QUENTIN ROUX

Specially-designed street lights illuminate North Collier Boulevard at night, but lights meant for installation along South Collier Boulevard will stay in storage until City Council decides how to finance the installation. North Collier lights were put in place with funds from the city’s electric franchise fee, but council wants to revisit the payment method.

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Street lights to be installed along South Collier Boulevard are ready, but they will have to wait.

Amid questions of how to fund it, City Council is putting off the installation in order to take a step back and reassess.

An item on the consent agenda at the Feb. 19 meeting asked the council to approve a $310,000 contract for the electrical design and installation of the specially-ordered street lights. Council requested a delay in the contract, citing concerns about the continued use of the five percent electric franchise fee to fund the purchase and installation of street lights.

However, the next day city staff contacted the manufacturer of the street lights and found the order was already en route to Marco Island, where it is now being held in storage.

“At a special called meeting by the City Council held on May 21 , 2007 to discuss the Five Year Capital Improvement Program, according to the Minutes, the Council by consensus agree (sic) to install decorative streetlights along South Collier Boulevard from Winterberry Drive to Collier Court, and that it was to be funded by the Electric Franchise Fee,” Interim City Manager Tony Shoemaker wrote to the council in a Feb. 21 email.

Former City Manager Bill Moss reportedly signed an invoice for the light poles soon after, knowing that the fixtures would take six to eight months to manufacture.

Council agreed in May 2007 to an expenditure of $400,000 for the South Collier street lights, but Joel is asking for an additional $250,000 to complete the whole project, bringing the total to $650,000 for manufacturing, electrical design and installation.

“I understand that the Council is interested in discussing the funding further, but the light poles have already been ordered,” Shoemaker wrote in his email. “It is my understanding that the desire for installing the lights is the same, it just may be that you decide to use a different funding source.”

Council agreed to revisit the issue at its May workshop addressing the Capital Improvement Program.

The poles, which cost roughly $300,000 for the South Collier Boulevard stretch, were paid for with money from the city’s electric franchise fee. The fee, paid to the city by the Lee County Electric Cooperative since 2004, is raised through a five percent charge on every resident’s electric bill. It was established with the express intent to finance the placement of overhead electric wires underground, but has morphed to be put to use for street light purchases as well.

“It’s all based on definition,” said Public Works Director Rony Joel. “The previous City Council defined it one way. It’s up to the new City Council to decide how to apply it now.”

In a 2004 guest commentary in the Eagle, Moss wrote about the specific purpose of the new fee.

“By deliberate action on the part of City Council, the franchise fee cannot be used for any other purpose,” Moss wrote in 2004. “When the undergrounding of power lines is completed, the franchise fee will be rescinded.”

Though he was on the council at the time of the consensus to pay for the street lights out of the franchise fee, Councilor Rob Popoff said the fee should not have gone toward that expenditure. He is advocating finding another way to pay for the installation.

“The franchise fee was for undergrounding our electrical lines,” he said. “We need to underground our electrical wires. We are subject to all of the obvious things like hurricanes.”

Popoff, like his fellow sitting council members, is comfortable with waiting until May to find a better solution. He is one of four who will remain on council through March 17, when three new members are sworn in and three officially step down.

Joel said he planned on presenting other funding options to council at that workshop, but did not elaborate upon them.

Councilor Chuck Kiester said he is eyeing possible leftover funds from the Collier Boulevard refurbishment.

Joel presented council with totals of that project at the March 3 council meeting. The overall budget for the project was $17.8 million. While totals show now that the city was over budget by nearly $100,000, Joel said some of those charges are being disputed by the city with the contractor, and that the project could come in under budget when final totals are determined.

The South Collier portion of the project alone, with a $5.3 million budget, was under by about $50,000. Outside funding for the whole project topped $13 million, leaving just $4.5 million of the project financed from the city’s general fund.

Property tax rollbacks have left city finances tight, though, and city coffers are not expected to be any more abundant in the next fiscal year than in the current, constrained Fiscal Year 2008 budget.

Still, Councilor Ted Forcht said he sees the street lights as an item that should fall within regular budgeting. When councilors come together in May to discuss capital improvements, he said he thinks the council should also work toward better defining the purpose of the franchise fee.

“It’s sort of a gray area for me,” he said. “If they’re going to say it’s going to be that way, they need to be informing the public a little bit more. We’ve been way too gray on too many things. I would like to see a little bit more detailing on what the government’s doing and what we’re doing with people’s money.”

Franchise fee charges bring in $1.8 million per year for Marco Island. At the city’s Fiscal Year 2008 budget workshop, council briefly discussed using the fee to add programs back into the budget that were cut because of reduced revenues.

Outgoing Council Chair Mike Minozzi told council at the time they might as well apply the franchise fee toward flagging programs, because the cost of undergrounding power lines has increased to the point that it will not be a possibility to complete in the near future. The suggestion was rejected, however, by much of his fellow council.

“I think it’s important to provide the value to the residents consistent with what the intent of the franchise fee was, and that was undergrounding,” said Councilor Bill Trotter in a recent interview.

Trotter said he fears putting the money toward other projects would put off undergrounding wires in neighborhoods even further.

“My concern is I want to make sure the undergrounding is a priority,” Trotter said. “I don’t want to delay undergrounding of the neighborhoods while we use that money on other things.”

Council has also turned an eye toward installing street lights along Bald Eagle Drive and Barfield drive, two secondary thoroughfares that residents have complained are poorly lit.

“I think they’re valid,” Joel said of the residents’ concerns.

While some have criticized the city for placing street lights too close together on North Collier Boulevard, Joel defended the placement, saying the design was based on traffic patterns and engineering standards. More traffic necessitates more lighting, he said. On South Collier Boulevard, south of Winterberry Drive, street lights will be spaced further apart, Joel said, reflecting the lighter flow of traffic through the area.

In December, an elderly man was struck and killed by a car while crossing Bald Eagle Drive on foot. No charges have been filed and Marco Island Police Chief Roger Reinke said his department is still looking into the death, and could not comment on the ongoing investigation.

Joel said that getting more lighting along those side streets is a priority of his, but that — as with the street light installation along South Collier Boulevard — it will be in council’s hands whether funds get allocated toward that project during the Capital Improvement workshop in May.