Issues
My Top Priorities
As a retired CPA, I tend to focus on money. Money is needed for everything we do as a city. Some of our issues will require a great deal of money. We need to diversify our city revenue. Our major source of revenue, and the only one we really control, is the property tax. The residential properties (of which over 6,200 are homesteaded) pay 96% of this. Tourists contribute zero to the city treasury directly and only indirectly through the commercial property taxes, yet a significant portion our city costs are supporting and hosting tourists.
I have done a peer analysis (not an AI product, my own research) of 16 cities plus Marco and found that Marco Island is an outlier in its reliance on the property tax as the most significant element of city revenue. Working on diversifying our revenue is my top priority, and supports all other priorities.
I hope to convince the other 6 Councilors and the City Manager to pursuit a plan to learn from other cities that have achieved a more diverse revenue stream. We also need to have a frank conversation with the Tourist Development Council (TDC) and Collier County. The TDC spends millions of dollars promoting tourism on Marco, but not much to help our taxpayers pay for the costs to host tourists. We need infrastructure money from the TDC. One current Council candidate has been our representative on the TDC and he has achieved very little to help balance the equation. Yes the TDC spends some money on beach renurishment. But the money flowing to the TDC from the Marco economy vastly outmatches any money coming to Marco from the TDC. We can and should do better.
City services support the needs of residents, local businesses and tourists. Commercial interests pay 4% of the property taxes. Tourists pay nothing to the city. We need to balance who pays with who benefits.
We also need leadership that is a better steward of our money. I am a fiscal conservative. I oppose things such as the city pursuing a plan to spend $12 million on a parking lot to serve visitors who want to go to the beach, which was recently proposed (and now under fire, backed off). I oppose the abuse of working remotely which has been generously granted to certain city executives. Spending nearly a million dollars to replace a beach boardwalk mainly used by tourists is also a bad idea especially when it only needs some repairs. The list of misallocated resources is long.
We also need people with real skills and experience, and not just local experience, to manage our money. For 32 years my career was in public accounting and consulting with a Big Four firm. 20 of those years as a partner.
It comes down to: Who Do You Trust With Your Money?
Our city has not maintained the canal system on Marco Island. As a result, the canals have begun to decay, some more than others. The city is responsible for maintaining the canals. It will take a significant amount of money to address the problems caused by neglecting the health of the waterways. The solutions vary, but they all involve lots of money. See my position paper on restoring our waterways to health.
The noise and chaos caused by some negligent short term rental property owners must stop. We need a vigorous approach to restoring normality to our neighborhoods. This includes new laws and stronger enforcement. I support Councilor Gray’s efforts to address this problem.
This election is not a popularity contest, it is a serious opportunity for voters to decide the direction our city. Are we to be a mini Key West, or primarily a residential community known as a great place to raise a family, a great place to retire after a life of hard work. The education, skills and work experiences of the candidates are very important because these are how voters gauge who has the ability to do what they say.
I earned a Bachelors Degree from the University of Connecticut and a Masters Degree in Public Administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. Prior to pursuing a career in public accounting, I spent 4 years working for the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority performing management audits of all utilities in that state, in collaboration with major consulting firms I helped select.
In conclusion, among all the challenges facing our city, one is quite prominent. Balancing the interests of Residents and those of Commercial Investors. Over the past 10 years or more the scale has tilted and it’s time for the residents to have a representative who is committing to fairness.
Restoring Our Waterways
I support the upgrade of the Marco Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) to Advanced Wastewater Treatment (AWT) standards. This will reduce the excess nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus, that are leaching into the canals from the “toilet” water that is feeding algal blooms. Upgrading the WWTP is an “upstream” project – reducing the pollution at the source.
The annual 600 million gallons of reuse water per year is the largest single known source of Nitrogen (N) and the only known source of Phosphorus (P). AWT is designed to reduce the total N by 60% and P by 75%.
Since we went to central collection of sewer water approximately 20 years ago, the city never had a good plan for disposing of the effluent. It uses an agricultural permit to dispose of the water by spreading it on the island, on the golf courses, medians, public parks and elsewhere. In the rainy season, I believe the reuse water is pumped into deep wells. It seems to me we are not a farm field, and so using an agricultural permit is a significant indicator of government twisting things to allow a bad practice.
The city should not be cleaning the sediments by dredging. Dredging the canals is a “downstream” project – attempting the mitigate the effects of the pollution after it occurs. The dredging cost has been estimated at $300,000,000. Dredging would have to be repeated. Upstream is always cheaper than downstream.
The best solution is to clean the pollution at the source. It has been estimated that natural flushing of the canals by the daily tides will clean up the sediments within 3-5 years. The Marco Island water quality data shows that the canal oxygen would recover to healthy levels within months of stopping the “toilet” water pollution at the source.
Funding AWT will come from the Water & Sewer utility not the general fund. It will come from these funding sources:
—The new revenue resulting from significant increases in gallons used measured by the newly installed water meters. These meters are adding to the available revenue substantially.
—Reserves that may be available in this utility and can be applied to AWT.
—Bonds issued by the utility for this purpose.
If we use debt, the principal and interest will be paid by the water rates.
This cost has been estimated at $5,000,000, and the city is getting quotes to firm up the cost and the best solution for achieving AWT water quality standards.
Regarding the water utility, the rates for potable water and reuse water were set many years ago. I support re-examining and possibly resetting the rates to reflect a balanced and fair pricing structure. It appears to me that the current rates my disadvantage the residential users and favor other users. We need to get this right, and I support reviewing and possibly resetting the rates.
Hilton Hotel Expansion
The Marco Island Planning Board has approved the Hilton Hotel’s request for a zoning change to vastly increase the size of the hotel and the inherent density at this location on South Collier Blvd. This now goes to the City Council for approval. As a Candidate for the Marco Island City Council, I say hold on… there is a lot to unpack before the Council takes up this proposal.
The City staff rejected this proposal. The staff says it violates our Comprehensive Plan and that to proceed, the Plan would need to be amended. The Planning Board has overridden the city staff’s well researched and documented recommendation to reject. This has rarely been done…almost never. Certainly never on such a major proposed zoning change.
During Planning Board discussions, it was stated and is now in the record, that the Hilton suggests there is no upper boundary for density on Marco Island. Let that settle in. That means, if you accept this as the Planning Board did, that we have the possibility of unbridled growth.
As a Candidate for Marco Island City Council I say the residents, the owners of OUR City, have a voice. We say we want a government that adheres to our Comprehensive Plan and isn’t sweeping the corners of the Plan for tiny loopholes. We say, there is a limit to density, to commercial growth, and to traffic and tourism. There is a limit and we insist on a government that listens to us. There are now multiple instances of the Council ignoring our laws (Ordinances). Shall the ignoring of our laws, and the Comprehensive Plan continue? I say no!
This isn’t just one property, one project, one more expansion of tourism. This is the straw that breaks the camel’s back, the line in the sand. Some say the residents will benefit from a higher property tax valuation on the property and more tax revenue to the City. The fact is, any additional money is down the road and very marginal at best. There are no benefits to the residents of meaningful tangible value, just more density, more traffic, more cost to the taxpayers, and a terrible precedent. The applicant suggests there will be less market for short term rentals. That is nonsense, and we have the Collier County Tourist Development Council spending millions of dollars on advertising to promote tourism on Marco. This is purely about another scheme to extract more profit dollars from our island, and the residents be dammed.
Here are some facts to illustrate the growth in traffic on Marco Island. Based on data reported by MIPD, inbound traffic on the Jolley Bridge increased as follows between 2024 and 2026.
January up 85%; February up 12%; March up 44%.
In June 2026, the traffic count inbound was up by 33% from June 2025. Up one third in one year. What is the upper limit? The voters will decide that question on November 3rd.
Rose Marina Public Policy
Something significant is missing from the discussion of the Rose Marina expansion. That something is called “Public Policy”. Let me explain.
The Planning Board and city staff have devoted several meetings and significant time to reviewing, debating and supplementing the application for several variance requests by the marina owners. Those can be summarized as requests to relocate a dumpster, to add some landscape buffers, to build a restaurant, to have sufficient parking for marina customers, and to fence off an area for dry rack boat storage.
The Planning Board is charged with maintaining and enforcing the Comprehensive Plan, and using that as a standard in assessing requests for zoning and Land Development Code variance requests. Nothing in the variance requests currently on the table asks: Should the Rose Marina convert from a marina serving the local boating and fishing community into a Cruise Ship Terminal? And nothing that the Planning Board approved and now forwarded to the City Council addresses this question.
As such, the Council may approve these variances as passed by the Planning Board, and never have addressed the significant Public Policy issue. This is equivalent to having an elephant in the living room, and the only thing being discussed is the carpet, the upholstery on the furniture, etc.
I suggest there is a major public policy issue involved, and only the City Council can raise the issue, discuss it, invite public comment, and decide…. What Is our Public Policy On The Marina?
Should the local marina, from the outset devoted to local boaters and fishermen, be converted to a Cruise Ship Terminal?
Let’s look at the scale of the cruise ships involved.
There is proposed to be as many as 4 cruise ships, massive vessels relative to our small waterways, at any one time anchored at the marina. So, as a Candidate for City Council, I am asking:
Shouldn’t our City Council discuss the public policy involved?
Shouldn’t the City Council determine if this conversion is a legal and permitted use of public submerged land?
Shouldn’t the City Council determine if this has any benefit for the residents, the legal owners of Marco Island?
I say the Council should answer all of these questions and many more before dealing with the variance requests that the Planning Board approved.
As to whether this Marina conversion presents benefits to the resident voters and the community at large, any benefits that are currently suggested are in the insignificant category. The marginal property tax valuation impact and resulting incremental tax revenue is down the road and small. No one living on Marco can board the ships at Marco. There are no meaningful benefits to the residents. Nor has the City even suggested they should collect fees for allowing the cruise ships in.
As such, our island is being used to harvest profits, and the residents get nothing significant. As a candidate my position is we need a robust discussion of the public policy involved before any variances are approved.