In the space of a few days, three different City bodies gave residents three different reasons to worry. The City Manager overrode an ordinance she and the City Attorney said they could choose whether to enforce it and the majority of City Council voted to not enforce it. An audit committee and City Council met a stack of unresolved deficiencies with softball questions because the bottom line looked fine. And the Planning Board almost heard a major rezoning request on the strength of a public notice process one of its own members flagged as legally deficient. None of these are small things. Taken together, they are a pattern, and it's one Marco Island can fix.

City Council: An Ordinance That Wasn't There, Until It Was

At the recent Council meeting, City Manager Casey Lucius took it upon herself to give Council candidate Chris Ricci a pass on the attendance requirement for the Audit Advisory Committee, clearing the way for him to sit on the committee. When the issue was raised, both Lucius and City Attorney Alan Gabriel told the Council they could simply override it.

It is, in fact, an ordinance: if you miss three or more meetings in a twelve month period, you are automatically removed from an Advisory Committee.

That distinction matters. An ordinance is not a guideline Council can waive on the spot because it's inconvenient. It's the law the City itself adopted, and it applies until Council formally changes it, not when the City Manager and the City Attorney decide in the moment that it doesn't count. Getting that wrong, in public, on a matter of committee eligibility for a fellow candidate, is not a technicality. It's a preview of how casually this Council treats the rules that are supposed to bind it.

A resident who spoke during public comment made the same point more directly. The City Manager does not have the authority to suspend the law. The Charter requires the City Manager to faithfully execute the City's laws, ordinances, resolutions, and acts of Council, and faithful execution does not mean waiving inconvenient laws.

The resident also noted that Chairman Palumbo took an oath when he assumed office, an oath that includes the statement, "I solemnly swear, that I will, in all respects, observe the provisions of the Charter and the Ordinances of the City of Marco Island." Mr. Ricci is now running for City Council alongside Chairman Palumbo. Both had an obligation to uphold the law. Both failed.

Marco Island cannot have one set of rules for ordinary citizens and another set of rules for political insiders.

Audit Advisory Committee and Special City Council Meeting: Softball Questions, Hard Findings

At the Audit Advisory Committee and City Council meetings, the questioning was gentle. The auditors delivered a clean opinion, and on the surface the City's finances look fine, so the deficiencies underneath got waved through with little pushback.

A clean opinion means the numbers add up. It does not mean the internal controls that produced those numbers are sound. Repeat material weaknesses and a long list of adjusting entries don't disappear because the audit ultimately reconciled. They mean the process that got the City to a clean opinion is still broken, and a committee and Council whose purpose is to ask hard questions about that process chose not to. Let me be clear, I am not criticizing Carol Mc Dermott and the hard work she put in under difficult conditions. Nor am I criticizing the Audit Committee. I am critical because the City didn't allocate more resources to get it right. I believe they are on the right track, but I'm still not convinced they are giving the Finance Department everything they need to get caught up. This was confirmed by the Auditor when he said things might not be cleaned up until after the 2027 fiscal year.

A clean opinion is not the same as a clean process.

Planning Board: A Rezoning Almost Heard on Faulty Notice

Before the Planning Board could take up the Hilton Hotel expansion request, a rezoning petition seeking to grow the property from 310 to 626 units, board member Brad Henson pointed out that the notice of meeting was deficient and that the Board probably needed to reschedule until proper notice had gone out.

What followed was a scramble. City staff and the City Attorney worked to sort out the notice problem in real time, and Chair Jason Bailey hesitated before the Board ultimately agreed to reschedule. Member Henson then went a step further, pointing out that the City's entire trial program to bypass newspaper notices in favor of an alternate method was itself probably faulty and needed to be reexamined, not just for this hearing, but going forward.

A rezoning request this consequential deserves a hearing that starts on solid legal footing. It almost didn't get one, and only because a Planning Board member, not City staff and not the City Attorney, caught the problem first.

The Pattern

The City Council ignored an ordinance. The Audit Advisory Committee and City Council perhaps did not push hard enough. A flawed notice process nearly derailed a major rezoning hearing. Four meetings, three different failures, one common thread: the City keeps getting the basics wrong, and the people responsible for catching those mistakes before they happen are too often the ones waving them through.

Mistakes may cause residents to question City Hall's competence, but when officials ignore the rules or break the law to cover those mistakes, residents must question something more serious. Our laws and ordinances exist in part to keep the government honest and accountable. When City leaders are willing to disregard them for their own convenience, residents have little reason to trust that they will do the right thing for the community across the board. Marco Island needs new leaders who will restore public trust through honesty, transparency and ethical conduct.

A $23 Million Ask From a City That Can't Balance Its Books

On August 18, 2026, Marco Island voters will decide on a $23 million general obligation bond for a 10-year infrastructure plan. The money would replace the Caxambas Bridge, currently the lowest-rated of all 370 bridges in Collier County, with FDOT rating its deck and superstructure as serious. That $12 million project carries two FDOT grants of $3.75 million each, leaving a $4.5 million City obligation, scheduled for 2027.

It would also replace the Goldenrod Bridge, rated scour critical by FDOT, at $10 million with a $6.25 million City share after grant funding, scheduled for 2029, plus $1.5 million in repairs to three more bridges in 2028 and $7.2 million to catch up 36 lane miles of overdue roadway paving, with another $3.5 million over the following seven years to stay on schedule.

These are real needs. But they run through the same two functions the City has just failed to get right for two straight audits: tracking capital assets and accounting for grant revenue correctly. Before residents approve $23 million in new debt and new FDOT grant obligations, they deserve an answer to a simple question: can this City administer and account for that money on time, or will we be reading about it in a finding two years from now?

Why This Matters for November

This isn't about any one person's competence in isolation. It's about a City government that has let the same finding recur across two administrations without treating it as the priority it is. Fixing this requires a Council willing to demand real accountability and real deadlines. Marco Island deserves a Council that reads the audit, asks hard questions in public, and holds City leadership to a real timeline.

We need new leadership, not an incumbent who will perpetuate the same mistakes or candidates that might continue the status quo and have the same faulty judgment.

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