BOARD POLICIES AND POSITIONS:

1. Past efforts to counter the attacks on the marine industry and the boating public by the Save the Manatee Club (SMC) et al have been largely ineffective.

2. The industry has concentrated its efforts in the legal arena, while greater efforts could have been made in the administrative, political, and public relations arenas.

3. While the SMC has well coordinated its strategy with two score of allied organizations, there has been little strategic coordination beyond legal fund raising on the part of our industry.

4. The Florida Marine Contractors Association, Inc. and its members have made independent efforts to support the industry through contributions, press releases, political initiatives, and repeated appeals for close coordination and cooperation.

5. The Manatee Agreement, the Manatee Guidance Document, the Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) Manatee Key and the proposed State Agreement individually and collectively spell disaster for the industry, the boating public, and the marine construction industry in particular.

6. The virtual construction permit moratorium imposed by the ACOE and the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) during negotiations was a gross overreaction and an unnecessary cowering to the SMC.

7. With no negotiated resolution of the state suit, there is every indication that the Cabinet, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWCC) staff, and many county permitting agencies are similarly competing to see which can layer the most regulation on the industry to placate the SMC, the new professional environmentalists, and the radical animal rights advocates.

8. The Florida Manatee is not really an endangered species and is enjoying unprecedented growth in population.

9. With manatee deaths from boating never having exceeded 3.6 percent of the census population, clearly the industry is not the justifiable target for punitive attack.

10. The FMCA does support reasonable measures to protect the manatee that encompass all causes of deaths.

11. The FMCA supports legislation to increase boat registration fees provided the revenue is employed to adequately provide effective marine law enforcement.

12. The FMCA considers that the imposition of any additional manatee refuges or sanctuaries should be deferred until the adequacy of existing zones is properly evaluated subsequent to provision of effective policing.

13. The provisions of the Manatee Guidance Document that require marine permit applicants to donate large sums of money for law enforcement without any expectation that permits will be approved amounts to legislated charity at best and legalized extortion at worst.

14. Any future summits hosted by the Governor should not intentionally exclude organizations with a great vested interest in constructive participation nor should the panel of participants, the agenda, and any surveys be loaded in favor of SMC allies, both within and outside government.

15. The true purpose of the plaintiffs is subject to question, may not be the survival of the manatee, and may simply be to embrace a cause that will precipitate quantum contributions from uninformed absentee liberals.

16. It is absolutely ludicrous that the SMC et al can employ tax-free funds to sue any government that grants it tax-free status.

17. The industry must, as a matter of urgency, develop an agreed broad- spectrum offensive and defensive plan by establishing a Multi-organizational Strategy Committee encompassing only the presidents and executive directors of selected associations with common cause, while avoiding unproductive group gropes.

18. The Marine Industry Association of Florida, Inc. should first be given the opportunity to assemble such a Committee of continuing purpose.

Approved by vote of the Board of Directors on February 12, 2001.