Council candidates attend final forum

The last City Council candidate forum was Wednesday night in Rose History Auditorium.

The first question of the evening addressed the island’s numerous aging commercial properties and asked the candidates to share their vision for redevelopment.

“My vision is your vision,” Charlette Roman said. She noted that she served on the city’s planning board during the early-2000 ‘boom years’ and helped ensure that commercial developers followed Marco Island's comprehensive plan, which was created with citizen input and is aimed at maintaining the island’s small town feel.

Incumbent Larry Honig agreed.

“We have an LDC, zoning ordinances and a planning board that maintain the comprehensive plan,” he said, “and that’s how we get quality redevelopment.”

Candidates were also asked what businesses and services the island is lacking, and while many of the candidates used the question as an opportunity to praise the business community, Jerry Swiacki seized the chance to address the issue of obtaining a COPCN, which would allow the city to control its own ambulance services.

“We have medical services on the island but we need to make sure that those services remain high quality,” he said. “Right now Collier County controls our ambulances and we should be in charge of that.”

Howard Reed also used the question as an opportunity to think big.

“Marco Island should be an incubator for high-tech ideas,” he said. He noted that the island has an abundance of unique natural resources – sunshine, salt water, etc. – that, if properly utilized by businesses, could be extremely beneficial to the community.

The night’s discussion then turned to the budget as the candidates were asked whether they support City Manager Roger Hernstadt’s ‘bucket plan,’ which involves setting aside money during each budget cycle to prepare for regularly occurring capital expenses.

Incumbent Ken Honecker said he fully supports the bucket plan, calling it "the best thing that's ever happened to the island."

“We have a real budget where in two years we won’t have to borrow any money,” he said.

But Jared Grifoni was a little more skeptical.

“There’s two sides to the bucket plan: a good side and a negative side," he said.

The good side is, as Honecker said, the elimination of the city’s debt, but the negative side is that the city doesn’t know how much the future capital expense projects are going to cost, Grifoni explained, so it might be putting more money in the buckets than is actually necessary, thereby encouraging excessive government spending.

However incumbent Amadeo Petricca said the city does not spend more than it needs to, and during his four years on City Council he’s made sure that every penny has been spent purposefully.

“It’s not wasted cash,” he said. “I’m a fiscal conservative and I watch your dollar. The money in the buckets is not going to be spent frivolously, but wisely.”

Fred Kramer also praised the bucket plan, and said it allows the city to pay for necessary projects such as road repairs, which was another question asked during the forum.

“The bucket plan is an excellent plan,” he said.

And as for the road repairs, he said that he understands residents’ frustration that the roads in front of their houses might not be the ones being fixed right now, but the city has a "reasonable plan to address the roads in an objective order.”

A video of the forum will be available on the websites of the three sponsoring organizations: Marco Island Area Chamber of Commerce, Marco Island Association of Realtors and Marco Island Civic Association. Election Day is November 8. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

For more information, visit the “Election 2016” section of the city’s website.