Message from POP!

Fellow Marco residents:

This brief message hopes to do two things: update POP's progress and thank all of you for your support, encouragement and loyalty to POP's "common sense" proposed charter amendment.

The first objective is easy: Last week POP submitted well over the required number of signed petitions to the Supervisor of Elections. That office will certify the required number of petitions from registered Marco voters and deliver the certified petitions to Marco's City Hall. Thereafter, the petition will be placed on a city council meeting's agenda for processing. We can depend that city council, led by Tucker & Minozzi will do anything and everything possible to stop you from voting on the issue. It ought to be interesting, particularly since the council's newly hired, high-priced Miami attorneys will be out to prove that they're worth their "big bucks".

The second objective is actually impossible to do! - There's just no way that POP can express the appreciation for the way you good folks out there stepped up to the plate and began hitting home-runs for POP. Without your generosity POP would not have been able to accomplish all those mailings. But even more importantly, the hundreds of notes you sent in with your comments and encouragements were truly what made our work worthwhile. I plan to make a collection of those remarks and will post them on this website for your own info. It would be such a pleasure to meet individually with each of you...Perhaps one day, when political sanity is restored to Marco Island, POP will be able to host just such an opportunity!

Meanwhile, please keep yourself informed of the changes that are beginning to form on Marco Island's horizon. The defeated STRP funding plan and the promised defeat of the Tucker/Minozzi motion to extend their terms by eight months show that Marco Islanders are becoming fed up with a preposterous government. Hopefully the upcoming city elections promise the departure of a city management group that has overstayed its usefulness, its respect and its welcome. POP's charter amendment, if approved by the voters, would assure that this doesn't happen to us so easily again in the future. An aroused American citizenry historically has always been awesomely effective, has it not?

Russ Colombo, Chairman
Preserve Our Paradise (POP)