Don Farmer: Marco's new homeless man

We’ve never had a homeless problem on Marco Island.

We do now because the Marco Island City Council has spent $5,400 of taxpayers’ money for a sculpture, “Marco Man,” and isn’t sure where to put it.

It’s a metallic, 8-foot tall male humanoid apparently having a seizure. It won second place — really — in an island art contest.

Taxpayers cannot agree on what it looks like, much less what to do with it. Here are some suggestions I’ve picked up by listening to the little devil on my shoulder. It looks like:

A marathon athlete who ran through a colony of flying ants. Or hornets.

A guy imitating the way I dance. Badly.

A fellow in arthritic agony, desperate for a knee replacement.

A lawyer for a proposed beachfront skyscraper showing City Council how high he thinks the new shadow-maker of a building should be.

A beginner in one of Donna Hands’ yoga classes who got stuck in that position and can’t move, while Donna just thinks he’s really concentrating.

A Costco customer, trying to break through the noon shopping-cart crush at the free pigs-in-a-blanket sample table.

Submitted photo

Marco Island officials are looking for a permanent home for Marco Man, an eight-foot tall sculpture purchased this week by the City Council. The sculpture, created by New York artist Jack Howard-Potter, is made of welded steel and designed to withstand winds up to 130 miles per hour. The work now rests in the shopping center at the corner of North Collier Boulevard and Bald Eagle Drive across from the Sun Trust Bank building.

A dramatic image of a man fleeing in fear from the community room having just been involuntarily elected president of his condo board.

Or, face it the other way and it could be a thief escaping empty-handed after trying to steal from cars at Tigertail Beach or Coastland Center.

I think I flunked art appreciation in vocational school, so I admit I’m not much of a critic. The sculptor, Jack Howard-Potter, clearly has talent and bows to no one in his use of electrostatic powder coat finishes.

The issue isn’t whether it’s great art or even a stalwart statue. It’s whether all taxpayers should have to pay for something that some love, some dislike and some have no opinion.

I know that $5,400 isn’t much from the city treasury, but, as it is such a small amount that no one will miss, how about just taking it off our sewer hookup charges and see whether we notice.

Like it or not, we seem to own it. Oddly, the same officials who picked our pockets for Flailing Man haven’t yet figured out what to do with it.

Again, as a public service, I asked my shoulder-mounted Satan.

We could use it to fill the seat of whichever member of City Council is absent at any given meeting.

It might make a terrific hood ornament on the Marco Trolley.

We could lend it to Collier County as a traffic-calming device, in that it might scare people into slowing down.

Six L Farms might need a weather-resistant scarecrow.

We could keep it and have an annual “Dress Up Marco Man” contest. School kids could enter. The winner must take Marco Man home. Forever.

That would solve the question of what to do with it.

Rumors are afloat that crafty city officials are seeking a donor to absorb the $5,400 cost of Flailing Man.

Meantime, my solution is to put it in the Park-That-Might-Actually-Be-Developed-Some-Day, you know, the one that has had all the construction debris on it. Yeah, that’s it. We paid for that, too.

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Don is a former newsman for ABC News and CNN. E-mail: don@donfarmer.com.