correct?

Yes. Yes, sir.

So we're going to deny him beer and wine in a cafe. I get it because we fear the word business or growth or whatever it might be. But we're going to put him in a position to build a 120-seat restaurant with beer and wine and really make the public happy. Also, if you remember, Mr. Kramer, when he built that little golf course, people were just distraught, the ruination of Marco. He built the most unoffensive, tiny little garden golf course with no jeeps, no airplanes, nothing that would offend anybody. It's pretty scaled back. If I have to choose between forcing his hand in a 120-seat restaurant with full beer and wine and full liquor, would they really come here and yell at us? I'm more thinking, what does beer and wine do to a cafe? Is it going to change anything? Is anybody going to really lose quality of life? That's my thought. I'd like to hear from the public. But I see Vice Chair Champagne's light is on, so Vice Chair.

I just want to mention that one of the reasons why I voted the way I will vote is we're talking about a Jewish congregation here. There's no such thing as more anti-de-Semitism than what's going on in the United States at the moment. And we're going to give the opportunity to some visitor in a cafe to have a few extra glasses of wine or beer or whatever. And if they feel comfortable, go outside and do something. And for those who say it would never happen on Marco Island, that's false. That's just absolutely false. And to put the Jewish congregation in the middle of the whole argument by asking them what they would tolerate seems to me to be embarrassing. Well said. Very embarrassing. At the state of affairs in this country with the Jewish congregation nationwide, A facility 30 feet at the closest, 160 feet from building to building. I think if we pass this, we have the responsibility on our shoulders for what might happen. Will it happen? Who knows? Hopefully not. But my goodness, this is a Jewish congregation. I mean, think about that. It's already out of control in this country, and we have a building 160 feet away, and we think it's okay. I think we need to do a little more thinking. End of comment. Appreciate it, Vice Chair.

I'm going to piggyback on that. I see your thoughts. I also know there's a bunch of restaurants in the area, so 60 feet, 70 feet, 80 feet. If they're anti-Semitic, they're going to be that regardless. I had this challenge with the cemetery, the property next to the cemetery. Do we give them a 12-foot setback? Do you see a set of hedges, and then the other side is 12 foot of pavement or 12 foot of grass? Because the opposite was the owner was approved for six stories without our approval. Could have simply sold it off to somebody who did not live on Marco, did not care for our values, and is going to maximize their property rights. I'm not saying Mr. Kramer will, but somebody else might. So in the lesser of these two challenges, I don't love it, but I look at beer and wine in a cafe, it's going to have probably daytime hours a lot less concerning than a full-blown restaurant with a full bar. That's just my take on it, but Mr. Kramer, did you want to say anything before I call the public up for comment or?

I don't care if I go now. I have to comment.

We'll bring the public up for a comment then. Who signed up for a public comment?

We only have one registered speaker. Please call him up. Mr. Keith Alter. Keith, come on up, please.

Good evening.

Just your name and the fact you've been sworn in.

Keith Alter. And yes, I've been sworn in. Thank you. I'm the president of the Jewish congregation here on Market Wild. And I first wanted to say how much I appreciate the comments about the Jewish congregation. Also, that it's not a center. That's a different terminology. We are a congregation. We are a house of God, a house of church, as the other churches are on this island. I also want to comment why I wasn't here for the other meetings, for exactly what you guys just talked about. I did not, nor did the congregation, want to be put in the middle of this. We did not feel that we needed to be, it wasn't our position to be, but we were forced to be. So with that, I know that we don't have any vote in this issue, and there are other issues before it comes to our congregation about precedents and procedures, which it doesn't matter to me one way or the other. I did reach out as well as Attorney Kramer reached out to me to talk as good neighbors and talk about what he was trying to do. I then consulted with my rabbi. And I talked to my rabbi about the conversation we had and what he thought and what he would like us to do. And again, not getting into if this is a cafe, if this is a restaurant, if they could do this, if they could do that. I can't stop that one way or the other. But if it went through, what I would like to see, according to the rabbi. And I spoke to Attorney Cramer about this and about certain high holidays throughout the year, about our services. We have our services. Our high holiday is Friday night, unlike other religions around the world. And we agreed in principle, in our writing, that if this passed, he would uphold with his tenant to be closed or early to shut down on these times. And that sufficed our rabbi. And that sufficed us. Because if it was going to be put through, and there's nothing we could do about that, that would be the best we could ask for. And we appreciate it. It's hard for me not to comment on a few other things that were said. I want to try to just make one other comment. Because I live here full time. I live on the south side of the island. And by the way, I would like to see the utilities on the ground, just so you know.

We're working on it.

We're working on that. If you couldn't tell from my accent, I'm from Boston. I was born and bred in the Boston area. So we have a lot of clubs, a lot of bars on every street. And most of the public can't control what goes on except by example. And our synagogue does try to go by example, and our congregants by that. And we do believe that whether someone's drinking at a hotel off of Winterberry, I mean off of a Collier, or next door, the same issue is going to happen, unfortunately, because of what's going on in this world. And we just hope that the people around us don't do that. And I do feel very comfortable that Attorney Kramer will work with us if anything does happen in the future. Thank you.

Thank you.

We have a second registered speaker. It's Mr. Jason Bailey.

Please call him up.

Alan, does Jason need to be sworn in? I believe he has not been, but he will do it now. Would you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and the truth to help you God? I do. Thank you.

Chair Bailey.

Jason Bailey, Dogwood Drive. I was not going to speak on this issue. So I voted against this at the planning board hearing. I voted against it because I was a little upset about the process. that the applicant had to go through that he came to the planning board with a site development plan that site development plan was approved as such he started permitting he started construction he got a long way through construction and then came back to the planning board asking for this variance so he spent a lot of time and money on that i was opposed to the process in that regard not none of the citizens No one on Marco Island should have to go through a process like that. Like, hey, I want to build a house, and you can build a house. And I'm like, oh, by the way, at the end of the job, I want to make this change. And you come up, and your feet are sort of held to the fire, or you're told, no, you can't do something by an advisory board and by council. I didn't like that for the sake of the process and what it says for how the city, how the board, how the council could handle things. I also thought that having the neighbor the Jewish community, the Jewish synagogue, having them as a part of the conversation was important. That was one of the reasons the planning board motioned to continue the conversation for a second meeting. When Mr. Kramer came back and presented a letter from the board, I voted against it again because I was against the process, but my personal opinion was, listen, these are neighbors. They work something out. I was not going to speak on this, but now hearing Mr. Alter speak, it sounds like the synagogue may not really be in favor of this. And I can tell you I personally would not be in favor of it, whatever that does to impact your vote, if the synagogue is not in favor of it. To me, it's important for neighbors to work together and neighbors to get along. And if there's an agreement on their part, simply because they feel like they have no other option was which is kind of what i heard him say he he said listen if we're if this is going to be approved this is the best we can hope for that doesn't sound like somebody who's a willing participant and i'm just telling you you know again it's it i hope i hope it's not out of order that i'm here as a citizen and as a member of the planning board giving you some more context but it I don't know what else I can say. It doesn't sound like from what Mr. Alter said that the synagogue is really a willing participant in this. And Mr. Kramer can speak to it. Mr. Alter can speak to it. You guys can ponder it. But I guess I just wanted to add that to the conversation. So thank you for hearing me.

Jason, appreciate the clarification. Councillor Henry.

Interesting enough, when we came into the meeting tonight, I asked Mr. Alter, I was like, are you good with this or are you not? And he smiled at me and he said, we are good with this. So I don't know what might have been this misconstrued in conversation, and I don't know if you want to come and clarify how you feel about that, but if the Jewish congregation is okay with it, which is what I... I point black ass because if he said no, I'd say no. But he said yes.

I'm sorry. So please. So as my position was, we have nothing to do with nor do we want to be about what the rulings on your precedents and your procedures are. I'm not getting involved with that. It would be a losing war for us. We are, if this goes through, in agreement with Attorney Gramer of how he would operate the cafe under certain restrictions of hours. The biggest thing that we would worry about, which is really, I can't really see how you would hold this up, is the precedent. I don't want my decision not to argue this or fight this to be a precedent down the road, where it could be said down the road, St. Mark's Church, where the gas station is, gets leveled, and they're going to be able to build a full bar there. It's okay because the Jewish congregation didn't argue this. I don't want to get put in that argument, and that's why I didn't get involved at the beginning. I do not want to be used as a precedent. But if this goes through without anything to do with us, with your guidings, We do not oppose this, and I am comfortable with the decision and the agreement that Attorney Kramer and I have. Is that clear? Thank you. Thank you.

Fred, come on up. Fred Kramer, on that point then, staff made clear to the congregation, to the planning board, that there is no – responsibility to the future of this being used for any other situation. Right, so that point is not an issue. Fred, just speak up a little. Please, I'm sorry. With that then, if I could. Right, at the base of the page then, and we submitted this to staff, The Jewish congregation asked for and requested one change to the petition, and actually to the resolution. And that was to replace the language that's crossed through. And I apologize for my handwriting at the base of the page. But they wanted to insert it in place of that, owned by the Jewish congregation of Marco Island, Inc., on which they're building. And that is the only thing they requested for this resolution. If I might... and possibly this is totally irrelevant, but last February I was in Buenos Aires, and across the street from where I was, there was a little park. And I went there, and that was a park that was a memorial. It had been the Israeli embassy that had been bombed in 1992, and 29 people were killed there, and over 200 people were injured. I totally respect the congregation. I totally realize also the Israeli embassy and the Jewish congregation are totally apart. I find very offensive the concept that there could be any type of anti-Semitism practice on the island. That's a possibility. But with all respect, I cannot see that as a reason for objections or opposition to this. If I may then, at the request of the congregation, I would ask that the resolution be changed this way. And I ask you all, can anybody articulate a rational reason to deny a 48-seat restaurant from serving beer and wine when, as a matter of right, a 120-plus-seat restaurant could be there serving beer, wine, and straight alcohol with a dance floor, a bar, whatever else? Also, can anyone articulate a reason why or to impose an alcohol restriction solely to protect religious congregations when the congregation does not seek to have the ban imposed. There's no rational reason for that. If I might, it was referenced to the issue of distance. In the materials, there is a site plan that shows there's 160 feet between the two buildings. Also between the buildings, there is not only the alleyway, there's two retention ponds. Additionally, then the access points are from this here to there. If you walk that distance, it's over 500 feet. There's a space between these places. The concern of two of the four people on the planning board opposing the application was confusion about the position of the Jewish congregation. I think it's clear tonight then there is no opposition from the Jewish congregations. They don't want to be in the public eye. I understand that. But again, with this, if I may, without opposition from them, there's no basis to oppose this. There's no basis to say, you can't have a small little restaurant that's family friendly as part of a miniature golf course operation when you could clear this land and build a multi-story building with mixed-use items in it, including a full restaurant with a bar. The third member of the planning board that opposed it said that there's an issue with the procedure of applying in two different places. Applying here for the city council to approve a variance, and again, it's not a variance of any structure, surveillance of occupational usage. And with that, if I could, a separate path of going through with the site development plan. There are two different distinct operations or concepts. When we go through with the site development plan, the planning board is the head of everything. They do the approval. It's their bailiwick. Here, then, this variance is purely for the city council. Also, if we applied for this variance when we first applied for the site development plan, this would have been timed out. In other words, if it was approved by the city council, we would have run out of time to have it in operation. It had to be done at a later stage in the procedures. Now, I would anticipate possibly my comments have made raised a few questions for you all. And if you have any, I'd really like to address this. I don't want to go on forever, but I do want to make sure I address every point you have. Thank you.

Counselors, light signs for questions? Fred, if you could hold it. I have a question for Josh. If you can come back up, please. Josh, so if Mr. Kramer builds the 120-seat restaurant, does the Jewish congregation get any concessions? Can they ask for certain days, or are they just He's approved without our say-so.

I'm not quite sure how to answer that one.

Well, that's the premise I've been under since this whole thing started, that it's this or that.

Yes. It would go...

It's just it's it's a it's a right Maybe let me let me try to help you I'll answer that we follow the land development code So anything there could be conditions that the Planning Board May put on the applicant and then the applicant could decide if they want to follow through with it or not But we follow the code so the conditions

that are there we let them know that the conditions are based on the land development code so you can't go outside that that envelope and put conditions on there that aren't allowed got it so per our land development code right now is this qualify for 120 seat restaurant with beer and wine yes it is okay i keep going back to that counselors i don't know how we honor the Jewish congregation by giving them, no say so, an 120-seat restaurant with beer and wine. That's my fear. He has the space to do it, the means. I'm not saying he would, but that's add on and just alleviate coming before council for this small ask and just build what you're going to want. And that's my concern. Councillor Gray, your light sign is on, please.

Thank you. I'm a little confused. When you come to a fork in the road, you take it. Yogi Berra, go ahead. The building has been built. Are you proposing that this would be torn down and then that this gentleman would absorb that cost and then go ahead with 150? I'm not the applicant. You could ask him directly. I don't need to. I find it inconceivable once you've incurred this kind of cost. So I don't understand that that fork in the road is relevant to this conversation. Thank you.

How about if he just adds on to it? Go ahead, Mr. Kramer. With that then, what we've done is put together a garden. And that garden has probably better than half a hundred species of plants, tropical plants, subtropical plants. It's a beautiful place. It's viable only because of the miniature golf course. With that, then we have the adjacent lot that we've worked over 10 years, close to 14 years, planting trees to be developed to further improve it. With that, the practical reality is there's a rumor I'm not going to be around forever. With that concept, then, there is a future here. And I've tried to put together something that's in place that's unique on this island with vegetation that at some point in the future, somebody's going to be there to decide, look, Not only this three parcel, three lot parcel, but also the adjacent property where La Tavla is, can be developed in the future. And when it's developed, it's gonna be a very large operation if they don't respect the garden. This is going to be a multi-story facility. And that's the future. And that's the bump in the road that you see. It's not just this moment. The value of the property is there today, where although there's income from the miniature golf course, it more than supports the garden. It's not the best use of this property if you wanted to make money. And basically, I think this garden is a very special place for Marco Island. And when it's nothing but a high-rise, I shouldn't say a high-rise, a three-story building, or whatever mixed uses go there, Okay, it's going to be a loss. And I'm not going to have any control over that, and you're not going to have any control over that. There's going to be a practical decision made on what's available. And by adding something here, something as simple as beer and wine for a nice restaurant that's different than anything in the area. Everything there is 120 plus seats. It's got a bar. It's got everything there. It's not a simple place to go and relax. And this place will never have a substantial percentage of sales of beer and wine, but it will be there for people, largely families. And that's where I'm coming from. And I apologize for not being objective right now, but I think your point is not well taken, that there is going to be an end to this road, and that's what I'm planning for. Thank you. Thank you. Council Gullar.

I'm confused as well. So here is my question. I don't know who I'm asking this question, but maybe a city attorney or maybe Mr. Smith. So we have a rule that we cannot sell alcohol within how far from the worship place?

500 feet.

Okay. How far does he want to sell alcohol from?

Josh, I think you need to answer those questions.

What is it, 50 feet? What is it, 60?

160. I'm looking at 160 on this.

OK, 160. So I'm looking at there is a rule, right, that we cannot sell alcohol in this certain amount of distance. So wine is an alcohol, because I can get drunk as quickly with wine and beer as I can get with scotch. So it depends how much you consume, right? So I just do not understand why we're giving such a huge variance in changing laws unless just – I agree with Mr. Bailey when he went up there and spoke about it. And congregation, sir, with all due respect, I know you don't want to be the enemy here. And we're setting the bad precedents, people, so next thing will be somebody will buy a huge lot next to St. Mark's or some Baptist church and then we'll build something and they say, hey, it's mine. So how about we follow the rules, follow the laws? Mr. Chair? Well, wine isn't alcohol. Beer isn't alcohol. Alcohol sale is alcohol sale, without a doubt.

May I go back on this?

Yes, sir.

I'm going to bring this to the city manager first, please. She's had her light on for a while. Casey, please.

Yeah, excuse me. I just want to make a very, what I think is an important point, and the city attorney can certainly chime in or clarify. But this is a quasi-judicial hearing. And a quasi-judicial hearing requires that you consider the evidence before you. That's it. So a hypothetical something else might happen in the future is not evidence before you. The petitioner has a right to apply for a variance So there is something that he wants to accomplish that is not allowed in our code And when you want to accomplish something that's not allowed in our code you apply for a variance So this is the proper process. He's followed the proper process but now the City Council is should focus on the evidence before you. That's all the attachments that's on your agenda and the testimony of our staff and the applicant. But I feel like the conversation is going in several hypothetical directions that are very misleading. So with a quasi-judicial hearing, just focus on the evidence before you. And you can either grant the variance or not grant the variance. or you could grant the variance with conditions if you want to add additional conditions to the variance. I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Kramer.

If I might, then, to address your point, all right, with that, when we go to Chapter 4, the second part of that Article 2, that's the basis for everything here, the reason for the request for the variance. The purpose of the article, the restriction the city imposes through its land development code, I apologize, through its zoning code, is the concern of the community relating to the establishments primarily engaged in the sale of alcoholic beverages for on-site consumption. Right off the top, if I may, this is not primarily involved in alcohol sales. It's not. This doesn't even apply to this situation. More importantly then, when you look at the background, this is not the standard variance for a construction problem or a physical situation. Basically, then, this is to allow the city the opportunity to review anything that's taking place in this radius. And this opportunity relates not only to schools and children, playgrounds. It also includes, as a separate item, religious facilities, houses of worship. That provision is there for the protection of the house of worship, not the general public. In this situation, The Jewish congregation participates in this decision. They join me in the request to you, which apparently some of the members oppose because they don't think it's fair for the congregation, which is not really logical to me, but I accept your position. Also then, the restriction goes on to allow you the opportunity to control request for multiple bars, all right, as it reads, between such establishments, between themselves, that the city doesn't have some area that evolves into or devolves into a situation where there's multiple bars. So this is not your standard provision. I don't believe any member of this council has ever been confronted with this position before. Simply then, You're allowed under the zoning code the opportunity to review situations involving alcohol sales when it's within this 500-foot parameter. It's not a magic distance in any sense. It doesn't matter, well, I apologize. I think I made that point there. Is there any other questions as to the underlying code? And if there is, possibly the city attorney can address it as well as I can.

I see no other light signs. Thank you, Mr. Kramer. Councilor Gould, I like what you had to say. I find this a little odd in case they appreciate the evidence before us, but I am also thinking for the community in the long term. But it is odd that one thing could be approved in the future with no need for us, and this one has such a condition on it. Either way, I see no other light signs. Councilor, would anybody like to make a motion on this?

It should be made in a positive fashion.

Anybody like to make a motion to approve?

I move to approve. Second.

We have a motion from Councillor Henry, a second from Councillor Schwan. Light signs if you'd like any conversation on that. Jim, has anybody else signed up to speak after this motion's been made?

Well, no. I actually told people that public comment had been closed. So it's closed.

They can come up if they'd like before we vote. If anybody would like to speak again on this, please just come up to the podium.

Then we have two speakers who wish to speak. Our first is Mr. John Martini, followed by Ms. Lynn Nathanson.

Bring them up and let them speak before we vote. OK, thank you. Their voices should be heard.

John Martini, Nassau Court. You can all relax. I'm going to behave myself.

John, have you been sworn in?

Okay, and there's another gentleman. Have you been sworn? Ma'am, if you would, just both of you raise your right hand. You saw me swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. So help you God. I do. Thank you. I can do it a couple times. Yes.

You know, the coward dies 1,000 times before his death, the brave but once. You folks are sitting up there. You can't see the forest because of all the trees. All you have to do is enforce the codes that we have on the books as they are written. Why can somebody come to build something at one point in time, get the construction started, it's approved, and then come back and say, whoops, I made a mistake. I really wanted to have a bar, not just a coffee shop, so I'm asking for a variance. And then you get worried about they're going to build skyscrapers where you're going to put all the vehicles. Please, it's your duty as the counselors, enforce the codes we have on the books. They're not difficult to follow. They're not difficult to understand. They are what they are. And what Councilor Champaign said earlier is very, very true. Nothing happens here until it does. We all know about the mini crime wave that's been reported. We never had a crime wave here. This is the safest city in the entire state of Florida. Come on. You have to face the real world. If you're supposed to be 500 feet from a house of worship, you're supposed to be 500 feet. You're not necessarily going to be 100. You're not going to be 60. So if nothing else, look at logic. Look at reason. And if you're going to vote on this thing, please, vote your conscience. Thank you.

Thank you.

Ms. Lynn Nathanson.

Hello, everyone. Lynn Nathanson, Blue Bonnet Court. I just, I don't know if I'm allowed to ask a question. I just want to know if this is going to set a precedence. And you're shaking your head no. Does that mean I can't ask that?

Guys, guys, we don't address. But I will for you. Alan, can you weigh in on that for our citizen here?

Technically, it does not create a precedent, but it is what it is.

So if someone else comes to you to build something that's- Each request for variance stands on its own. Each one is on its own, but they can use this as an example and say, well, you did this here. Why can't we do it here? That's what I'm afraid of. I'm not afraid. I'm a congregant of the synagogue. I'm not afraid of this business next door, really, except I'm afraid of the precedent that this will set on Marco Island. And as you know, every inch of property is going there. and and my owls too but that's beside the point it's that's all that's just what I wanted to say that I haven't heard what I want to hear thank you thank you counselor champagne for your input and it's it's very frightening these days thank you we have no other registered speakers

And on a positive, we're doing all we can for the owls. Okay, I see no other light signs. Councilors, any other comments? Call the roll, please.

Councilor Henry.

Yes.

Councilor Schwan.

Yes.

Vice Chair Champagne.

No.

Councilor Dome.

Yes.

Councilor Gray.

No.

Councilor Goeller.

No.

Chair Palumbo.

Yes. Motion passes four to three. We'll go back to item nine, citizens' comments for items not on the agenda.

Mr. Chairman, if I can ask a question. There was a comment that was made about a modification to the resolution. Was that with the modification that was recommended by the applicant?

I assume that was in there, but I'll take your lead. I just want to make sure that that's what was the intent. Councillor Henry, was that with the modification? Who was the second? Councillor Schwan? Yes. Okay.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you for the clarification. All right. How many people have public comment? Item nine, items not on the agenda. Citizens comment?

We have actually four registered speakers at this point.

Please call them up. Give them their four minutes.

Thank you. Our first is Mr. Chris Scaglione, followed by Mr. Jason Bailey.

Good evening. My name is Chris Gaglione. I'm from Marion County, Florida. I'm just coming down to introduce myself, say hello. I have put my application in for the chief of police position. I know that when you look at applications, you're just looking at paper. It's nice to actually see somebody's face and know who you're... reading about. I've been a chief of police before. I've been coming down here to Marco Island somewhere in the area 30 years. I used to go watch the owls, too, come out of the ground and sit on their little perches. But I just wanted to introduce myself. I did a little research, read a little thing, a little story from another applicant's cover letter that they put down. You can pretend to care, but you can't pretend to show up. I had already said to myself I was going to come down here and introduce myself. I did a little research. I saw that quote and went, wow, that is me. I care. I show up. Here I am. So I just wanted to say hello and put my name to the application. Thank you.

Well, we appreciate that, and good luck with the process. Thank you. We don't decide on that. That will be the city manager, but thank you for coming, and we appreciate you showing up.

Our next speaker is Mr. Jason Bailey, followed by Mr. Elliot Baskook.

Jason, welcome back.

Thanks. Jason Bailey, Dogwood Drive. I don't like public speaking, and I definitely don't like being here at the moment. But I've lived here almost 30 years. I've been really fortunate to have kids here, raise kids here, raise a family here, have a business here, meet a lot of really interesting people. And so far, I've had a pretty good life. I hope I'm around for a little while longer. I've enjoyed being on your planning board. This is my eighth year of serving, so it will be my last year on the planning board, and tried to figure out how I could continue serving the community, and I've thought a lot about it, and so I put my name in this morning to run for one of the open council seats. You know, I know it's not an easy job. I mean, it's evidenced by what's just happened right over the last half hour, 45 minutes. It's tough, and it can be thankless, and people might not like the decisions you make, but I'm prepared to sit up there if there's enough people who would choose to have me on this island. I'm not going to say anything besides that, but I've been really blessed to have a good life here so far. I'd like to give back in that way if I can. So that's why I chose to do it, and I'm not going to say anything else about it now. We've got a long way to go, and I'm sure there's going to be other people who want to put their name in and serve as well. So that's it. Thank you. Have a great evening.

Thank you, Jason. Good luck.

Our next speaker is Mr. Elliot Mascoup, followed by our final registered speaker, Mr. Mario Curiali.

Good evening.

Elliot.

Elliot Mascoup, 1300 6th Avenue, Marco Island, Florida. Yesterday, I learned something pretty incredible and not to my liking. That at the end of my street, they are now building a third marijuana dispensary, 6th and Elkham. I am appalled. We don't have enough potheads on our streets driving. We don't have enough problems. This is basically inches away from where children live, a lot of children in a residential area. I couldn't believe this was true, but I verified it is. And I do attend some planning board meetings. I guess I missed that one. I attend all the city council meetings I can. I guess I missed that one. I'm just blown away. I can't believe that they're putting a third marijuana dispensary on this island and it's inches from children, lots of them. I just took my breath away. Don't know what else to say. I'm hoping somebody can do something about it and stop it, get rid of it, make it not happen. Thank you.

Thank you, Elliot.

Our final speaker is Mr. Mario Curiel. Good evening.

Good evening. Congratulations. City manager, thank you. Congratulations to you also. Kevin?

Mario, we all know your position. Name for the record, please.

Oh, come on. Mario Correale.

The attorney yells at me if I don't.

Okay. I'm going to yell at you, too, now. Okay. 820 Eubanks Court, Marco Island, Florida. Thank you. 34145. You want to know anything else? No? Okay. All right. Unfortunately, it was out of order. Six o'clock is supposed to be the public meeting. hearing me.

Or as close to it as possible.

Okay. Well, I just have to make it here on time because I was called from Fort Myer. I came down here. The reason why I'm here, I'm not here actually representing mostly myself. I represent a lot of people in the community, okay? And not only that, which really blew my mind a couple weeks ago, this guy brought me an article which was written about, I would say, let me put my binoculars on. May 8th, 226, okay? Supposedly, you guys approved for a bond referendum on Marco for November ballot. Unfortunately, what it says here that you guys have there to be for August. So, to me, not only is a very too short time for August, but secondly, such a thing, so important, it should be for November ballot. The next thing is that this misrepresentation, this very bothers me tremendously, is that the $23 million bond for 20 years, with most of us who ain't gonna be here, okay, is to replace two bridges, repair two more bridges, and pave some roads. My question to you guys is, before you put anything on the paper, I want to know what bridge needs to be replaced for $14 million. There is no name on the bridge here. Yeah, we have around, I would say, 40 bridges around Marco, but these two are not identified. Can anybody here know where the bridges are?

All right, I'm not sure what you're reading, the newspaper maybe, but they've clearly been identified. Which bridge is that? At the top here, do you know which bridge is?

Caxambas and Goldenrod. Caxambas and Goldenrod. Let the city manager.

Okay, Caxambas. So he was right. I was wrong. So last week, last week I took a ride to Caxambas, and I personally looked at the bridge. There is nothing wrong with the bridge. The only thing the bridge needs to repair the head walls, one end to the other end, is re-grout the planks. It does not cost $7.5 million. I don't know where you guys come up with these prices. I have no idea. You guys send out the bids first before you guys come up with this number, or you guys pull the number out of the sky and you put it down in there, and the taxpayers here, they got to worry about what it is. Well, we have taxpayers on the island, the people I represent on the island, who they barely make ends meet. We got millionaire, billionaire, but we also got poor people here too. So therefore, before we spend any dollar to invest in something that does not really necessarily, I really would like to be sure that we clear our budget first and find out where the money's supposed to go. Secondly, they paving the side streets right now, which it blows my mind. I drove last Thursday. I was driving my van. I almost snapped my neck. I'm driving south Barfield. I get two bombs in there. I forgot the damn bombs. I hit the thing. I had to hit the freaking ceiling. I said, oh, what happened here?

Finish up, Mary, please. Okay. What's that? Finish up quickly, please. Oh, come on.

I can listen for half an hour. Give me five minutes, will you?

You don't get five minutes. Give me another ten. You don't get another ten.

All right. But the bottom line here is why don't we pave the proper roads first and then we do the rest? And as far as the bridge goes, it's supposed to be advertised and put down in the paper so people know about it. Thank you. You're welcome.

That is our final registered speaker.

Gosh, I'm so tired. I've got to go back home.

For clarification, we don't campaign for the bond. It's up here. We just set the vote for you, but you'll have your chance at the polls to decide if you want this referendum or not. And the city has plenty of information they'll have out there for you. You can certainly email them and ask any of the department heads if you have any questions. All right. Public comment is closed. We are on to item 15. 15A, discussion with council recommended next steps for the advanced wastewater treatment AWT implementation funding strategy. Jeff Poteet. Jeff.

Good evening, Council. That's a hard act to follow right there, but for the record, Mario did concede that he was wrong, so there's good news there. Good evening, Council. For the record, Jeff Poteet, General Manager of your Water and Sewer Department. On May 4th, the City Council approved an ordinance authorizing the City to move forward with planning and implementation of Advanced Wastewater Treatment, or AWT, improvements at the City's wastewater treatment facility. The purpose of this agenda item tonight is to obtain City Council direction on the next steps for AWT program. Specifically, staff is seeking guidance on three key decisions. First, selection of the preferred treatment alternative. Second, development of an initial funding strategy. And third, authorization to begin the procurement process for design services. Based on the Black and Veatch evaluation, Staff recommends alternative one, the preferred path forward. Alternative one was identified as the most cost-effective long-term solution, and it is the most compliant with our existing water and sewer infrastructure. Staff also recommends a design build approach to streamline the process improve coordination between the design and construction Effort and reduces risk and keeps the facility operational throughout construction To initiate the project, staff recommends using available water and sewer unrestricted reserves to fund the preliminary design and permitting as we move forward, and then we'll come back for construction services. If council concurs with this approach funding The funding approach and design build delivery methodology staff will issue a request for qualifications to identify firms with experience in advanced wastewater treatment projects following evaluation the submissions staff will negotiate the contract with the most qualified firm in the in accordance with the Consultant's Competitive Negotiation Act. And then we'll come back to City Council for approval of a design contract. And with that, the discussion is yours.

Councilor, slight signs for questions? First of all, thank you, Jeff, for the presentation. Councilor Gray, you're up first.

There's references to rate studies as part of the required insight for this. Is there any way to piggyback a rate study that would relate to stormwater utility if we're gonna go to work and do a rate study that could be a complimentary insight because that's something we've contemplated?

It's a totally separate conversation. This is for water and sewer, and we're totally separate from the stormwater conversation. Thank you. The quick answer is no.

I like quick answers.

Vice Chair Champagne?

I have a quick question. Excuse me. Assuming AWT is approved eventually, implemented, and now it's ready to use. Is it conceivable that the city could convert all potable water systems to water grass in front of yards to non-potable water to give voters a discount in the cost of the water?

I'm not sure on the exact question, but I can tell you right now that if it were council's direction to install the lines necessary to to to irrigate with non-potable water you could do that now the only issues are the availability of non-potable water and as the wastewater treatment plant only produces a total of about 3.1 million gallons during the season and off-season 2.1 million gallons off-season. We have a much higher demand than that.

Okay. That's all I have.

Councilor Golder?

Jeff, thank you for your presentation. I just have one question. Do you have any idea of which engineering company you think you kind of have in mind?

Well, as required, we'd have to go out to RFQ. And so the engineering firms, and preferably, I'm asking you tonight to have us go with a design-build engineering solution. and there's probably five engineering firms in Florida that do design build, and they're all probably going to respond to an RFQ, and those firms are Black & Veatch, CDM Smith, Jacobs Engineering. Do you know any others? There are a couple others, but only a handful that do this in Florida.

Okay, thank you. That's all I have.

Jeff, option one. That was, I'm looking through all these pages, and I did revisit this before we came in. That was the biological treatment as opposed to the chemical, correct?

There is a chemical component to it, but it is the biological with a side stream going to a fermentation tank.

I remember I personally liked that biological versus less chemical.

And at the end of the day, when I say the end of the day, over the lifespan of it, it's a more economical choice.

That's what I also liked. You're asking us to make a decision on something we're probably not experts in every day. Why are you leaning towards number one? Was it cost and effectiveness?

Not just cost and effectiveness, but it also matches up with our treatment process a little better than just the other options.

So it implements better?

It does. Okay.

So it's the least expensive, correct, with better implementation. And I like the part that it's more biological than chemical. That's just my own personal opinion on that. All right. Vice Chair Champagne.

Can you give us a slow walk as to what the timeline would be If we were to tell you this evening, go, when would we, first of all, get a bid back? And then when would we choose someone to do the bid? And when would the actual work get done? Are we talking a couple years down the road?

Great question, and thank you. So you're asking for the timeline, and we would begin, say if we go with a design-build approach, we would put together a scope of work for the advertisement for requests for qualifications. will that that whole process between advertisement collecting them and doing the evaluation is going to be probably three to five months once we negotiate a contract we'll come back to council for an award of contract with the engineering firm the design-built engineering firm so we're looking probably in the November December timeframe if council decides to move forward at that point it's probably eight eight months to a year for design Once they complete the design, it'll probably be about a year to a year and a half for construction.

So we'll be looking at almost 89, I mean 29, before it gets implemented.

That's a very good estimate, yes.

So we're going to have polluted canals for quite some time.

I would say you're going to have polluted canals for a lot longer than that.

Is there an opportunity to do anything about getting some of the muck off the bottom of the canals before the implementation of AWT?

That would be a Public Works question. Hate to punt it off on them, but I'd love to get my shovel and go out there and start digging muck up.

That's not part of this agenda item, but it's something we'll be talking about in addition to this agenda item.

But at some point, all the voters need to know what the true cost is. And until they know what the cost of muck removal is, they don't know the true cost. They have no idea, even with your new bid process. We'll get a better idea through the bid process. But until we look into what it's going to cost to clean up the water really well by removing muck or at least neutralizing it, no one really knows what we're approving.

Well, what we're approving here is what was the direction given to us a couple meetings ago. I agree.

And Vice Chair, I agree with you, but this is not the task the citizens put in front of us. They said we're dealing with AWT first. They signed that referendum in huge numbers, so this is the way we're starting.

And I would like to add, you mentioned about the cost, right? So we're really not going to know the cost until we get the design complete. and doing a design build project, we'll have the cost at the completion of the design, and we'll come back to council for approval for that. And so but we'll have a hard number at that time so we can either It's probably going to be somewhere between the 60 and 90 percent Design portion before we'll come back to council, but we'll have a good number at that point.

Thank you.

Thank you vice chair counselor gray Thank you. Just a couple questions, trying to dial in. So we go for the RFQ, we'll get a cost for that. Obviously all of us are very anxious to understand the real cost of implementing this and understanding that. So that would be clearly produced out of this first phase?

It would be clearly produced at the end of the first phase.

Okay. And then I don't know if you all are noticing what I'm noticing. There's a great deal of supply chain challenges globally right now. And the price of stainless steel, as an example, has jumped dramatically as other products have. How do you try and handicap the pricing between when we get this report in five months and actually going and ordering materials three years into the future?

Well, the design-build approach streamlines that whole process. If we do our traditional approach, which is design-bid-build, You design it, then you bid it out, and then you go to construction. That's a much lengthier process than this would be. So this helps to curtail those expenses.

So we have good hope that we can correctly identify the cost of this and bring it in on budget when we get to that point.

Well, we won't have the budget until that award contract. And that award contract will be a not to exceed.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah.

Councilor Boulder.

I want to make one more comment. I think it's time to stop the pollution, and you're probably right, Councilor Champagne. At some point, we might have to think about cleaning up the MAC, too, but right now is not the time. But thank you so much, Jeff. You've been working hard on this project, and I would like to make a motion to approve this.

I'll second it. Wait, guys. Help me out here. We have three different directions here. Treatment type, funding, and permit process. So, Alan, is this motionable, or do we need to break these down to we don't have anything we're motioning on? Mr. Chairman?

I do suggest that you take them in three separate motions. And I'll get to you, Councilor Gray. Give me a very clear direction to this. Okay. Councilor Gray, do you want it?

Yeah, well, there was some pretty good coaching on the potential motion where I moved the City Council to approve alternative one, four-stage... And it's a preferred advanced water treatment alternative for the advancement into preliminary design, permitting, and regulatory coordination for improvement of the Marco Island Reclaimed Water Production Facility. I think that's the wording suggested by the city. That's the card.

So you want to make that motion for item one? Yeah, I'd love to. Thank you. Okay. Staff, is that clear enough for you? All right. Very good. So we're on the treatment type, which is the item one. Anybody signed up for public comment?

Yes, sir. Mr. Elliot Mascu.

And, Jim, we're going to take this three different times, so if they want to come up and talk, I will grant them the right to come back up again if they'd like.

Yes, sir.

We'll do that.

Thank you. Hi, once again, Elliot Maskoop, 1300 6th Avenue, Marco Island. Very, very briefly, I'm on the Waterways Advisory Committee. I was the chair for a year, and I've done a lot of intense research and learning about what we have out there. And we keep talking about the cost of doing this cleanup and working on it. I just wanted to bring up the cost of not doing it. I think it's extremely important that we also look at the adverse effects of the pollution. The cyanobacteria, cyanotoxins, they're cancer-causing. When you breathe them, when you eat them in the fish that we eat, The cost of the way that they get beyond the blood-brain barrier. I attended a University of Miami program, as I mentioned before. What the effects are when it comes to these toxins in the air that we breathe. bringing on diseases involving Alzheimer's and dementia. It's been proven at the University of Miami, very interesting reports. I'm not an alarmist, but I just wanted to balance the cost of doing it with the cost to public health on Marco Island that we don't take action in a timely fashion. We need to do this. Thank you.

Thank you, Elliot.

We have no other registered speakers at this time.

We have a motion by Councillor Gray, a second was Councillor Goehler, correct?

That is correct.

I don't see the light signs as I think this is long overdue. This is a campaign promise I made we're gonna implement this for the community. I plan on keeping it Call the roll, please Counselor Gray.

Yes, I'll say goaler. Yes, I'll say one. Yes, how's our dome? Yes, how's our Henry? Yes vice chair champagne. Yes Chair Palumbo.

Yes, beautiful motion passes 7 to 0 Let's take the second part of this Jeff funding

Do you want to take the lead on this one, or I'm not sure if you have questions for me, a little blurb if you could? So I would suggest to begin the process using unrestricted reserves to fund the first part of this, and as we move along, Once we get a design, we can start applying for grants. And also, in the meantime, if you want to do a legislative priority project, this would be an ideal one as well.

Very good. You go first, Vice Chair Champagne. Can you give us an idea of what kind of unrestricted funds we have?

sitting in your water sewer department we have about fourteen point three million dollars of unrestricted reserves that you know part of that needs to be for emergencies because that's part of our emergency reserve fund But part of this could be used for this project. We have other projects that are going to be coming up I'm not sure if I Know counselor dome wasn't here. I'm not sure if you were here for the presentation that we did with the Jacobs engineering regarding the future of our water system So we do have some challenges coming up on the water side the drinking water side and we're going to be Needing funding there, but we do have right now about fourteen point to fourteen point three million dollars But it doesn't sound like we should count on fourteen million dollars, right?

I

Not the whole amount. No, we want to keep $8 million to $10 million in reserves for emergencies. So we do get storms here, and they become quite costly.

Jeff, I see no other license. I have a question. How much of this $14.3 million or the $4 million that we have left to work with, how much of that are you anticipating to use to get this started? Or do we have a number for that yet?

So I would anticipate based on, if you base it on a $10 million project, you can figure 15% would be a good rule of thumb for engineering. So I would anticipate about $150,000 for phase one. Okay. And... I mean, what? 1.5 million? I did go to school for math.

I apologize. My calculations.

You guys make me.

I had 1.5 million written down, 10%, but that was just me. 1.5, I'm sorry. So 1.5 million. Do we have any what would be other funding options besides unrestricted rate raises? What other options are available to us?

Utility rates you can increase utility rates you could You know grants are great, but but there aren't any grants that we can apply for without a design That's one of the big downfalls and then I I don't believe we can use, like, impact fee. We can't use any of that because it's not improving capacity. It's just a treatment. Okay.

So this seems like the most logical step that gets us going forward for the citizens' needs. With that, I see Councilor Gray's light sign is on.

We mentioned money. My head perks up. There was reference in your document to maybe collection of a couple of grants, one to the tune of 2.1 million associated with affordable generators and reference to approximately 900,000 with the Southwater Treatment Plant. I couldn't tell if there was hope embedded in that and that money could actually be collected and channeled into this conversation.

Well, that money, we have contracts for the $2.1 million for the portable generators. That was a federal grant. We've completed that project two years ago, and we're still waiting for the money, and we touch base with them monthly. We're a lot closer today than we were a year ago, and they keep on saying, well, we're at the top of the list now. So I don't know what that means.

If you are able to collect could it be changed?

Yeah, I'm getting I'm getting to that the nine hundred thousand dollars for the South water treatment plant project That that's a state grant that's going to come to us a lot quicker those that grant money can be utilized in the water and sewer Capital program however council would like to use it so i know you like the quick answer i gave the long one the quick answer is yes you we can use that money and is there a contingent yes on hope for the 2.1 million as well and could that there's not a contingent yes there is a yes on the 2.1 it's just whether when we get it um is but that should be applied absolutely thank you it could be applied to any of our capital programs okay

Seeing all the light signs, I'm going to ask for a motion first, and then we'll talk. Does anybody want to make a motion on this as it's presented, or any questions?

I'll make a motion as presented.

I have a motion by Councillor Goulder, a second by Councillor Schwan. Alan, are you specific? This is for the... Let me read to you the motion that's been proposed.

Thank you. I move that the City Council authorize staff to utilize available water and sewer reserves for initial project funding while pursuing grants, legislative appropriations, SRF financing, and other external funding opportunities to reduce project costs.

I will move. You make that motion? Yes. Thank you very much. Actually...

The same motion, the same second. Anybody like to speak on this?

There are no registered speakers on this one.

No. No other light signs. Call the roll, please.

Yes, sir.

Councillor Golar.

Yes.

Councillor Schwan.

Yes.

Vice Chair Champagne. Yes. Councillor Dome. Yes. Councillor Henry. Yes. Councillor Gray. Yes. Chair Palumbo.

Yes. Beautiful. Another seven to nothing.

And I would like to just qualify this that we're not asking for any money right now. We're going to come back to you when we finish the RFQ process to utilize funds. But this gives those that are doing the RFQ a little knowledge that there's funding out there for this project.

We appreciate it. We look forward to the third part of the process. What was number three? We had a permit process? I can read that.

Please. That'll help us out, Alan. Thank you. MOVE TO CITY COUNCIL AUTHORIZE STAFF TO PROCEED WITH THE REQUEST FOR QUALIFICATIONS FRQ PROCESS FOR PROCUREMENT OF DESIGN BUILD SERVICES FOR THE AWT PROJECT AND TO RETURN TO COUNCIL WITH FUTURE RECOMMENDATIONS REGARDING PROJECT CAUSE, FINANCING AND IMPLEMENTATION. WOULD ANYBODY LIKE TO MAKE THAT MOTION?

I WILL MAKE THE MOTION. GREAT JOB, COUNCILOR.

MOTION BY COUNCILOR GOLD. DO WE HAVE A SECOND?

I'LL SECOND.

Second by Councillor Henry. Any light signs, Council? I have one question before we vote on this or ask the public if they'd like to make any comment. You mentioned, and we hear from our citizens a lot, they want us to get multiple bids on everything we can. They want to see that we've vetted the process. Sometimes it's not that easy as a city. There's not a lot of people lined up. You had mentioned there's only so many people willing to do this in Florida, correct?

Well, there's that, but in this particular case, this is designed, so there's different rules and laws that don't allow you to do a... a cost-based evaluation of this at this point in time. So you have to do what's called a request for qualifications, and that's what we do. We'll do the request for qualifications, we'll negotiate with the number one firm, and then we'll take that negotiated contract to city council for consideration.

Thank you, and I'm sure that's what the citizens want to hear. No other light signs? Anybody want to speak on this?

Now we have two registered speakers on this. Please call them up. Our first is Mr. Rick Woodworth, followed by Ms. Chris Dowell.

Good evening, Rick Woodworth, 908 North Barfield. I'm also a member of the Waterways Advisory Committee and it's been five long years to get to this point and I would like to thank Jeff Poteet for bringing this forward, especially in the design-build format, which I think will get this moving down the road as quickly as we possibly can. And it's really great for us to hear that this is finally going to get done, and I'm assuming that we're going to get a 7-0 vote on the last part of this motion tonight. And so I hope I'm thanking you all in advance for that vote. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next speaker is Ms. Christine Dowell, followed by Mr. Mario Curiel.

Hi, Christine. Hi. Good evening, Christine Dowell. I know I mentioned it before, and you're always looking for funding. I know it's not a huge amount, but where I live, I don't have a canal, and I don't use reuse. The people that use reuse need to be charged more. They pay 40% as I pay 60% to use my water. they need their rates raised that will go toward awt but i don't use it i'm going to be punished in essence by living inland and having to pay for this there are some ways of at least getting some money from the people that actually use it we have golf courses we have the city itself that uses it and tons of condos so i think you need to look at that thank you thank you

Our last registered speaker is Mr. Mario Curiel.

Mario, welcome back.

I'm very popular tonight.

Just keep it with the four minutes, please.

Mr. Champagne, you said the right thing before, the muck and the bottom of the canal. Unfortunately, we've got to be very careful with that. The original seawall built around the canals, they're only 12 feet long. They only go on the ground around four or five feet. If you remove the muck, it's so close to the wall, you're going to lose all the seawalls, the old ones. Then we changed the length of the seawall. We supplied the rebars at that time, the 14. And it's still not long enough, since we had the surge coming in. Now we're going out to 16 footer. But the majority of the island, over 70% the canal, the walls is only 12 feet long. You're going to mess with that thing in there. You're going to have a disaster in your hand. You're going to forget about your houses, okay? Because one of them goes, the whole darn thing falls one apart, one on top of the other. That's why I spoke before that a guy would have drenched the canal in order to have bigger boats to go across. This was not designed for bigger boats. It was designed for a vessel. The people go, they have some recreation, a place here and there. This guy want to bring the yachts in here. This island is not built for yachts. The reason why I speak like that is because I've been here. I've seen it build out. I supply the material for that. I don't want to see that we destroy what's already here. We have a great ambiance, but if we start to play with that, we're going to lose it all. Vegetation grows everywhere. We have to treat the vegetation the way it grows, the legal way, not the arsenic way. Let's put the stuff and work together. I don't live in a canal. Most of you guys do live in a canal. But it's among you guys to find out how to maintain the environment. But when you go to the structural industries, it's a disaster. Now, back into the bidding process. I've been a GC for 45 years. I dealt with saltwater management across the whole state of Florida and also in New Jersey. So I'm well aware of what I'm talking about, okay? When you go for bidding, you don't have to bid only within 20 miles radius. These people, they already know you guys are the mercy. Go elsewhere. Go as far as Tampa, for that matter. Or go far as Gainesville, North Florida, even the borderline of Georgia. They got the same law. It's the same environment, those studies that they have. So we can save money and do the job right the first time. We don't have to depend on the local environment to spend, oh, we have $600 for a load of field. Well, we can get a field also cheaper than that, or we can get more than that. Dig a hole somewhere. Pick up the fill. You got a lake, and you got your fill already. So there's so many ways to eliminate the cost. And right now, we have very stable ground. But if we keep spending money foolishly, we ain't going to have no money going around for two reasons. The construction industry is over, Marco. We only have 250 lots left. Island is built out. They should have collected money when they built all these houses for the past seven to eight years. Whatever money they collected, I don't know where the hell they went. The whole public work, utilities, and everything else, they spend the money coming out of, I don't understand where. The public work has got a full brand new fleet of trucks. So they'd have to buy no trucks for the next 10 years. It shows the utilities. So let's find out what we have, what kind of inventory we have, and then we start spending money. We must send the bids out, not locally. Thank you.

Very well, thank you. Council Member, I see you lit up. Do you have any final thoughts?

I just have one question to pick up from the comment one of our citizens earlier. Jeff, do you have a response to Ms. Dowell, the earlier that she spoke about there would be like different rates perhaps for the reuse water. I'm really ignorant about that subject, so if you can provide any kind of. Sure.

Utility rates are a policy decision. I don't know if you all were around in 2010 when we had utility rate discussions and that was very exciting. We went through several years of utility rate discussions, which is what we're referring to here. that ended up not making any adjustments at the end of the day and We did spend several hundred thousand dollars on On that process and got nothing out of it. But again, this is a policy decision And if council would like to go out for a rate study To modify our rates or our rate structure we can Okay.

I might have discussion with you later on. Okay. But thank you, sir.

There is one thing I do want to mention because we were talking about bids and whatnot. When we get to the construction portion, just so you understand how a design build works, in that portion we can have the consultant, whoever they are, to require firms that are doing the construction to bid it out. In that portion, we can have bid out. But the beginning of this is based on qualifications, not on cost. Thanks, Jeff. And that's by law.

You're going to be having this conversation again with either two or three new counselors. It depends on how these seats fall. It depends on if I'm back or not. But you can bring them up to speed, and the counselors will all be up to speed. So thank you for your work on this.

And I'll keep you up to date on my monthly reports. Very good.

Thank you. All right.

Call the roll, please.

Councilor Goler?

Yes.

Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Gray? Yes. Councilor Schwan? Yes. Councilor Dome? Yes. Vice Chair Champaign? Yes. Chair Palumbo?

Yes. Passes seven to nothing. This is long overdue.

And I do want to mention Sonia Isler, our engineering and operations manager, is here tonight, and I want to thank her for her efforts. Absolutely.

And go ahead, give it a clap if you want, folks. This is long overdue. Thank you. Thank you. We appreciate that, Jeff. All right, counselors, we have a pretty good agenda left up here. We have the beach boardwalk. We have new revenue. We have noise. We have advisory committees. So let's try to keep the comments down to one or two rounds if we can and keep moving as well as we are. Does anybody need a break? All right. We're going to five minutes more for you. Four minutes. Four minute break. Quick bathroom break. We'll be back. Meetings and recess.

breakdown of those costs we can certainly do that and then bring that back to you again and then you can go through that breakdown and determine yes no but otherwise the alternative is we would We would put it out to bid for contractors. We would have to hire an engineer to have the design work done and then provide the design work as part of that bid packet. So it's just a much longer process and more expensive process because then the cost of design is broken out and we're paying for that design to provide to a future contractor.

When the documents, when the bid is submitted, is there any kind of bid breakdown? Or did they just give you a lump sum, or do you have?

I attached the bid that they gave, and there was a breakdown.

I didn't see a whole lot.

Yeah, it gives you a breakdown. Yeah, it's all broken down, the mobilization, site setup, demolition. I mean, everything's got a dollar amount to it that equals up to that.

So I'm trying to figure out what you're, because I do think the price is high, and I think there's opportunities. to do other things. I don't want to spend good money on bad or bad money on good. I don't know.

Can I jump in with you? Absolutely. Before I turn it over to the light signs. First of all, if I remember correctly, it was Councilor Gray, Schwan, yourself, and we'll leave it with the four that voted for it. Does anybody want to move away from the boardwalk itself, go back to the matter? Are we still sticking with this particular?

I want to stay with the boardwalk.

OK. Nobody wants to move away from this?

I need some further clarification. OK. So we've got three and a half.

So we're talking about maybe a rebid process, finding out, Casey, if we pay for the design, or Joe, if anybody knows, if we pay for that and then we have somebody do it, we have some local contractors that want to bid, we'll explain to them what the process is. Can we then save that money in the bid because we have a design for them? Do we get a cheaper bid that way? Do we just pay up front for it?

Well, it depends how the bids come in. So, yes, it potentially could be cheaper because the design work, the engineering work is done up front, so it could be potentially cheaper, although Joe did get some information from Bowman Engineering, and they estimated the cost of this project to be between $850,000 and $1.1 million. And the contract we currently are working under that you approved at your previous meeting was $847,000.

Was it 849-4? 849-4.

I just want to be clear on the number.

I'm not sure how to exactly help you with this. It's either we're going forward the way the four of you desired or we're going to talk about rebidding it, maybe paying for some design work. That seems like the options for the moment. Am I missing any other obvious options? Give me one second. That you could think of.

So if I can just kind of chime in and ask, Joe, if we have someone who is going to give us the materials, and that would alleviate the materials being charged by the contractor, and you would break out that number right from the contract? Absolutely. We could do that. But the conversation that I'm hearing, though, is that there's no definite

I think it's more of the conversations. It came out of the last meeting, so I'm kind of only two weeks into this conversation.

To the point that I was going to make with Joe is that you have a contract for $849,400 broken out into different expenses. If the contractor was willing to accept whatever that material, using that as an example, what that material was and he doesn't have to buy it, then the city would save that money. for the purposes under the contract, whatever that value is. Yes. So we could do it that way. You have a contract.

Can I make a suggestion? Unless you want me to add something. Why don't we hear what our other co-counts have to say? Why don't we hear what our contractors have to say and see if we could tie all this in it? All right, Councilor Gray, you're up next, please.

Thank you very much. Just a few points of clarification. This latest presentation still drifts between the word repair and replacement. There was a term used in there, necessary demolition. Do we know the remaining life expectancy of that boardwalk as it exists today?

So I did ask the architects that drew the repairs, which was Bowman Engineering. And they gave me a kind of a vague response, but it's still... So the material that was used for that boardwalk has a lifespan of 20 to 25 years. And the boardwalk right now is currently 10 years old. They said anything that is touching the actual soil has a life expectancy of 10 to 20 years. And then anything that had long exposure to saltwater was deteriorated more than that. It didn't give me an actual, like, in three years it's going to fall down. This is what they gave me.

We haven't identified any pending collapse of this boardwalk. Is that correct?

That is correct at this point. I did ask for that. This is the breakdown that they gave me.

I'm getting the best I can here. FEMA, there was a reference that we were still in play potentially for $35,000 of FEMA, but was that under a repair request or a replacement request?

So just to be clear, it's under a repair, but originally it was under a full replacement, and then they found out that we only had the plans for a repair, so they redid it, and that was what the $35,000 came to.

So $35,000 is still in play as a hope for a refunding time? Yes. Repair? There are people that have gnawed on me and said we can repair it. There are people that are willing to roll up their sleeves and do some work on that. Is this beyond repair?

No, we still had the drawings for a repair, and we still can do that. We just didn't get as many bids. There were companies that wanted to bid it because it was quite a bit more work to just do the repair. Plus, and then we had that in the breakdown that we were trying to keep it open on the weekends because we didn't want to have that completely shut down. So we actually had it bid so that they would do repairs and then keep it so that it was finished and could be used on the weekends. And then after the weekend, they would restart construction. So it was quite a bit of start-stop that... contributed to that great color commentary um so if we did repair it might we be able to achieve this for 350 or 400 000 so the repair cost that i got the last time from the single bid was about 430 000 if i'm able to shut down the boardwalk without having to reopen it over the weekends for the duration of the project it will lower that price you're on a roll with your answers thank you very much

And if we did that repair, we'd still have a shot at the FEMA collection for 35,000? Yes. I think that covered my questions, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Counselor.

Vice Chair Champagne?

Yeah, I think we're here with this topic for two words, nothing else, repair or replacement. Agreed. Otherwise, why are we here? All this other stuff is extraneous. The issue was the minutes read at the last meeting had confusion over the words repair versus replacement. And it was decided to bring it back under reconsideration so that it could be changed to replacement, not repair. And here we are discussing all this extraneous stuff. We're only discussing two words. Which one do we want to use, repair or replacement? Seems to me we want replacement. And all this other stuff is yet a different topic, had nothing to do with what the issue was that brought this one back. Am I wrong? Is that how you understand it also?

Yes.

Yeah. I mean, doesn't everyone understand it? One point of clarification. There was a gorgeous red herring that came out that was the TDC might actually step up and take care of this bridge for us. Still available. And that gave me goosebumps. So that was, again, under the replacement category. But I don't know if that's a plausible consideration or if that's just a distraction.

I think that's like a grant, in my opinion. So you go forward with your concept. And if you can get TDC, great. but it's frosting on the cake.

I'll jump in, and Casey, I'll ask for a little clarification. We have the application in process?

There's no application in process because this project hasn't been approved yet. So the council has to decide what you want to do, and once we award a contract and we have the cost, then we'll be able to apply for that funding.

Prior to starting, we'll know if we have the funding or we can work in that direction, correct? Or it's going to be after?

It will be after. So the council would have to commit to the full funding of the project, and then if approved by TDC, you would be reimbursed probably at the 50% amount.

It's like a grant. Yeah, absolutely. Guys, I could tell you they're very positive on it, but that's neither here nor there for this moment. Before we keep turning the light signs over, and I'll go to Councilor Golder. Guys, this was a decision four of you made. This is a decision four of you are not making, so we have to find some direction for this today. There's only so many times we could talk about a boardwalk. But, Councilor Golder, you're up next.

Joe, thank you. I did more digging into this project, and I read a lot of engineering reports, Yeah, it doesn't look like that it's falling apart to the point that people are going to fall and break their necks. And it's also we can actually – we don't have to replace it. We do – it's now mandatory, so we can actually repair. Here is my question. I know that you only had issue finding bidders, like contractors. I mean, we have the best builders on this island. I mean, I don't understand. Is there any kind of rule that we cannot utilize them? I mean, you can put out the RFP, and I'm sure the great builders in Marco Island would just jump right in.

Yeah, I'm not able to reach out to them when we go out for public bid. I have to let the process play out. So, I mean, I know that we can work through our procurement management.

I think that I would definitely do the recommendation would be the repair, if we can salvage it. it will be wonderful and make sure that it's usable and nobody's really getting hurt because we don't want anybody getting hurt. And I think that would be also a great idea for Mr. Palumbo, Consul Palumbo, to reach out and maybe use the TDC money on that, you know, I think that would be the best choice. And that would be my suggestion at this point.

I can't guarantee you, but preliminarily we are told we qualify. Let me rephrase that. We look very good. It looks like an excellent possibility. Councilor Schwan.

Yes, Joe, thank you for your presentation. So you started to talk about the repair and the reason why the repair was in that 400 price tag was because of the stop orders, and you said it would reduce significantly if we didn't do that, possibly. Yes. About how much do you think it would reduce? Any idea?

We never went down that road, so I really don't have a number to give you.

Okay, thank you. And I have a question out of the TDC, too, so... Are they willing to do the 50% reimbursement for both replacement and repair?

I haven't got into replacement because we were talking about repair.

I just am asking a different question.

I haven't. Casey, you didn't have any conversation on this, did you not? Because it was going to be replacement for me when we voted on it. We could certainly find out and ask, by all means. But up until now, it was just simply replacement. Vice Chair Champaign.

I just kind of want to raise a red flag here among counselors. We bid the project out Okay, we get two bids one a blue mat three hundred and some odd thousand dollars and then This one eight hundred and forty nine thousand. I did not vote for eight hundred and forty nine thousand I thought that was way over the top from a expenditure point of view, but my concern to the council is We accepted a bid And then we decide over two words misstated in minutes, one being repair and the other one being replacement. We're going to open this whole thing up now and we're going to rethink how we want to approach this. If I were a contractor, I'd get a little tired of this. I would really get a little tired. Why do I want to put up with a city who can't seem to make up their own damn mind? You accept my bid for $849,000. You vote on it. You pass it. Come to the next meeting. The minutes are read wrong or they're written wrong. And now you're changing the whole ballgame. Come on. I don't favor $849,000. But damn it, you accepted it. at what point does this city stand by its decisions i have a point of clarification sir please

I asked very carefully if this was an emergency repair. It was defined as an emergency repair, which put an entirely different context on the conversation. Follow-up conversation tonight has identified the remaining life expectancy of this boardwalk as potentially multiple years. So I was mispositioned with the decision I was making because when I hear the word emergency, I have to protect the public. And so that's why I sought clarification on the remaining life expectancy and also whether or not a repair was plausible. So you're right. I did vote the way I did. I will stand on that, but I was not given clear instructions.

Wow.

You seem to be the only one that was confused. Guys, play nice. Play nice, play nice. Let me try to... Steve, do you have anything to add with that, or am I going to take my turn? Yeah. Let me try to tie this in a little bit, best I can. I know four of you didn't like the blue mat. I understand. We didn't like it. We prefer the boardwalk. It's nice looking. I didn't vote for it personally, but I'm not adamantly against it. But at some point, we have to make a big boy and big girl decision up here. It's being held up by Jax. We could mince words over... Is it have life left or not? This isn't our own little deck in our backyard. This is the city of Marco Island. We fix it or we rebuild it. It's about that simple. We make a decision on it. I suspect four of you made a decision. I suspect four of you heard from some of your constituents. I suspect four of you said that's ridiculous. I suspect you came back and now we're talking about it over and over, which is your right. But it's not the end of the world in Marco. It has to be done or not done That's just pretty much that simple.

But with that Councilman you want to go first if I'm gonna open it up because I just want to say I still full support 100% replacement got it. I was just looking at avenues of For this sponsorship. I was just looking at ways of saving money I still fully support because You're just pushing, once again, kicking the can down the road. So I just want to clarify, I'm still fully for full replacement. My whole complexity of making this complex was ways to save money.

Jim, how many people signed up to speak on this?

We have four registered speakers.

Okay, we're doing only one round, so if anyone wants to jump in before these four are done, please do. But if not, please call up the speakers, please.

Yes, sir.

Our first registered speaker is Mr. Mario Curiel, followed by Ms. Christine Dowell.

Let's get this going. Who are you? My name again? Please, sir. Oh, Mario Correale. Nice to meet you guys.

Welcome back.

All right. This doesn't really make any sense, and I'm telling you why. I'm a certified general contractor of the state of Florida and the state of New Jersey. Before I bid on something or before we disclose anything, at least put some pictures on the TVs so people can see what we're looking at it. And then we may identify if actually this boardwalk or bridge is really deteriorating or need to be fixed or repaired. That will determine what kind of value is taking place to do that. Without any drawing in place, without anything there, you guys throw numbers up your head. They find out what is going to hit and what is not going to hit. But the worst thing is, which you guys maybe don't know because you're new on the block here, The Marriott, when he got the approval to build Marco Shore. What was the name? It's not Marco Shore. What's the name of it?

Crystal Shore.

Crystal Shore. That was close. They specifically, and I was in this room, and I spoke in favor of that, that they will maintain the boardwalk for the remain all the life of the boardwalk. So all this nonsense that you guys have to raise money to this and that, it should not be spent a dollar. The Marriott needs to come over here and fix the damn boardwalk like they should have done at the beginning the right way, but they have not. Therefore, you don't need no money from anybody. They're making enough money right now. They just sold the whole place for $835 million. I think they can share a half a million or a million to build a brand new boardwalk. They say, thank you, Marco Island, because we take care of you very well. They're making a lot of money in this place, so let them spend some money instead of the taxpayer. Now, as far as the contractor goes, that's a joke. You know, people need the blueprints in their hand. Without the blueprints, how are you going to know what he's supposed to do? And then we talk about he came working a weekend. We never had accessibility to the beach before. Now we have five of them. And I'm the main campaign for that. You can shut that down. Why do they get fixed? You got four more places to get to. The beach is not the end of the world. Or people can walk 100 feet now. Or they borrow all handicaps. But it's their problem. So it cannot get to the beach in the first place. So let's use our mind to find out how can we save money and how can generate stability for the island and for the taxpayer.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Ms. Christine Dowell followed by Mr. Dwayne Thomas.

Hi, Christine Dowell. I am not a general contractor, but I lived with a general contractor my whole life, my dad, and we did 400 homes a year. I'm well aware of how things are built, and I have built decks. I know this is a bigger deck, but this was just built in 2017. my roof of 2004 i'm told it lasts 40 or 60 years maybe i should just take it off because something may happen to it we can backfill we can put cement pads in with rebar we can put the vertebral beans back in and put the tyvek back on i'm sorry this does not cost that kind of money that we've been told it costs um if it's an emergency that has should have been shut down and kept shut down i'm sorry you can't have it as an emergency and then keep it open you can't have it both ways Then I have been to Hilton Head quite a few times. I don't know, has anyone been to Hilton Head? Okay. What do they have there at the beach? Blue mats. I'm sorry. We don't have to have it all pretty here. That entrance is used for visitors. a $300,000 mat is a lot cheaper than $898,000 I'm not saying we should if we can fix it for cheaper than that fine but I'm not all into this aesthetic I'm sorry but you know all they want to do is get to the beach the beach we don't even own so what we're doing as taxpayers is giving them an entrance but we're supposed to make it oh so beautiful I'm tired of my taxpayer money being wasted like this when I got sewer problems, I got the street in front of my house sinking, got a whole bunch of other problems on this island, and to spend $890,000, I'm sorry, for tours? I'm done. Thanks. Thank you.

Our next registered speaker is Mr. Dwayne Thomas, followed by Ms. Terry Sommerfeld.

Good evening, Council. My name is Dwayne Thomas. I've been a contractor here on the island for 30-plus years. I did the residence beach boardwalk back in the 90s, and I redid it again 16 years ago. I did the design build on that, and I would like to advise Council to... not just take the contractor's design build. The prison deck that's there now, walkway, is designed more like a deck. They're using joist hangers and things more that you'd use in a residential application. Pylon penetration was never monitored. Again, nothing against the engineer. I think the Radisson paid for it. But they got exactly what they paid for. They got a very inexpensive product. The decking that they used is even also labeled as a non-structural material. And they're using that in this. Unfortunately, I didn't have my name on the bid list and didn't bid on this job. If it does come back out to open a bid, I probably would bid it. But I would strongly advise council to do their own engineering and pick their own products. Thank you.

Thank you, Dwayne.

Ms. Terry Sommerfeld, followed by our final registered speaker, Mr. Rick Woodworth.

Terry Sommerfeld, 1111 San Marco Road. I love reminiscing. We're talking about something that happened in 2022 with Hurricane Ian. And we had FEMA approve reimbursement for repair on that boardwalk in 2023. we moved along like the turtles and we're talking about it now in 2026 and I think that when we talk about the council making decisions this is a great example of how we go around come around and never figure out what kind of position we want to take and then when you talk about emergencies This is where the citizens in the community, I think, question what the council is doing in terms of trust. Because as was mentioned by one of our other residents, if this is a true emergency, why is this boardwalk still open? And as far as the tourist dollars, even if we don't have anything to put in front of them, why was it not discussed? We've had two years to do that. So I think that it's really difficult for us as citizens to try and support you spending taxpayer money on this project because we don't really have a sense of trust that you know the right answer. of what we should do. I think that from our end, we want to preserve our money and repair this boardwalk as best we can, rather than just replacing it if it doesn't need to be replaced. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next registered speaker is Mr. Rick Woodworth, followed now by our final registered speaker, Mr. Michael Josephs.

Rick Woodworth, 908 North Barfield. After you all voted to replace the boardwalk, somebody found some paperwork going back to when it was originally damaged, and there was a complete engineering report, contractor bids, that came up to $210,000. why that wasn't presented to you when you made that decision, I don't think you had all the facts in place. And coming here tonight, I thought that that missing paperwork had been circulated to the council so that you had that background and that perspective before you made a decision again to spend 800 and some odd thousand dollars. I don't think you had all the facts. And I don't know if the city lost it, misplaced it, whatever but uh it was out there and and if you don't have it i'd be happy to share with you what i did have now 210 000 was several years ago i'm sure that's not the right number today but i also don't understand why we don't have local contractors bidding on this work if they can build docks and pool decks and houses, why aren't those people helping us on Marco Island doing the work for the benefit of the taxpayers? They live here. They work here. They should be doing this kind of work, and they should have the opportunity to do it. So anybody who doesn't have that paperwork, I'm happy to send you what I had. But I'll bet somewhere in the city those documents are there, and you should have had them before you made your decision. Thank you.

Thank you. Hold off on the next speaker. Casey, we put this out to bid. Anybody can bid, correct? It's available for all contractors to bid. There is no rule that says only certain ones. I don't know why they chose not to at the time, but that's certainly not on the city staff. Next speaker, please.

Our last registered speaker is Mr. Michael Josephs.

Good evening. Michael Josephs, Marco Island. I really didn't want to talk about this tonight, but I just have to state my case one more time. We were told there was an emergency. I heard it all over this room. We now know there is no emergency. There's no emergency, okay? That's the first thing. Repair or replace. I firmly believe, once again, I emailed all of you, I spoke about it, that there is an opportunity for repair. There is absolutely an opportunity for repair. If for some reason we have to spend taxpayer dollars There are contractors that want to bid this work. Why, again, are we going to one contractor? One contractor. Remember, it's voting season. We don't want one contractor bidding for anything. I know how difficult it is. I am in the contracting business. It's difficult to get three quotes, but it can be done. Thank you.

Thank you.

That is our final registered speaker.

All right, guys. I don't even know how to tie this all together. Counselor Champagne, you're right. And maybe the contractors watch this and say, if these seven can't figure out a boardwalk, how are they going to figure out working with me? Guys, yeah, you're right, Mike, and I appreciate the time we spent on the phone. We have an election coming up, and you better be very careful who you put here, because if we're going to debate every single city item to this level, we will never get a thing done. We do have to be good stewards of the citizens' money, and this is a great conversation. We have to start tying it into what direction we want to go with. I'm hearing the citizens, and maybe they're saying... On a project this big, Joe, is it possible to pick up a phone and call a few local people? Is that within the rules? Or is it? No, you can add. Sorry. Sorry. Please.

No. We have a public bidding process. Anyone who wants to bid can bid on a city project. I would encourage any interested contractors to register on DemandStar. There's a link on our website. Search for purchasing. Click on the DemandStar link. Register. Anyone can bid. We do have a city ordinance that requires that we accept the lowest qualified bidder. Sometimes as soon as a contractor hears that, they no longer want to bid. Or they may bid, but they may not be the lowest qualified bidder. So I just want to be clear about that opportunity is available to everyone. We do not make phone calls and solicit individual contractors. What would be helpful tonight is to hear whether the council wants to replace or repair the boardwalk And then whether you want us to negotiate with the existing contractor we have or put that work out to bid. Those are the really two key decisions I think you have tonight.

Thank you, Casey. So you've heard it. We have a process. The process must be followed. You cannot blame council if multiple bids didn't come in. However, what I did hear, too, is council might feel... I'm not going to use the word deceive. We might have misunderstood, or maybe we were not exactly clear on how much of an emergency, how much life is left in this. So now here we can stretch some life out of it or choose to repair it. This is pretty simple. Repair, replace. We'll have to get to that in some kind of motion or a second. But, Councilor Gould, you have the last light sign on.

My suggestion would be let's put out for a new bid and ask for the repair. and give opportunity whoever's interested to participate in this opportunity, bid an opportunity. That would be my suggestion.

Casey, you need direction? You need a motion on this? We need a motion and a vote. Okay. So do you want to motion that?

I'll make a motion for our staff to issue a new RFP for the repair of the boardwalk.

Do we have any second on that? I'll second it. I do have a point of clarification.

GO AHEAD. MOTION BY COUNCILOR GOLD. I HEARD COUNCILOR DOME. SO SECOND BY COUNCILOR DOME. COUNCILOR GRAY, YOU'RE UP.

IS THERE ANY VALIDITY TO THE ROLE THAT CRYSTAL SHORES MAY BE PLAYING IN THIS CONVERSATION? I WAS GOING TO SPEAK TO THAT.

I'm not aware of any contract agreement or maintenance agreement that the city has with Marriott Crystal Shores.

Quite the opposite. I spoke to some people involved back then, some local attorneys, and the real egregious part was we did not ask for the maintenance as we did with the Castaway Park where there's, I believe, 30 years of maintenance. wonderfully negotiated in. So I don't believe that exists. Mario, if you have that or we have that on video, we will look for it. I would love to find that. I was around for that. I remember them doing it as a concession, a builder, whatever you want to call it, whatever was legally approved. But I don't remember the maintenance being there, to be honest. We have a motion and a second. Anything to let know of the light signs? All right. Call the roll, please.

Councillor Gouler?

Yes.

Councillor Dome? Yes. Councillor Schwan? Yes. Councillor Henry? Yes. Vice Chair Champaign?

I'm sorry?

No.

No. Councillor Gray?

Yes.

Councillor Palumbo?

Yes. Motion passes six to one.

Thank you, Joe.

Thank you very much, staff. We are on to 15C, new revenue options, presented by city manager, Casey Wishes. Casey, you are up.

Thank you. I'm going to ask Martin to please put up the slides. And I'll just give a brief background while he's pulling up those slides. You may remember in January, city council had a goals workshop and you all agreed on six goals. The number one goal that was identified was to identify new sources of revenue. On March 16th, I brought forward five revenue options from the State Department of Revenue report, and City Council was interested in two of those five options. The first was the communication service tax, and the second was a local business tax. At your last City Council workshop on May 18th, I brought forward again the communication service tax and the local business tax, and no direction was given to pursue either one of them. So today I'm bringing forward a new potential revenue option, and that is the potential purchase of a parking lot on Collier Boulevard. Martin, if you can go to the next slide. Most people know this as the turtle lot. It's on Collier Boulevard. There are 84 parking spaces, and there is also a vacant commercial lot on the corner. Both of these parcels are for sale for $12 million, and they were purchased in May of 2024 for $11.25 million. If you go to the next slide, Martin. Back up one. There we go. So these two lots are owned by Tailwind Marco LLC, Marco Holdings LLC. The addresses are 711 South Collier Boulevard and 731 South Collier Boulevard. The parking lot is zoned commercial, 0.78 acres. The vacant lot is also zoned commercial at 0.38 acres. Next slide, Martin. I did provide on this slide some potential scenarios for usage. And you can see the most conservative scenario with a 35% occupancy and $10 an hour rate would bring in an annual income of about $1 million. The moderate scenario of occupancy at 60% Also, $10 an hour would bring in approximately $1.8 million a year. And the more aggressive scenario with occupancy at 85%, again, $10 an hour would bring in potentially $2.5 million a year. The estimated operating costs would be around $82,000 a year, which would include code enforcement, probably striping the parking lot once every five years, credit card fees, and the parking software. I also, just to let you know, I did do an analysis with $8 per hour. I know there was a very thoughtful email that was sent to the council suggesting that $10 an hour may be too high, maybe $8 an hour is more accurate. So just looking at the moderate scenario at $8 an hour, it would generate about $1.5 million. And the median between the three scenarios is $1.7 million with the $10 per hour. At $8 per hour, it's $1.5 million. And then the next slide shows the potential debt service. So if the city council were interested in purchasing these two lots for $12 million, what I would do is work with our financial advisor, Jay Glover, and talk about what the best funding sources would be. For example, if the council were to simply take out a bank loan for $12 million, you can see these scenarios here, whether you pay back over 10 years, 20 years, or 30 years, you can see the annual debt service and then compare that with the potential revenue. So what's being presented here is By the way, not a parking garage. No one has suggested a parking garage. The word garage is nowhere in this agenda report. It is essentially the status quo. There is currently a parking lot on the island located at 711 South Collier Boulevard. I'm not suggesting any change to that parking lot. What I am suggesting is a potential revenue option that would not require any increase in millage and would not require any taxpayer dollars. City would take out a loan to purchase the lots and we would pay back the loan with the revenue generated from the parking lot The revenue generated from the parking lot would be primarily tourists and visitors who come to the island to utilize the beach Once the loan is paid off, that would be a forever revenue source for the city. We know that today the state legislature held a special session to discuss property taxes. And we know that based on the proposal from the governor that is being discussed with the state house and state senate, there could be a potential $2 million impact to the city operating budget if the proposal passes and is approved by voters in November. So what I'm looking for, a way to Make up that potential deficit and I've heard loud and clear from the City Council and from our residents that Whatever revenue options are presented should not place a burden on our residents So this is an option that does not place a burden on residents But places the burdens on on those who visit Marco Island beaches and we have very few parking lots near our beaches And this is the only parking lot near The winter berry boardwalk near one of our beach access we have two public beach access points owned by the city and this is the only parking lot by one of those beach access points and So if the city council is interested in this possible revenue option, I would ask that you authorize me to have the property appraised. We do have an ordinance that says we can't purchase a property for more than the appraised value. So I think it would be important to have the property appraised and then allow me to negotiate with the seller based on the appraised value. Thank you.

Very good. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for thinking outside the box. Councillor Henry, you're up first.

Dr. Lucius, thank you. The outside the box is key. I recently had a situation with a board I'm on at looking at buying, we bought several lots, not on Marco. But the whole theory behind it was you had it now at today's value. And in four or five years, a plan changes. You sell it. If it's one of those things, if it's a burden, it's not coming out as planned, tourists decide never to come to Marco again, whatever it may be, you can sell it. I just think this is a great idea because it is something that the cost is totally covered by tourism and visitors to our island. So thank you so much for thinking outside the box. I just think this is a great idea.

Thank you, Counselor. Vice Chair Champagne.

I like the idea with a lot more financial work looking into the numbers. But nonetheless, this seems to be a revenue generating idea that does not involve taxpayer money and yet contributes profits towards the taxpayers running of the city. A lot of questions yet to be answered, but certainly I would call for an independent assessment of the value of the two lots and look at all their records to see how many cars actually park there on a daily basis and over what period of time. I think I would favor the $8 per hour parking fee until such time. I'm assuming we go forward and buy it. until such time as we determine just how well it performs at $8 an hour. But, you know, I just, and I'll just underscore one thing that Casey said. Again, gossip went around real quick that we were going to build, the city council was deciding to build a parking garage. You know, please read the agenda items. It would be helpful for civil conversation and eliminate a lot of negativity right off the bat. But it's hard to find what would be negative in this regard, assuming the minimal estimates could be achieved. That alone produces a profit. So I would favor going forward with Admittedly a great deal more work to make sure we're comfortable with all the numbers, but seems to me that makes sense Thank You councillor Schwann Yes, thank you chair.

Dr. Lucius. Thank you for your presentation. I also agree with this I think this is an excellent idea I've been greatly concerned ever since our revenue workshop on May 18 how we need to find revenue we got a we have to raise revenue and we have to start saving and Where can we save money? Also, so I know I would make a motion for a consensus to give dr. Lucius Direction to go out and seek that appraisal and the other necessary steps so to provide additional information I'll second We're looking for a motion or consensus here.

Okay, so we have a motion by councillor Schwann a second by councillor Henry Counselors want to have anything else did all right councillor goaler. You're up.

I

I had a great meeting with Dr. Lucious today, and we had a long discussion about this specific project. And yes, it's not a parking garage, please. Now, somebody who comes from up north – I lived right outside of D.C. for 20 years. Parking lots are cash cow. I mean, literally, you can make a lot of money. But this is not D.C. And this is not Old Town Alexandria. I think we have a lot of investigation to do. Here are my questions I asked you today. I would like to know what was the revenue the current owner was making at $8 in an hour. I also go in that way we can actually move forward and maybe have the discussion. And I asked you that, that if you would ask that make a – that question for him. And I know that you cannot do it until we do the assessment of the land, and I agree with you about that. I also see – I go to – I run around the city all the time. I see – I know the Jewish congregation allows parking – everybody to park on their parking lot. During the off-season, the place is empty. I mean, literally, there is nobody there. Same with the little museum across from the Jewish congregation. So I have my doubt. First of all, thank you for thinking outside of box. Remember when I actually had an idea about the toll on the And they wanted to actually – I had death threats, and they wanted to send me to Russia. So I really – let's do not – let's do not squish the idea before we investigate it, okay? This is what the community is all about. Let's give her – just praise her for thinking outside the box, because he earned it. She earned it. Do I like the idea? I like the idea, but I do not want spending my president's money on it because we don't know how much revenue we're going to get. I will support for you to go do more investigation, but it doesn't mean that I'm going to vote for it. I'm just being as honest as it gets. But definitely I need to know how much revenue they're making right now and, yeah, an assessment of the property. Thank you, Casey, again.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Gray. Thank you. This one's intriguing. My first reaction reading the file was if we had some astute business people that saw the powerful return on this investment, I would think they would want to pounce on this. So having done a lot of real estate finance as well as appraisals, I doubt that the highest and best use of this property done by an MAI appraiser is going to necessarily be a parking lot. So I don't know where the alternative uses are. I do recognize that you can put something in the warehouse for a while, make some money off of it for a period of time, I really am concerned about what the actual free cash flow would be generated from this after-debt service and whether or not that justifies crowding out $12 million of borrowing capacity on our balance sheet for what I would call potentially a marginal revenue raise. So the first issue to clear it, so I'm sort of tracking with Councillor Goehler, shockingly, but I'm not going back to Russia. There's execution risk here. I do believe, and I have been reading about some parking lots recently, that actually are fairly innovative and create a green space in those lots to help the drainage. So I just go down field, if you actually rolled up your sleeves and got to this, I would think about, if it's empty for half the year, it's not draining very well, so that's something that we're building another asphalt area. But simply put, I'm extremely guarded. My inclination is this is, the one in Naples was built by the business community and charged no parking fees. And so that was the business community saying, we like this, we like what it does for our side of the equation, and we go forward with it. I do respect the hell out of the fact that you are thinking about revenue-raising opportunities, but I do look at what the marginal, what we're really gonna generate off of this, and I'm pretty suspicious. Thank you.

Thank you.

Dr. Lucius, thank you very much. I think it's a great idea initially. But I think once again, the city council is getting down into the weeds prematurely. Until we get the appraisals, we can't do any kind of analysis or studies on cash flow. Can we just keep this simple and say, yes, go ahead with the appraisals and get it done with from there? Then we can get down with all the analysis that needs to be done.

Yeah. All right. Guys, you're actually – you're speaking as if Casey bought it already. This is what you brought us, a procedure, a start. But let me – let's share a few facts. The fact it's an existing business. The city is not going into a brand-new parking lot business. We are not creating a parking lot for tourism. It's already there. We are – we have a choice to consider. We want to explore buying opportunities, right? The second we buy it, if not one single more parks – car parks in there this year, when we buy it next year, we're still more profitable. Because we have tax advantages, property and income, right? So right then and there, we're better off. Maybe $12 million isn't the number. Nobody else bought it yet. I actually have, I believe, a whole file on this, which I will get to you, because I'm a realtor. And every realtor has been looking at this property. Look at Tony Oliveira shaking his head over there. We've all been on it. So there might be some price improvement. Now, we have to purchase for either appraised value or below, correct?

So this is a great starter conversation.

Now, Casey, I disagreed a little bit with Fred Kramer's business as to what I view as what could happen. If we're on the island long enough, and Stephen, I appreciate the pushback of what I think you perceive as fear-mongering, what could happen. But if you see these people, if you sell real estate, if you hang out with the attorneys, you see the plans they have. You see the plans, you see the offers being made for land. His land... Three-story hotel inland with a pool courtyard. It's valuable. What's there now is underutilized. So I'm very happy he's underutilizing it. Dan, does anybody know what was the proposal for that parking lot before we talked about this? Five stories high, right? Two restaurants, condos, two parking garage floors, pool top. And the variance we gave was very minor. It was going up regardless. We gave a little variance, in my opinion, to make it look better and be more palatable. But we weren't going to stop the project. It was zoned for it. Is that permit still active, do you know, or is that expired already? I believe we did an extension a second group had purchased the property and then they were going to make some changes and then they asked for extension so I'm not sure if the site plan still may be valid same group I believe that purchased the mobile home park I believe is the players here so now if you buy it you get the plans you get the five stories you get the hundred and something thousand dollars of all that expense of engineering that we complain about with boardwalks and what they charge nowadays Somebody else, and this isn't quasi-judicial, so my fear is somebody else might maximize that to its highest and best potential. And if we could consider striking a deal with the seller, picking up pavement, leaving it as pavement, and owning that underlying land, and not building five stories while it goes up in value, we're golden as a city. We could decide what to do with it at some other point. But this is one where we should all agree we stop five stories from being built with two more restaurants, rooftop pool, two floors of parking, beach bathrooms. Beautiful design. I mean, incredible design. Casey, the one thing I forgot, and I said I was on this, I didn't say showed it because you don't show a vacant parking lot, but I had to send this out to some clients. Do we know exactly what they get per hour now for parking?

$8.

Is it the $8? I couldn't remember. Okay. This should be the biggest no-brainer to give Dr. Lucia's consensus or to look into. We are not buying it. And there might even be an appraisal on file, I think, for this, which would be wise to have our own, too. But we might have another one from the owner already that we can at least use for some basis. So I think all this lines up for us to just at least engage in conversation. No brainer. I see no other light signs. Anybody signed up to speak on this?

We have three registered speakers. Please bring them up. Our first registered speaker is Mr. Dennis Bartolucci, followed by Ms. Terry Sommerfeld.

Dennis, how are you?

Very well, thank you. Dennis Bartolucci, Marco Island. Ideas are born into two families, the good family and the bad family. This idea, unfortunately, is born into the bad family. This is a proposal to monetize the Marco Island Beach. It's not consistent with the comprehensive plan, nor is it good for the residents in the community. Any money borrowed by the city is in the taxpayer's name. The taxpayers do not need to dilute their credit capacity with a use that is not good for them. There is no benefit to the taxpayers from this proposal. It will increase traffic. It will increase the use of the beach. There are no public restrooms available for those that would use this parking, thereby increasing pollution both in the water, in the tall grasses, and under the boardwalk. Furthermore, the details of the analysis are not presented in terms of the assumptions and so on, and I realize it's at an early stage, but where I come from, if you start looking for $12 million, you ought to at least tell the people you're saying that to what your assumptions were, and frankly, none of those are in there. I think there's about 72 parking spaces in the current paved lot. You're also talking about buying raw land. And so there's a cost to paving the raw land to improving it. That's not in here either. The other thing that's not in here is the fact that this is taxable property. So somebody in government is making money on it, aren't they? Through the property tax. Well, you're going to forever give that up, aren't you? And that's another cost, isn't it? It sure is. It's not in here. Now let's talk about the history of the sales of this property, and I'm not a real estate agent, and perhaps I might be wrong, but I also like common sense, and I'll talk from that point of view. Thank you. The history of the sales of this property indicate that it was sold for $2.8 million combined, both lots, in 2018, eight years ago. It was sold for $4.2 million in 2021, five years ago. And then it was sold for $11.25 million in 2024. That's a 268% increase over a three-year period, 2021-2024. That's very interesting. I don't know of any property anywhere around here that had that kind of increase. So, you know, there's some things here that are way more than you guys are talking about, all right? Mr. Chairman, I'm going to do a point of order.

I'm sorry.

Not for public speaking.

We're getting way offside again. We need to focus here and just give her direction.

He has his right to his public comments. Please, please, let him speak. Once again, there's no point of whatever.

Please credit me for the time that was just consumed. Thank you. In fact, on the Collier County property tax records, the fair value is noted as $3.3 million. $3.3, $12 million, what's the difference, right? The operating costs assumed in the analysis seem awfully low to me. I think that certainly would have to get examined much more closely. Bottom line, the proposal is a bad idea on its face. There are many questions about the purchase price, the revenue to be expected, and the ongoing cost of ownership. The last point, it's not in the best interest of the residents or the taxpayers to pursue this idea any further. And I realize that I have a track record here where you never agree with me. So I presume that I'm going to bat 1,000 on this one. But you know what? People listen. The community gets educated. This one's got some fleas on it. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next registered speaker is Ms. Terry Sommerfeld, followed by our final registered speaker, Mr. Tony Oliverio.

Terry Summerfeld, 1111 San Marco Road. I heard a counselor say this won't cost the taxpayers anything, and we're going to create revenue. So my question is, who's paying the $12 million for this piece of property? seems to me that we are and the plans that were developed for this property which maybe the permit still is active is actually a revenue producer for the city based upon the economy that would be driven by that business and i believe they had projected 252 parking spots in that building so That's a tourist area. We know that. So it would be much to our advantage to have tourists there than to have the residents pay for a lot that really doesn't benefit them. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Tony Oliverio.

Good evening, Tony Oliverio, 1801 Olds Court. We had all the superstars speak today, so I wanted to put my name in there. Everyone knows I'm a big fan of Dr. Lucius, and I love this whole thinking outside the box. Nobody probably knows this property better than myself and my partner behind us other than the current owners. This land was offered to us from the previous guys who couldn't get it developed. We walked on it. I'm not going to violate my NDA agreement and get into specifics on the numbers. But without killing the idea, I would say if your conservative estimate is correct, I thought it was about 1.1 million. We'll buy it today. No one has to put up any money. We could write a check for the $12 million. We'll buy it today if the city could guarantee us $1.1 million in revenue. Anything over $1.1 million we'll give to the city. So if it's 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, tomorrow. I'd do it today. Mr. Van Cleef told me he'll fund that deal, and he's in the audience. So simple. Okay. Just don't think that that's gonna happen. I think that it would have sold many times over That gentleman behind me would have bought it already if there was a real number there Definitely keep exploring it it has failed on two rounds with no bidders Is it a six million dollar piece of property who knows it's only worth what someone's willing to pay? If we're in the business of buying land on this island, I sure in the hell got a lot of it to sell. And one real good controversial piece next to the cemetery. I do like the idea, though, and I do like thinking outside the box, but I just wish we would have, you know, I wish someone would have maybe even talked to us first on something like this, because it's going to be pretty difficult to make these numbers work. Yeah, that's pretty much. Yeah, I had one other thing, but that's okay. I think I made my point. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Our final registered speaker is Mr. Mario Curiel.

I'm very popular, you guys. Mario Curiel, nice to meet you guys. I've been here for so many years. I never dreamed about it. I missed the boat. Let's put it this way. I would have bought this whole island for the matter, for peanuts. And then they get a Cracker Jack. Maybe they'll never get to come back. But the bottom line here is this. We talk about noise. We talk about pollution. We talk about people on the beach that leave garbage on the beach all the time. Why we want to encourage that to take place? If somebody wants to come over and buy the property for whatever money they have, which I don't really care, I'd rather have more stability. I don't want more people bringing more junk to the beach. And it seems that we roll the red carpet for all during the season. That we have to do so much for these people coming in and out. All these snowbirds come from everywhere. And then we complain about it. So let's forget about this lot. Let's see if somebody really put something substantial in the place. It will eliminate a lot of problem with the boardwalk doesn't get used as much. A lot of stuff won't be stuck in the traffic. And you have a lot of noise and pollution on the beach. Thank you.

Thank you.

That is our final registered speaker.

Counselor's light signs? I'm going to tie up a few thoughts at the end here. Dennis Bartolucci, I agree with something you said. We are going to lose the tax revenue or a piece of it, but we get a tiny, we get a small piece of that. County, everybody else gets their piece. That's an accurate statement. We asked our city manager to do a job. She is doing a job. She's bringing us an alternative source of funding. I have heard not one other suggestion from our speakers as to what would be another alternative source of funding. All I heard was it'll never work. It's already in existence. As some of the speakers talked about how we're going to increase tourism or traffic, it's there already. We're increasing nothing. It exists. You're buying an existing business. Whoever parks there now will park there later. Now, if we had a city plan to build up five stories and promote it and advertise it and maximize the profit, sure, I could see where that would be. A challenge. I do remember this. I remember the fight, the knock-down, drag-out brawl the community of Marco Island had when we bought the Glahn property. Anybody know what the Glahn property is? Veterans Park. It was craziest purchase ever. $10 million. And here's me saying, I need that. It's like you have the two colors of Monopoly, and I need a third one. I'll pay you whatever you want for it, because once I get it, it's mine in perpetuity. What's that piece of land worth now? Now, we're a city. We're not a city for profit, but land is scarce. Cities do buy property in this country, or at least they look at it or they're open-minded to exploring the opportunity. I'm not saying we should buy it. I'm not saying we could even make it happen. I'm not saying the appraisal will come into the numbers we need. We might not even be able to negotiate this to the numbers we need with the seller. But kudos to city manager, Dr. Casey Lucius, for doing what we asked of her. We might have a few more questions and answers right now today, but we can get those. We're not purchasing a piece of property. We're talking about looking at a possibility. And we have to do it in a public format, which is 10 times worse. You think the owners aren't watching us here? I just think it's a great conversation starter. Will it ever get anywhere? Who knows? Casey, let me ask you this. I know it from the real estate side, but we send you forward with this. There's not going to be a tremendous amount of staff time involved, and it's correct. We're going to look at the numbers they have, verify the numbers, get an appraisal if we say so. It's hours, not weeks. Correct. I mean, this is not like we're putting 10 staff members on this. So I guess the question would be if the numbers come back favorable. If the owner had a favorable, would we even consider? If the answer is no, don't send her forward with anything. If it's something that's at least a seed planted in your mind, then we should look at this alternative source of funding. All right, that's all I have for that. We do have a motion and a second on here, correct? Call the roll, please.

Councilor Schwan? Yes. Councilor Henry? Yes. Councilor Dome?

Yes.

Councilor Goller?

I'm intrigued to find out, yes.

Oh, okay. Councillor Gray?

No.

Vice-Chair Champagne?

Yes.

Chair Palumbo?

I agree with you, Councillor Gullar. I'm intrigued, yes. Motion passes 6-1. Very good. We are now on to 15D, noise ordinance. Let me speak on this one first, Councillors, if you don't mind. And Councillor Gray, add two, three meetings back when we brought this up. This had a consensus of four to move away from it. Nothing was going to change. I had a few things I liked in there. I want to talk about enforcement a little bit, how we could help the police, help our community, help our citizens. And Vice Chair Champagne, I think you had said you liked a few things in there also. Yeah. Suspecting that we're going to revisit this over and over and over and suspecting that this is going to be a huge portion of our next election, my answer was let's try to see if we can come to some consensus or let's take a look at what can and cannot be done here. So that's my thoughts on it. With that... Steven, you want to take lead on this? You want to open up for questions?

I'm happy to take the lead, but Joan's document suggested that Alan was presenting.

OK. Alan, you want to go first? Sure. All right. Before you are, is a proposed amendment to the noise ordinance that is, you have that. You've seen that. It makes certain changes. making it a little bit stronger than it presently is. It does address reducing decibel levels within certain zoning areas as well as cleaning up the ordinance in somewhat as it presently exists. Also before you as part of the backup is the current noise ordinance. If you recall, In 2024, the city hired an individual who came through and he actually went through the city codebook and tried to modify and amend the codes to take out extra statements and things to bring it into current, to make it current. And that ordinance, the one before you, the current one, was a result of that. He modified the code books to create the articles relating to magistrate and code enforcement. And this noise ordinance, as it currently exists, is a body of that. It's creation of that. Also, before you, I believe, Councillor Gray, which he'll talk to it himself, is a modification that he presented as backup for the document as well. So, Councillor Gray, I'll give it to you.

Thank you very much. I'll try and be as absolutely succinct as I can so we can get into the meat of the order here. The noise ordinance history goes back to 1997. Just so you're aware, it was a foundational concept in Deltona about having noise protections. The concepts, just to give you the overarching view, lower decimal limits mean complaints are validated and not dismissed. No warnings stop the endless reset cycle. Owner accountability fixes the problem at its source, and strong enforcement restores trust and reduces conflict. I want to thank our chairman for making the point that there are things, if enough of the council wants to move this conversation forward, there will be other pieces of this that need to be discussed. But I will read my sort of position statement for all of your benefit, because I've been living with this for nine months and so. I GUESS I'M IN COUNSELING RIGHT NOW. WHILE CAMPAIGNING DURING 2024 FOR CITY COUNCIL, I ENCOUNTERED MANY RESIDENT REQUESTS TO STRENGTHEN AND ADDRESS OUR NOISE ORDINANCE. IN MARCH 26, WINK NEWS HIGHLIGHTED COMMUNITY FRUSTRATIONS REGARDING EXCESSIVE NOISE. MARCO ISLAND'S CURRENT NOISE ORDINANCE HAS PROVEN INEFFECTIVE ADDRESSING PERSISTENT AND ESCALATING DISTURBANCES IN RESIDENTIAL AREAS. My proposed noise ordinance revisions are focused on being both responsible and respectful. Please don't be distracted by false narratives surrounding modifying our noise ordinance. As an example, there's 6% or less of the complaints have been about kids in pools. Nobody wants to pick on kids in pools. This is mostly the obsession is about really sleeping quality of health, et cetera. The concept is better protection for callers, uniform noise enforcement with better protocols and responding and validating protocol executions, procedures. I think there's been conflict in which officers do what and how they execute it, and I think that has led to some of the noise in our analysis. Property owner accountability is critical to this, and then fines, and my concept is that if you screw up, the price of screwing up is going to go up fairly rapidly. Chronic and jarring disturbances seriously affect residents' peace, quality of life, and trigger adverse health effects. Transient occupants in residential areas are a well-documented source of NOR's friction. The goal is to alter poor behavior by holding violators to account. I am recommending a comprehensive zero tolerance noise control ordinance, including strict liability for owners, proactive enforcement, and sufficient tools to achieve compliance. To those that argue noise is not a problem, these changes shouldn't be much of a burden. My proposed ordinance represents what is in place in 2020 with some modest enhancements the tunnel deed restrictions which shape the islands specifically addressing this nuisance behavior This is a foundational concept. This is not a neighbor problem. This is an absentee owner problem I do have a number of pieces of criteria. So January to February 26 36 noise complaints One citation issued, that's a whopping enforcement rate of 2.8 percent. In fiscal year 24, code fines issued 682,000. In fiscal 24, fines collected 180,000. Slight gap between issuance and collection. Noise calls in 2020 through September, confirmed noise calls was 361. That just shows you when we were serious about it, we had different metrics. We were getting traction. I do believe, and I hope I'm not speaking out of turn, there was a recent incident at the Marriott on February 13th, 26th, seven separate complaints in one night, 82 DBAs, eight individual complaints, noise audible a half a mile away, disposition, contact made, no further action, zero. That really summarizes where I'm at. I'm happy to talk about the specific metrics But this was driven by the community people that want to think that I have some personal obsession with noise I don't I have a personal obsession with doing right by the well-being of this community So I've spent the last nine months going back and forth. The difference between Alan's version and mine was just the mapping and the way he presented it, and it was not all-inclusive. So the second one I submitted was the noise ordinance exists with all the corrections and suggestions. There would be some friction on some of this conversation. Can I please proceed to hammer out this noise ordinance for the benefit of the council? Thank you. MR.

Thank you, Councillor Gray. Thank you for your work on this. Councillor Henry.

Thanks for all the hard work you did. Where nothing has been provided is the data. You're saying the numbers of noise calls versus the complaints versus people being fined. But there's no data saying, I think the question here might be enforcement. But it's not as though, when you look at the problems of Marco Island, the way I see it, and as you read in the report we see every week, we should lower speed limits before we worry about decimals. Because there's 10 times, 20, 30 times accidents that happen, then there are due calls for noise. As previous Chief Frazano put out, from 2023 to 2026, there was 1,008 noise complaints in three years. Of those calls, 131 were determined to be valid violations, representing approximately 13% of all reported complaints. I'm not seeing the data to make any changes to the ordinance we already have. And if you have it, I'd love to see it. I just see nothing to change what is already in place other than enforcement.

The best answer I can give you is I think our water quality testing data has been impaired. I do believe our fertilizer ordinance data has been challenged. You're right, we do not have good data. But what I do have is I spent six months on the campaign trail, boy, and I've captured a lot of information. One situation, seven calls for noise ordinance complaints, zero results. I joined the process, we got there after 10 o'clock at night and on the eighth journey, a qualified noise complaint was written. So I agree. I just know with every bone in my body and talking to this community, this is a serious problem and it needs to be regulated stronger. And you're right, we can crave more data on so many fronts, but I know it's here.

Thank you.

Councillor Goler. Everybody knows that when I joined this journey was because of the noise issues. I had an unhinged neighbor, short-term rental, that actually to the point that I could not even live. So it was bad. It was terrible. So I think, and I'll tell you the little story that happened not long ago. I think that the way they clock that noise from the front when the party's going on on the back, It's just not a problem. And I have to ask – we have a new chief now, and I just want you to be prepared for that. You will be hearing a lot about this. I think we need to have better enforcement, and I agree with – I joined Mr. Gray – we campaigned together that we will take care of the noise issues on the island, and I'm determined to do that. I promised my constituents, and I'm going to do that. So what are you proposing? Why are we having? I have a neighbor that's busting music. My neighbor across the canal calls the MIPD three times. They come, they stand on this side in front of my house, but the party's outside. And they say that, oh, it's not a, there is no violation. How can you tell me that? I'm sorry, I just, what is your thought about that? Chief, yes sir.

So I've been here in this position for about a week. Welcome. But I have been with the department for over six years.

One of the first things, oh, I'm sorry.

Again, this is my first meeting. One of the first things that I did was I standardized the response of the officers when it comes to noise. Because I know that this is a very important subject, an important issue on this island. When I came to work here, I was a patrol officer. I handled many noise complaints. I realize that this is something that everybody is interested in. So every officer, we started with the sergeants, every officer has been given a template of how I want these noise complaints investigated. So one of the issues that I know that was part of this was where where are we measuring sound from? One of the ways that I would like the officers or where I want them to measure from is from the person who calls, I want them to measure it from that person's residence. So one of the things that we're gonna do is every time we get one of these noise complaints, we're gonna reach out to the homeowner that called us and asked permission, can we come and measure it from your house? If they give us permission to do that, they've been directed that they will do it from the residence so that we get an accurate measurement of what the caller is getting, what they're hearing. So we will measure from there. Now, that being said, not every person who calls wants the police to show up at their house after they call the police on their neighbor for being loud, as you can imagine. And I respect that. I probably wouldn't want it either. So we're going to make a good faith effort to meet the standard, which is 50 feet from the property line. So what you had mentioned, measuring it from the front doesn't always give us an accurate – I recognize that. So we are in the process of – We're going to make a good faith effort in those instances where people don't want us to obviously come to their house and make a big spectacle of showing up at their house and measuring the sound of their neighbor, which probably doesn't go very well towards... good neighbor relations, I'm sure. But we do want to address this. And that was one of the first things that I did when I came in. Every officer now has a template. They know exactly how they're going to investigate it. And it's going to be done the same exact way every single time. And the supervisors are going to make sure that it's being done.

And Chief, one more question for you. Is MIPD required to give out the information of the caller?

We don't.

The violators.

Well, the violator, that's part of the Freedom of Information.

When somebody calls on the telephone, the MIPD, and complains, they give the name. That's the law, correct?

The person who calls us? Yes. Well, yeah, they have to. You can't take anonymous complaints.

Yeah, but when the MIPD shows up to the complainer's home.

OK, so we show up with the person who called.

Yes. Then later on, and when you get a phone, do you have to give out the name of the caller?

No. Because there have been retaliations quite often. We're not going over to the person who is the violator and saying, hey, just so you know, Mrs. Spiff called us and said that you're being too loud. We don't do that.

OK. So you're making changes.

Thank you, sir. They can request that as freedom of information.

You're making changes.

And thank you so much for that, sir. That's my goal. I recognize this is an issue.

Let me make a point of clarification. I'm done here. The first place this started between our former police chief and I was on caller protection. And Alan actually joined this conversation. So to make this very clear to the community, and it's still open, the current conversation is the officers and Alan requested that we not memorialize a FOIA request in the ordinance itself. They raised some legal concerns, not that I agreed with those legal concerns. But the understanding is that any caller, anybody challenging a caller's complaint would have to go to the city and pull a FOIA request. This was to buy a few days of time before that person started stalking you, so to speak. So that's as far as we could take that specific measure of protection. Thank you, Chief.

Very good. You're welcome.

Vice Chair Champagne. Yeah, I'm going to address most of my comments to the police chief. My understanding as I ask around the community, where are the complaints coming from, who are they coming from, why are they coming forward. I'm being told the following. Please correct me if you have different information. Most complaints occur from 10 to 7 a.m. and mostly on weekends. Number two, amplify music is at least two-thirds of the problem. Number three, it's mostly from homes on or near canals. And last, police officers frequently do not wish to come on to my property. Tell me they can't. You just mentioned that one you said that's not you're changing that to whatever degree it was true or not true You're changing it anyway You're saying Please ask the complainant. Do you wish us to come on to your property? We will if you don't we won't and if we don't there's no noise complaint Pretty common sense What about? Do most of the complaints occur from 10 to 7 a.m. on weekends?

Okay, the data that I have, the data that I have is it's pretty evenly split between 6 and 10 and then 10 to 7. It's a little bit higher between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. It's a little bit higher. My data is 30% over that time period we were discussing, and it's 26% for the 10 to 7 during those three periods. Looks like it's between 23 and 26.

Do you have it as to whether it's weekday or weekend?