New Council Chairs Appointed

At the start of the November 17th City Council meeting, Pastor Scott Kerens of Marco Presbyterian led with the prayer and TBE’s Benjamin Paolini, a fifth grader, led the Pledge of Allegiance. The first order of business of the meeting was to name a new Chairman and Vice-Chair. Members voted Darrin Palumbo as the new chair with Rene Champagne as vice-chair.     

Brittney Piersma of the Audubon of the Western Everglades (AWE) gave a presentation on the Safe Harbor Program for Burrowing Owls, noting development on the island saw the loss of 340 owl sites since 2010. “To make up for that, we’re trying to dig burrows in front yards of willing homeowners to provide habitat for the owls,” said Piersma. “If you're not familiar, we started a program called the Safe Harbor program. It was a pilot study between Audubon Western Everglades, Florida Fish and Wildlife, and the city of Marco Island. Just to look at the last four or five years, we have increased to about 154 burrows. We have now had 60 of those burrows excavated, and we're currently sitting at 27 pairs with 97 fledged chicks from the past season.“Piersmaasked those with starter burrows and volunteers to stand up and be recognized.   

Next up Audit Committee Chair Gene Siegel gave a brief history of his time with the audit committee and introduced Elena McFann, the vice-chair, to council.   Following this year’s audit, in a meeting on July 17th, five new members of the committee were introduced. “We have five very talented and very excellent committee members,” Siegel commented. They’ve reviewed and updated their mission and responsibilities and rewritten areas tomatch ’cadence’ with the audit firm.David Tolces, acting City Attorney, clarified the committee reports to Sharon Dangles, Controller for the City of Marco Island. The Audit Committee will meet December 4th to set the stage for the2025 audit.   

Mary Holden, Planning Manager, addressed what she said wasan appeal to an administrative decision of a zoning verification letter. “Staff is recommending that the code provision be upheld, that they have other options that they could pursue.” Zach Lombardo offered a presentation regarding four contiguous lots on 6th Avenue where the owners want to pursue building duplexes, citing old ordinances and the history of changes made to the land development code over the decades,by both the County and the City, since the land was first plotted in 1965.A lengthy discussion ensued. It was Councilor Goehler who ultimately made a motion to come back with a variance and have it go through the proper channels to planning, in effect denying the appeal. Motion passed unanimously.  

The Interim City Manager presented a contract for review and approval commenting, “City managers customarily have a contract that outlines their salary, benefits, severance pay, etc. That’s true whether they're in an interim position or in a full-time position,” said Lucius. “So attached to your agenda is the proposed contract. I also included some compensation comparables from our May 2025 compensation study.  I also included a memo just to let you know my intention to keep the assistant city manager position vacant, which will save the city some money. I am asking for the city manager salary of $228,744and I think the other important piece of the provision that you should be aware of is that there is a section under section seven termination that if I am terminated without cause, I'll be entitled to 20 weeks of severance per Florida statutes.” 

Councilor Brechnitz stated he felt that a $60,000 increase in salary was too much.Further, he maintained if the City officially hires an Interim City Manager, other applicants for the role simply won’t apply for the job, assuming it was already filled. It was pointed out that at this time, they don’t know if her application will be among those submitted for consideration for the role long-term. Further, she does not receive health benefits, which saves the City $15-20,000 annually.  

Councilor Schwan commented, “I do stand by us supporting her contract. And what I think you're all missing is that you're talking about $60,000 is what's been referenced here. What Dr. Lucius is doing has stepped into the shoes of Mr. McNees, who is the manager. It's a totally different level of responsibility from her being at her assistant manager job. She has taken all that responsibility home with her last Friday, which was made very clear, two totally different positions in that this is about responsibility. And we give her our confidence that she's going to be doing this for us 24 hours a day, every day of the week. It's in a different category than what you've been referencing about this $60,000. So please be sure to acknowledge what Dr. Lucius is doing. It's the responsibility that we need someone to take for our city. And she is in that position, and she's accepted doing that. And we need to honor her with this contract and please support it when we vote for it.” 

After further discussion regarding an employee review timeline,  a pointed question to Dr. Lucius asked “If we don’t approve your contract as written now, will you want to stay as interim city manager without a contract?”  

 Dr. Lucius replied,  “An extremely disappointing conversation for me. And the reason I say that is because I met with every single one of you individually. And during each of those conversations, we talked about the contract, we talked about the terms of the contract, and every single one of you, all seven were supportive of the terms of the contract. So, I'm quite surprised by this conversation tonight, and I'm disappointed to suggest that now you want to ask me to be the interim city manager without a contract.” In a 5-2 vote, with Councilor Brechnitz and Chair Palumbo voting against the contract was accepted.    

There are two more meetings left this year,  a Capital Workshop on December 1st and regular Council meeting on December 8th, as posted on the City calendar.