CCC: Cistern, City, County

Open Email to Councilors Kiester and Recker:

hello councilors,

i have not been successful in working with the county or the county version of the dept. of health as i promised mr. kiester on thursday. long story.

regardless, i ask that the council abate city's $150 "cistern permit" fee, and somehow either work with the county so the county can either abate their $250 or $295 tax or the have the city reimburse the county tax to those residents that undergo a septic-cistern conversion.

please keep in mind that the city poisoned the well (no pun intended) when it came out with an absurdly specious cost to convert septic-to-cistern of $5,500 (its less than $500 in the florida keys), and the "number" was repeated ad nauseam without vetting. despite the transparent motivation, the statement and the surrounding turbulence guaranteed that we would not get the grant since many actually believed the "number" and thereby did not sign up for the grant - hence costing each of us the $750 grant rebate.

in summary, if the city council agrees to abate/refund the taxes, there is a trade off of $445 ($150 + $295) versus $750: still a net loss to the citizens.

the city and the county not taxing $445 to a "handful" of residents (per the staff's own words) is not going to break or make either the city or the county - but

• it will undo a wrong,
• promote conservation (as i proved to the staff, there is a per home savings of more like 900 gallons of water every 2-3 days),
• note that this is a conservation savings, and not necessarily a monetary savings
• prove that the city is genuinely environment-friendly,
• spur other cost-saving/environmentally sound ideas and initiatives,
• impel the local economy (contractors needed to do the conversions),
• further foster citizen-staff engineering initiatives.

communities throughout florida, especially the florida keys that is also highly sensitive to enviro-tourism/eco-tourism (and also under the auspices of the same state department of health) are aggressively encouraging these initiatives. i pray that the city council of marco island quickly do the same.


thank you,