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What a proud moment for the true sovereigns of Marco Island, A.K.A. “We, the People!”

I believe it was a “first” in the 10-year history of our barrier island municipality as reported by our media.

For the record on April 21, our newly seated City Council unanimously rejected our acting City Manager’s recommendation and duly approved the appointment of Parks-Recreation Commissioner Dana Souza as interim city manager. Concerned and informed citizens unanimously salute our newly elected Councilor’s bravado, independence and intelligence.

Let history record this event as the first and only denial of a city manager’s recommendation by our up-to-now marionette City Council blindly supporting civic governance by self-appointed, elite “profit and gain” aristocrats.

Let’s never forget that era sadly characterized by our elected surrogates bowing to self-serving, hired consultants catering to the foibles and whims of a City Manager hell-bent on making Marco Island just another extension of Florida’s crass day-tourist mainland profit-centers. Isn’t that what we have achieved, since 1997, absent continuous, rational and timely civil debates accompanied with openly transparent decision-making processes and meaningful public referendums?

All attentive, responsible citizens are hoping and, yes, even praying that this singular event ushers in a long-over-due “audacity of change” era in our brief history so far marked by an overly excessive and disastrous tax-borrow-spend civic mentality illustrative of drunken sailors. Even proverbial drunken sailors resent such an absurd metaphor since we all know, both afloat and land-bound, they spend their own money, not other’s be they sober or otherwise.

Sayre Uhler, Marco Island