Chicken policies have come home to roost
To the editor:
“Sensationalized” . . . . . “annihilated”
These are big words, and they are also the words that the Lee County Board of Commissioners are trying to hide behind in an attempt to cover up their continuing fiscal incompetence. Because they ran into overwhelming public opposition to a proposed new tax, they are trying to blame press, radio and TV for the dilemma they find themselves in. In my opinion, local press and media have been, for the most part, remiss in asking the hard questions.
How have we reached this point? Why have they failed to add needed infrastructure in conjunction with growth instead of scheduling it (maybe) 10 – 20 years in the future?
Let’s travel back in time to the year 2008. The commissioners, at the behest of the developers, drastically reduced impact fees on new home construction. They did this under the guise that growth would be great for Lee County. Apparently, in their great sagacity and their zeal to placate the developers, they set aside any notion that new growth would require additional infrastructure; infrastructure which they no longer had the means to pay for.
Since then, the commissioners came up with a Growth Fund which they claimed would make up for the lost impact fees. This now presented a two-fold problem for the taxpayers of Lee County. The first is the money for the fund would come from current residents, not from the construction of new homes which were the de facto cause for new infrastructure. The second problem is that the commissioners have failed to fund the Growth Fund for at least two years.
Now, you might ask why the commissioners show/have shown such deference to the developers. Could it be, and this is in the public record for all to see, because the commissioners receive over 70% of their funding from developers.
Are there any other ways they are fiscally irresponsible? How about the piece of property, promoted as being for a future EMS Station, they purchased in North Fort Myers. The property was listed on Zillow for over a year at $1.7M. The commissioners, in their great exuberance, spent $2.4M of your tax dollars to buy the property.
Recently they approved the purchase of new/replacement phones. Now giving credit where credit is due, whomever wrote the contract seemed to be making an attempt at containing costs by ordering refurbished equipment. On the surface, this seems great, but I was able to locate online the same equipment (model for model) at a minimum of 40% lower cost.
There are many more of these fiscal skeletons in their closet.
As far as their present attitude towards growth goes, it seems like anything goes. They do place some minor restrictions on developers but fail to address the necessity of building energy efficient and environmentally friendly homes.
This only scratches the surface of their shenanigans, but they know that as long as the public remains ignorant, they can convince them to vote for the incumbent or whichever candidate is put forth by the Miller machine.
PS – In their great concern for the citizens of Lee County they are putting forward a proposal to limit commissioners’ terms to 12 years. But guess what. They worded it in such a manner that it does not apply to them!
Norman Cannon
Fort Myers