A Collier County judge has struck down a Marco Island law that limited boat anchoring in city waterways with a ruling boaters’ rights advocates hope will reverberate across the state.

Dumas

In a strongly worded decision, Judge Rob Crown agreed with a Marco Island boater who argued the law was unconstitutional.

Any “local regulation regarding the anchoring of non-live-aboard vessels outside mooring fields is expressly prohibited by state law,” Crown wrote in his decision Thursday. “If (the city) believes there are circumstances that justify exceptions to this general prohibition, then those circumstances should be conveyed to the Legislature. In the meantime, municipalities are not free to carve out those exceptions on their own.”

The legal challenge to Marco’s ordinance began in January when Marco boater Dave Dumas, 65, intentionally broke the law because he said it conflicted with state statutes. The ordinance limited boaters to a maximum six-day anchor at a minimum 300 feet from land. It was first passed in April 2006 after years of acrimony between boaters’ groups and Marco waterfront property owners, who argued for an ordinance based on health, safety and welfare concerns.

The case has attracted national interest from boaters’ rights advocates who regularly protest the various local laws restricting anchoring in Florida.

Dumas, his pro-bono attorney Donald Day and Margaret Podlich, vice president for governmental affairs at BoatUS, an organization with 650,000 members across the country, all hoped the ruling would send a clear message.

“This should put the nail in the coffin to stop this patchwork of ordinances,” Day said.

Podlich echoed Day’s comments.

“I think it will have a broader application,” she said. “I think Marco Island was a test case and many municipalities need to take note of what happened here.”

Marco Island City Manager Bill Moss said the ruling wasn’t entirely surprising given that courts have come down on both sides of the issue for nearly 20 years.

“Our council exercised the legislative power on this issue they thought they had the right to do,” he said. “Other courts have found that was the case.”

Like those of prior courts, Crown’s ruling was a county decision and does not set state precedent, unless it is upheld on appeal. Day said he expected the case to be appealed based on prior statements from Marco government officials.

Marco Island City Councilman Ted Forcht, who voted in favor of the ordinance, supported an appeal and said he intends to ask for a special-called closed council meeting to discuss further strategy.

“I would think we would want some ability to enforce our law until all our appeals are exhausted,” he said.

But Forcht, like other interested parties, are also changing their focus from the local to the state level. Forcht suggested inviting state Rep. Garrett Richter, R-Naples, and state Sen. Burt Saunders, R-Naples, to a City Council meeting to discuss Marco’s concerns.

“We’re a canal community,” Forcht said. “We have some unique problems that maybe the state didn’t foresee.”

Day referenced current discussion among state legislators and regulatory agencies, including the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, to further clarify state rules on the anchoring restrictions.

Those discussions interest Bill McMullan, co-chairman of a Marco organization that lobbied for the city ordinance.

“We need to be there at the state level so the state understands what’s at stake here,” he said. “I just don’t believe the Legislature understands the true meaning of this.”

Back on Marco, Dumas, the boater who violated the ordinance, said he hoped the ruling would unite boaters and property owners to hash out a new ordinance that would meet everyone’s needs. There’s already a base for an ordinance as Crown’s ruling only invalidated the sections of Marco’s ordinance that cover boat anchoring.

“Let us please sit and discuss this and try to understand what the city needs and is also fair to visiting boaters,” Dumas said.

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