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The goose that laid Marco Island’s golden egg has lost much of its luster.

Gone are the days of double-digit increases in property values that filled city coffers with tax funds. There is a nearly double-digit drop in island property values this year amid continuing pressure from state legislators to cut tax rates.

And so, with budget season underway, Marco city officials have cooked up a smorgasbord of alternative revenue sources to prepare for today’s all-day City Council workshop meeting.

On the table for next fiscal year is a special assessment for fire services, a stormwater utility fee and a charge on the city’s water and wastewater plant. Future suggestions include a bond issue to pay for parks improvements, a community redevelopment agency in the city’s town center and the granddaddy of them all: a city takeover of electric services.

All are designed to reduce the city’s reliance on the property tax, which accounts for 72 percent of the current year’s budget.

“Hopefully, (residents) can appreciate the need for stability,” City Council Chairman Bill Trotter said last week. “Just because property taxes go down, doesn’t mean the need for fire services goes down.”

Many other local governments are looking for alternatives to the property tax, and those alternatives are taking the form of assessments or user fees for services, experts said.

“There’s a plethora of these types of options around the state,” said Susan MacManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida.

Compared to the City of Naples and Collier County, Marco’s government is the most aggressive in examining property tax alternatives. At this point neither Naples nor the county has any similar proposals on next year’s budget. But Naples City Manager Bill Moss — who previously held that job on Marco — said he hasn’t ruled out suggesting the city examine a fire assessment in the future.

“We have a very serious shortfall in Naples, too,” Moss said.

Also, Naples and the county’s budgets are already more diversified than Marco’s with property taxes making up 45 percent of general fund revenue in Naples and 68 percent in the county.

The move from taxes to fee-based revenue sources typically gets less resistance from taxpayers across the state, MacManus said. That’s because the public knows what services it is receiving for its dollar. But that doesn’t mean taxpayers support fees.

“There’s definitely a scramble to find new revenue sources, but people are expecting (elected officials) to tighten their pocketbooks as well,” she said.

So the concern from taxpayers becomes not that governments are looking for alternative revenue sources, but rather additional revenue sources.

Marco Island resident Bill McMullan, who has become a frequent agitator on all things tax related on the island, said Marco’s budget strikes him as more of the latter.

“I was taken aback when I looked at the agenda,” McMullan said last week. “It was all, ‘How do we invent more money?’”

Trotter, who has taken the lead on council in coordinating this year’s budget process, said the alternative revenue items on the agenda were more a matter of laying out options for council discussion and prioritization than anything else. That process is particularly important, given the current state of the economy, he said.

Trotter added that he was well aware of citizen concerns about additional burdens on their pocketbooks in the form of taxes or fees. Should council choose something from its alternative revenue menu, Trotter said he expected, “a substantial portion would be reflected in a property tax reduction.”

The budget workshop meeting began at 8 a.m. today and is expected to wrap up by 4:30 p.m. in the city police building.