Bad Exposure from Bad Leadership

The recent days’ events have brought a most unfavorable light upon our island. From the images and statements memorialized on two networks (videos on this blog - marcoislandblog.blogspot.com), we have been portrayed as a community plagued with asbestos, as a community devoid of leadership, as a community with questionable management, as a community at war with itself.

The images are damming, incredible and farcical. We are treated to a city manager claiming conspiracy theories as to why toxic material continues to be found on a site purportedly cleaned up months ago. The same city manager declares that more asbestos is found on another site. We are subjected to images in what appears to be migrant workers hunched over with rakes shuffling through a contaminated field, only to find out that they too missed the asbestos because …they were told not to dig. The only statement assuaging any health risk comes not from city officials, but from a reporter stating that asbestos is “safe” when not crushed – as you see a bulldozer running over the lot. And all the time, the City Council is nowhere to be found.

The rudderless government on this island needs to get a manager that can actually manage and hence affect the immediate and near-term solution that many of these problems warrant. Asbestos being missed once is a mistake. Asbestos being missed three times despite repeated warnings is a crime – literally.

The elected City Council needs to start taking control of this government and hence effectuate their sworn duty of governing “for the people, and by the people” beyond contemplating the best location of a dog park, how to fix the racquet ball courts or what citizens group to sue next.

The Chamber of Commerce, the City Council, MICA, Celebrate Marco and all organizations immensely concerned with declining property values and declining real estate sales must understand that these trends are not caused by citizens petitioning their government for a redress. These trends do not arise from storms, interest rates or as they say, from a bunch of malcontents. These commercially beholden groups must understand that these deleterious trends comes from the very actions and words of a city management conveying malice towards its own citizens, ignoring the pleas that a toxic substance needs to be dealt with completely, promoting assessment inequities, and spewing absurd and irrational conspiracy theories – all implicitly sanctioned by an deficient and mute City Council.

When we are served by a non-derisory city management and a non-contemptuous Council, we can once again become a community prospering with a fair living standard, appreciable commercial interests and media coverage decrying only that Marco Island is a great place to live.