STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

Tell us about it

• What would you add to this story? Tell us what we missed.
• Do you have photos from this event? Documents we need to see? Share with us.
• Upload photos & videos
• More ways to get your stuff online and in the paper.

More Local News

• Fix investment
• Pet Talk: Cat food for thought
• Eye on the Y: It’s 2009 and everything’s fine!

Share and Enjoy [?]

Marco Island voters made it known Tuesday night they do not want their property taxes to pay for the Septic Tank Replacement Program (STRP). They also do not want the city’s 3 percent spending cap to be violated.

More than 42 percent of the 13,918 registered voters on the island voted in the referendum mail ballot to determine how to pay for the STRP.

More than 55.7 percent voted against limiting the sewer assessments in each district to $10,000 and paying the remaining cost with an approximately 4.5-percent property tax increase.

The majority vote also disapproved of the city exempting bond financing for the STRP from the city’s 3-percent spending cap.

The no vote also means that the sewer assessments for homeowners will decrease by approximately $2,800. The balance of the cost of the STRP will be paid for with a 16-percent increase in water and sewer utility rates.

Marco Island City Manager Bill Moss noted the citizens voted against a recent amendment to the City Charter to issue General Obligation Bonds to partially fund the STRP.

"It is apparent that citizens prefer not to help fund the sewers to the unsewered areas with a property tax," Moss said.

He added the only precinct with voters in favor of the property tax plan was predominately not on sewers.

"City Council has listened and provided various funding options to consider for the citizens on Marco Island," Moss said. "With over 78 percent of the island on sewers, this vote shows that residents on sewers wish to have the non-sewered residents pay for their sewer assessments solely. Through this vote the citizens have expressed consensus on the funding option they prefer."

He added the city administration was pleased that voters educated themselves on the issues of the referendum.

Marco Island spokeswoman Lisa Douglass said no action by the City Council is needed on the results of the voting and the council has discussed the utility rate increases.

"They are an 8 percent increase to cover the elimination of the paving from the unsewered areas assessments (2 percent a year for 4 years) and a second 8 percent to cover the $2,758 reduction all non sewered residents are receiving," she said. "The first 2 percent of the 8 percent cost (paving) has been approved through the public hearing process." A public hearing must be held each year for the rate increase to go into effect.

"Therefore, the City Council has voted to increase the rates, however, by law they must hold a public hearing each time a rate increase is scheduled," Douglass said.

Councilors Glenn Tucker and Chuck Kiester were not surprised the referendum failed.

"It went the way I thought it would, and I regret that we spent the money and effort to hold the election," Tucker said.

Kiester said the vote reflects the "unhappiness" that residents have for all of the commitment and expenditure of funds for capital projects.

"Hopefully, other members of the council will take heed of this sentiment so that we can begin the healing process," he said. "Reconsidering the vote to expedite the STRP would certainly be a move in the right direction."

Kiester added that City Councilwoman Terri DiSciullo was correct when she said moving up the schedule of the STRP was wrong. Kiester said speeding up the program in certain sewer districts would require those property owners to "come up with the $20,000-plus sooner than they had planned."

Resident Joe Batte, who declared his candidacy in next year’s City Council election, said the no vote was the "first shot across the bow of the sinking ship STRP. The votes proved what many voters have been telling me that they want to send a loud message to the out of touch majority on the city council that the people want an end to further sewering of this island and the uncontrolled spending by this dysfunctional council majority."

Batte said voters wanted a question on the referendum that would have given them the opportunity to approve or disapprove the STRP.

"Of course this was not allowed simply because this group of five on the council know that the voters would have stopped the STRP, which is the message they sent tonight," he said.

Batte said he hoped the no vote will cause City Council Chairman Mike Minozzi and other councilors to rethink about accelerating the STRP.

"The voters tonight started to point our city in the right direction," Batte said. "In January, they will finish this job by electing new leaders who will bring this city back to the people and allow democracy and the Constitution to cross the Marco Bridge."

Roger Hall, another candidate running for council, said the vote sent a "clear message" against a sewer system on Marco Island. He hopes council members will listen to the voters.

"The council intended to use the passage of these referendums to claim voter approval of the STRP despite the fact it was a choice between two bad methods of payment," Hall said. "Our council presented referendums that would have passed a major portion of the costs in tax increases to the nonvoting, non homesteaded property owners that make up 75 percent of the tax base on Marco. It was an attempt to entice the voters to pass a referendum whereby the major burden of payment would fall to nonvoters."

Hall added the citizens have wanted to vote on the STRP since its inception.

"The voters have demonstrated that the anti-STRP citizens are not a few malcontents as the council has maintained but rather the majority of the voters," Hall said. "The council can no longer claim they represent the silent majority." Hall said approximately $30 million has been "wasted" on the STRP. It has torn our island apart physically, emotionally, financially and destroyed our quality of life."

Resident "Butch" Neylon, another opponent of the STRP, said the no vote left the city administration with a "seriously flawed" bond issue that will be challenged as soon as property owners in the Tigertail and South Barfield sewer districts begin receiving their bills.

"Now we are truly at a crossroads in this process," Neylon said.

He wants the city administration to stop spending money on the project.

"To do otherwise in the face of this defeat would display disdain for the will of the people," Neylon said. "A wise person once said, ‘The person that loses their conscience has nothing left worth keeping.’"

He also predicted that, after next year’s election, council members will end the STRP.

"It is very obvious by the vote that the people of Marco will not stand for having the ‘Wool Pulled Over Their Eyes’ by the use of political language on a ballot that is designed with complexity to disguise future hidden agenda’s," resident Walter Jaskiewicz said.

"All the attacks against citizens in the courts and through the media has backfired," Attorney Sam Gold said. "Marco residents don’t trust anything their government does anymore."

Gold has represented Citizens Advocating Responsible Environmental Solutions (CARES), a political action committee on Marco Island.

Other council members and citizens did not return requests for comment on the vote.

Check the Collier County Supervisor of Elections’ Web site at www.colliervotes.com for detailed results of the referendum.