Council rejects current county trolley ILA
Why would the Town of Fort Myers Beach pay an additional $235,000 to transport tourists or non-Beach residents to a Lee County road on Estero Island for a traffic-related, slow-paced service of LeeTran trolleys? That appeared to be the questioning consensus among town officials.
At Monday evening’s meeting, the Fort Myers Beach Town Council was unwilling to accept and approve the Interlocal Agreement between the town and Lee County for continued additional trolleys for the period commencing on Jan. 13, 2011 through April 21, 2011. Instead, the four present council members decided to modify the existing ILA to include holiday service and exclude the seasonal augmentation for the above dates.
This means the council will write a new interlocal agreement to support the two additional island trolleys and one park-n-ride trolley for $14,057 on New Year’s Day, Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, but declined to pay for the service of additional trolleys for $219,892 for ‘season’ usage. It’s now in the hands of county officials if they see fit to transport seasonal visitors to and on Fort Myers Beach.
Before the 3-1 voting decision (with Vice Chair Bob Raymond dissenting), there were two prior motions that did not carry as well as talk about water taxis possibly replacing the enhanced trolley service. Both Mayor Larry Kiker and Town Manager Terry Stewart were among those who had comments about the rationale of the extra trolleys and the irregularity of the service leading up to the third and decisive motion.
“I think it’s time for us to look beyond the same old way to do business. This is a matter of functionality. If we’re going to do mass transit, let’s do it and stop kidding ourselves because another trolley every 1 hours doesn’t do anything and costs us over $200,000,” said Kiker. “If there is a problem, let’s fix it and not keep throwing money at it.”
“We’re paying the same thing for four months that each of the other trolleys are costing for the whole year. I don’t understand why it is not the county’s responsibility, period,” said Stewart. “The county is putting another trolley in the service to bring people here in the park-n-ride and increase the number of folks out here, but then think they don’t have any responsibility to deal with the people when they are here.
“That’s a policy matter. We need to be prepared to approach this from a business fashion next year with the knowledge of being able to make good choices. We still have the issue of whether or not that, even though it’s being divided fairly and equally, should we be paying for it period. I don’t think we should.”
Council rejects current county trolley ILA
Why would the Town of Fort Myers Beach pay an additional $235,000 to transport tourists or non-Beach residents to a Lee County road on Estero Island for a traffic-related, slow-paced service of LeeTran trolleys? That appeared to be the questioning consensus among town officials.
At Monday evening’s meeting, the Fort Myers Beach Town Council was unwilling to accept and approve the Interlocal Agreement between the town and Lee County for continued additional trolleys for the period commencing on Jan. 13, 2011 through April 21, 2011. Instead, the four present council members decided to modify the existing ILA to include holiday service and exclude the seasonal augmentation for the above dates.
This means the council will write a new interlocal agreement to support the two additional island trolleys and one park-n-ride trolley for $14,057 on New Year’s Day, Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, but declined to pay for the service of additional trolleys for $219,892 for ‘season’ usage. It’s now in the hands of county officials if they see fit to transport seasonal visitors to and on Fort Myers Beach.
Before the 3-1 voting decision (with Vice Chair Bob Raymond dissenting), there were two prior motions that did not carry as well as talk about water taxis possibly replacing the enhanced trolley service. Both Mayor Larry Kiker and Town Manager Terry Stewart were among those who had comments about the rationale of the extra trolleys and the irregularity of the service leading up to the third and decisive motion.
“I think it’s time for us to look beyond the same old way to do business. This is a matter of functionality. If we’re going to do mass transit, let’s do it and stop kidding ourselves because another trolley every 1 hours doesn’t do anything and costs us over $200,000,” said Kiker. “If there is a problem, let’s fix it and not keep throwing money at it.”
“We’re paying the same thing for four months that each of the other trolleys are costing for the whole year. I don’t understand why it is not the county’s responsibility, period,” said Stewart. “The county is putting another trolley in the service to bring people here in the park-n-ride and increase the number of folks out here, but then think they don’t have any responsibility to deal with the people when they are here.
“That’s a policy matter. We need to be prepared to approach this from a business fashion next year with the knowledge of being able to make good choices. We still have the issue of whether or not that, even though it’s being divided fairly and equally, should we be paying for it period. I don’t think we should.”