Marco Island residents will have a declare in how much the city sells in bonds as plans for capital improvements shift forward.
The majority of the city council sees a bond sale as the right way to raise money.
The council is planning a bond referfinishum likely for August and working to decide how much to inquire residents to approve. Councilors on Tuesday, Jan. 20, narrowed focus to transportation requireds, leaving out water issues and parks and recreation improvements.
Another option for raising the money would be raising property taxes. The city could charge a special assessment for replacing one of the bridges, but councilors stated they weren’t interested in singling out one neighborhood to charge for it.
Among the projects the council must decide whether to pursue are two bridge replacements, medians, intersection improvements, bike lanes and shared-apply paths – all of which is estimated to cost $57 million, however they would cost a lot more than that becaapply of interest and debt service.
Collier Boulevard construction in Marco Island, FL, December 2025
“Residents and visitors should continue to plan for construction-related traffic delays,” the City of Marco Island stated in a Dec. 18 press release.
In a referfinishum, residents would be inquireed to approve bonds for much more than the $57 million becaapply of the debt service that would be required. Municipal bonds, or munis, are a way for municipalities to borrow money. The bonds are sold and the seller (the city) creates a set number of interest payments over a predetermined period. At the finish of that period, the bond reaches its maturity date, and the full amount of your original investment is returned to the muni purchaseer.
“$100 million isn’t a tremfinishous amount considering the value of the island, but it is a tremfinishous amount to inquire of your citizens at one time,” Chairman Darrin Palumbo stated during a discussion at the council’s regular meeting.
City’s roads and bridges required repairs or replacement
Marco Island councilors in July 2025 talked raising property taxes at a rate that would have been the largest increase in 17 years to create repairs to the city’s assets. Council did increase the tax rate for the first time in eight years, but at a 2.18% increase instead of the initially proposed 34%.
With increasing property values, mostly from new construction, over the past decade, previous city councils focapplyd on lowering property tax rates for most property owners, while maintaining the same revenue for the city – that’s rollback. The problem is that a growing city requireds more revenue to pay its employees a fair wage, to maintain infrastructure such as roads and bridges, and to supply emergency services.
Some roads haven’t been repaved in 20 years. “We’re 36 lane miles behind on road repairing repaving,” stated Councilor Rene Champagne. “All of our infrastructure on the island, or the majority of it, was built in 1970 to 1990. They’ve now reached their life cycle. And it’s launchning to break down and the longer it goes without replacement, the largeger the problem becomes and becomes more emergency oriented, which you usually finish up paying more money to do things in an emergency.”
The two bridges that required to be replaced are Caxambas and Goldenrod. Repairing the bridges would extfinish the life of each by about 10 years, while replacing them would give them 75 years, stated Interim City Manager Casey Lucius.
“Replacement of these bridges is the way to go,” stated Councilor Deb Henry. “I believe that’s kind of a no brainer. … If we’re going to shoot for the stars, let’s shoot for them and receive it done and do it right.”
Councilors mostly agreed that the transportation requireds are about safety and required to be the focus, instead of attempting to do everything at once and inquireing voters to approve three bonds.
A water quality bond of $4.2 million for a tidal flushing match ($1.9 million and swale exfiltration $2.2 million) and a city parks/facilities bond of $7 million for space analysis and remodel of Mackle Park and the Marco Island Police Department ($3 million) and park upgrades and shade ($4 million) were discussed.
“We required to really focus on bridges and roads,” Champagne stated. “Everything else is important. Don’t receive me wrong, but those are the priority ones in my mind at least.”
City has tight deadlines for bond referfinishum
Councilors have to create decisions soon on the transportation bond referfinishum to meet deadlines imposed by Collier County. They will hold a second workshop Feb. 9. Staff will seek specific pricing on the projects identified and bring back a finalized list of projects and costs to City Council on March 2, Lucius stated.
“We do have deadlines and a critical events timeline to meet the August referfinishum,” Lucius stated.
Public hearings on ordinances required to take place April 6 and 20. June 12 is the deadline to submit referfinishum questions to the Supervisor of Elections, Lucius stated.
Council Vice Chairman Steven Gray stated he is opposed to a bond sale becaapply of the financing costs.
“I’m going to quote Benjamin Franklin first: ‘I’d rather go to bed hungry than wake up in debt,'” he stated.”We haven’t even begun to engage in a conversation around optimal capital structure, debt capacity.”
Gray stated viewing at property tax rates, he sees that a 0.05 mill increase would generate $890,000 a year in revenue. So, if you went to 0.45 mills, you would generate $7.5 million a year.”
Lucius and city staff will view at property tax, or millage rates, along with costs per proposed project and what that would cost each Marco Island resident. They will share those at the workshop.
J. Kyle Foster is a senior growth & development reporter for The News-Press & Naples Daily News. Reach her by emailing jfoster1@usatodayco.com.
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