Anchorage committee presses for clearer monthly occupancy and revenue reports for mooring field

Fort Myers Beach’s Anchorage Advisory Committee at its May 27 meeting pressed town staff for clearer, repeatable monthly reporting on mooring-field occupancy, nightly use and revenues so members can track performance against budget and historical averages.

Committee members said they want a simple monthly “hotel‑nights” accounting (boat nights summed for the month), daily counts across the month, and a revenue‑against‑budget summary. The request grew out of a staff packet that included an April report whose “nights” column was cumulative and therefore hard to compare month to month.

Curtis Ludwig, staff member, explained the source of the numbers and the limits of the standard report he receives from the reservation vendor. He said the standard report shows cumulative nights for vessels that have been in the field across months and that computing a pure monthly total will likely require either a tailored report from the vendor or additional filtering: “Once you get it filtered…they can give you or they got you got dates on here,” he said. Ludwig also said he will try to extract the daily counts and comparisons back to May 2024 so the committee can see month‑to‑month trends.

Committee members pressed for specific outputs. They asked for (1) a single monthly total of nights for the month, (2) daily counts for each day of the month so an average daily occupancy can be computed, and (3) revenue totals by month (actual cash received) so revenue can be compared against budget and expenses on the town’s fiscal calendar. At one point a committee member summarized the goal as: “We wanna understand revenue against the budget and expenses,” and others agreed that quarterly expense reporting would also be useful.

Ludwig said the packet already includes some revenue lines and that he can try to pull May 2025 and May 2024 reports for a simple year‑over‑year comparison at the committee’s next meeting. He also flagged that the reservation system’s standard output counts nights cumulatively (e.g., a vessel that arrived in 2024 and stayed through 2025 will inflate a simple “nights” column for April), so the committee asked Ludwig to request a tailored vendor report or to produce a filtered extract.

Members discussed related metrics they want included when feasible: number of reservations per month, breakdown of nightly/daily vs. monthly rates, vessel size distribution (how many 30‑, 40‑, 50‑foot boats), and pump‑out counts tied to the pump‑out grant. Ludwig said he has 10 years of data available and will work to recreate the historical charts previously produced for the committee.

The committee also discussed how grant funding and cross‑department charging affect net results. Members asked that future financial presentations distinguish (a) direct mooring‑field revenues and expenses, (b) grant revenue that offsets expenses, and (c) charges that were allocated to the maritime function from other town departments. Ludwig said some reclassification and help from the town finance office will be necessary to produce a clean, comparable fiscal‑year view.

The committee asked Ludwig to provide a draft template (example) of the proposed monthly summary before the next meeting so members can agree on which columns and filters they need. Ludwig agreed to supply May 2025 figures and attempt to pull May 2024 for comparison at the next meeting.

The requests are procedural only; no committee vote or formal policy change was taken at the May 27 meeting.