LESLIE WILLIAMS

The community room in the Marco Island Police Department was packed Tuesday night as residents turned out to register their reactions to the South Seas Club's plan to reconstruct a newer, longer set of boat docks in Clam Bay. The variance needed by the club eventually passed 4-2, with Terri DiSciullo abstaining because the club is a client.

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Vigorous discussion marked Tuesday night’s City Council meeting, but the topic, for a change, was not sewers.

A slew of residents turned out to discuss a request by the South Seas Club, a group of condos, to replace 166 30-foot boat docks with 140 docks ranging in size from 35 feet to 50 feet.

Council voted 4-2 to award the boat dock extension, but only after a 3-3 vote that would have defeated the proposal for the night. Councilor Terri DiSciullo abstained from voting because she has worked as the accountant for South Seas Club in recent years. Councilors Bill Trotter and Chuck Kiester voted in the minority.

In addition to the stipulations that boats not extend beyond the docks and no jet skis be docked at the facilities, the final requirement that swung Councilor Ted Forcht’s vote was an amendment that says none of the docks can have boat lifts, except for a small percentage in a confined area. He was concerned about reports that some South Seas owners were not in favor of having docks with lifts in front of their units.

The extension appeared to be defeated until that amendment was made, following a brief meeting between some of the association’s residents and the club’s representatives. DiSciullo lamented having to abstain from voting for that reason. Had the 3-3 vote held and Forcht maintained his rejection, DiSciullo’s vote could have been the swing to get it passed.

"It’s unfortunate that I can’t vote, and I’m sorry for that," DiSciullo said. "I took a lot of time to visit the site. It gives you a different perspective when you visit a site. From the empty lot across the bay, you can’t tell what size these docks are."

From a jam-packed audience, reaction to the proposal ranged from indignation to excited encouragement, as property owners and renters in the South Seas condos and nearby properties came before council in a lengthy public hearing, attempting to persuade or dissuade passage of the extension.

City ordinance allows the construction of 20-foot docks without an extension, and when the proposal passed the Marco Island Planning Board by a 3-2 vote in January, the recommendation was to scale back a set of 18 50-foot docks to fall into line with the majority of 40-foot docks planned for the facility.

However, the South Seas Club and the project designer, Turrell, Hall & Associates, instead reduced the number of overall slips and held on to the 50-foot docks. The city received many e-mails and letters from concerned or upset property owners whose homes or condos overlook Clam Bay, the site of the proposed docks. However, the audience seemed to be largely made up of people in support of the plan, who were not shy in voicing rowdy approval or jeers of comments by council or other residents.

As pointed out by both opponents and proponents of the plan, the most similar extension granted by the council in recent years allowed 35-foot docks along a point at the end of Huron Court, populated by a condominium building. However, South Seas Club attorney Craig Woodward told the council that project allowed the docks to project into a greater percentage of the waterway than those in question for South Seas.

"It’s 150 feet wide there," Woodward said. "It’s 23 percent of that distance. In our tightest area, we are looking at the area next to Spinnaker Drive. We also have the same 35-foot boat docks. This is 156 feet as opposed to 150. We protrude 22 percent."

At its widest, Clam Bay is 560 feet across -— a distance too wide to be affected by a 40 or 50-foot dock, Woodward argued.

For Loraine Olnowich, the length of a single dock is not the chief concern.

"I’m worried about the oil pollution and the accompanying busy-ness of these docks," Olnowich said. "I’m worried about bigger boats. You have to go under two small bridges to get out to the gulf. That leaves cigarette boats: those long, low speed boats that make a lot of noise."

In other business, council voted unanimously to approve a $2.1 million contract to the Crom Corporation for water tanks to be built at the city’s north water treatment facility. The two separate tanks would hold treated finished water and effluent water.

An item on the consent agenda to authorize revenue from the electric franchise fee to pay for streetlights on South Collier Boulevard was tabled until a future meeting.