Excellent letter Mr. Moss; you are right on with your observations. The people that I know on this island have never been enthusiastic about the STRP but virtually everyone I talk to had the common sense to realize the STRP was inevitable. Moreover, people were just tired of the bullies that wrote negative letters, attended council meetings and acted like immature children and cost our city unnecessary legal fees and embarrassment.

When an angry uninformed resident threatened one of our city councilors and his family this was despicable. For our family, friends and my husband and I this was the last straw. We had heard of people being bullied, booed and harassed at council meetings not to mention the barrage of trucks and signs on the north side of the bridge to our beautiful island.

Marco has always been a loving and peaceful community until the anti-city people moved here. Enough is enough. I am fully convinced that this election had very little to do with sewers and everything to do with citizens wanting civility. Good luck to the new council and we hope and pray the naysayers go away for good!

Mr. Moss states "In retrospect, a referendum on this issue may have resolved the matter and then allowed other equally important matters to surface in the political forum." This is the message the opponents were trying to convey to our elected officials for two years! Unfortunately, the majority of those officials had made up their minds, were resolved to impose their will and refused to even respond to those who questioned them. The residents of this community being impacted by this behavior believed they had been blind-sided, that their elected representitives were being unfair and nonresponsive. What in the world were these people thinking? An email written by former Councilman John Arceri revealed that he personally believed that the assessment process for the STRP was "too complicated" for our citizens to understand and any attempt at explaining it to them should be avoided. Councilman Minozzi once stated that "the train had already left the station", as if to imply further debate would serve no purpose. Councilman Tucker reversed his opposition to the STRP without any justification immediately following an election in which two anit-sewer candidates threatened it's continuence. The STRP NEVER had consensus on the Council. Residents of single family homes being impacted by the STRP, represented a minority that were NEVER GIVEN A JUSTIFICATION and many of whom believed they were being asked to pay for a new sewer plant that those on the old sewer and the condos and hotels had wore out. If only consent had been sought two years ago, we could have had an open debate, found a way to make this work and avoided all the acrimony and additional expense. I sincerly hope that the new council learns from Mr. Moss's very accurate observation, good government is a transparent government that seeks consent from all it's citizens. Being aloof and holding minority consitituents at arms length leads only to turmoil in a Democracy.

bbyrone: SHUT UP! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT! YOU NEVER DID. YOU NEVER WILL!

bbyrone, are you still around I thought you would be in your cave still licking your wounds. You just don't get it do you and most likely never will, Democracy has worked as it was intended and the majotity has spoken. The only turmoil I saw was that which you and your minority created.

More hate from patton1 and veridicus. Useless posts.

Now this is what I call a useless, hateful post that came back to bite you on the butt

Thank you Mr. Bania and the Eagle. You both deserve recognition for your professional investigation and reporting of the facts. One third of our citizens have known for a long time that these criminals have been trying to bilk us and that they never told us the why or wherefore. Now we know that they established the STRP in secret because they knew it could not be justified. They committed these crimes with the deliberate intent to decieve us. Minozzi actually admits as much in one of his emails to Moss! John Arceri actually coaches his City Manager on how to win over fellow Council Members! He then takes it one step further and implys that some of his fellow Council members are too ignorent to get it as a group so hit them up individully. If that doesn show intent I don't know what does. Let's get this investigation started. If it goes to trial, ask for a jury trial, we already know how our judges will rule. Send the evidence to the appropriate authority for investigation. That would not be Marco Island's Chief of Police because he is supervised by one of the potential subjects. 135 million dollar cost for a project that should have only cost a third as much. That amount of money alone invites investigation. Moss should offer his resignation immediately or be fired. Those Council members that participated in this secrecy need to resign as well. The City should order the City Attorney to start action to collect all lost money from previous and current officials that initiated this project and participated in the attempt to decieve us immediately. Cleaning up this mess will cost Marco Island a bundle and these officials should not be allowed to get away with it. Hit them in their pockets to teach future Council members that they must obey the law and respect the citizens they are sworn to serve. Service does not give one the right to take advantage of those you serve.
Posted by Lolala on February 4, 2007 at 7:27 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Was there something inaccurate in the above post? Or are you trying to somehow bait me into making the same recommendations as to Councilman Kiester's destroying/not destroying emails? If so, I'm holding judgment until the appeal process is completed. I read in an article that a deputy stated the emails were not "destroyed" only made unavailable by the computer they were written to. You also need to look at the motives, the Judge said that Councilman Kiester had done nothing ciminal. Next time you bring up a post make sure you do so in context. This particular post was in response to an Eagle story written by Mr. Ed Bania and emails written by Mr.Arceri that implied what I wrote above had a basis in fact. The story and the emails did appear to indicate that Mr. Moss was being used as a conduit. I admit that I am not an attorney or a judge and perhaps I was a hasty in my condemnations but then again, when a citizen reads something in the paper, they believe they are well informed. If you recall there were around 3,000 of our citizens at the time that also believed this to be the case.

Lolala, the inaccuracy and bias of Mr Bania's articles in the Eagle are I suspect one of the reason he is no longer with the Eagle and one should not believe everything one reads in the news paper.

While Judge Carr did say Councilman Kiester had done nothing ciminal he also said that Councilman Kiester had "made a mockery of the law". When I drop something in my recycle bin and then empty it I consider it gone and not recoverable unless I have a program capable of recovery. Had Mr. Kiester had his emails recovered as the CCSO did and then turned them over to Sal we would not be discussing this right now. I am puzzled why he did not do this.

I may dislike Mr. Kiester's politics but I do not consider him stupid, I believe he was fully aware of what he attempted to do. As for his reasons I will reserve judgement until the recovered emails are made available to the public.

As I said in a previous post Mr. Kiester owes the citizens an apoligy. He did not apply the same standard to Mr. Moss, and others as he applied to himself.

bbyrone since you have had such a mouth, why did I not see your name on the ballot for city council??? Hmmm... Interesting don't you think folks? All yak HA