Guest Commentary: The Greater Pine Island Plan is on Lee County’s chopping block
Having now reviewed the fine print in the Lee County proposal to amend the Lee Plan and its implementing statutes in the Lee Development Code, I now conclude that the Board of County Commissioners -utilizing the rubber stamp of the Lee County Local Planning Agency at its upcoming Monday meeting — will eliminate entirely the Greater Pine Island Community Plan from both documents. This plan benefits both Matlacha and Pine Island and was first won in 2003 and has survived many attacks thereafter to today. The history of the Pine Island Plan can be found on the website of the Greater Pine Island Civic Association (GPICA), including a report on another secret meeting to get rid of the Pine Island plan. See https://gpica.org/about-us/pine-island-plan/ Thanks to the heroic work of departed warrior Phil Buchanan and Bill Spikowski of Spikowski Planning Associates, and many members of the GPICA, our islands have preserved our Old Florida ways, mostly without much help from Lee County.
This is a HUGE DEAL being pushed by developers working hand in hand with Lee County through the “Horizon Council, the Voice of Business” on which Lee County Assistant Manager Mark Mora is a staff member. In October of 2025, the minutes of the Council elliptically say that Mora reported that the BOCC directed revisions of the Lee Plan and the Development Code “to make the process more efficient and less burdensome.” To what “process” does he refer?
The county staff presentation at the public information meeting last Tuesday gave us a link to a red lined version of the Lee Plan. None of us had seen it, and it was not presented on Tuesday. A review now demonstrates that staff has eliminated every single sentence of the Greater Pine Island Plan from the Lee Plan. All gone. But the red lined version contains staff comments that explain why each item is to be eliminated, offering the following assortment of reasons: county-wide policies should not be repeated as “preferences of individual communities;” “protections” for Greater Pine Island are already provided generally elsewhere in the Lee Plan; other goals for Pine Island in the Plan will be relocated in other more general parts of the Plan; some policies are duplicative of others contained elsewhere in the Lee Plan. Basically, they must be redundant. There are two other explanations offered for eliminating important sections which are impervious to my understanding.
With that, the Greater Pine Island Plan — a major piece of the history of the islands and Lee County — disappears from the county’s overarching comprehensive plan which Florida law requires. The Lee Plan provides goals and policies that shape all manner of land use in our very eclectic land area we have inherited. The purpose is that all citizens know the direction their elected commissioners are to take them. Citizens can be confident where we are going. Enacted statutes, regulations and government spending will all be directed in those directions. From the turn out on Tuesday, plenty of citizens already believe the BOCC is off the rails.
And with that, the entirety of Section 33 of the Lee County Development Code also disappears. This section contains 1,744 separate provisions which guarantee important rights to the islands to implement the Greater Pine Island Community Plan. The staff also claims that the new LCD preserves the Matlacha Overlay — a very important protection for property owners to prevent the county from applying county-wide land use standards to Matlacha lots which are peculiar as a consequence of its unique history. I don’t see where they were “preserved.”
The obvious question is why. The obvious answer is to specifically target Matlacha and Pine Island by striking out its hard-earned special status, a goal of developers for 50 years. The rationale given by the staff is the supreme goal of all brilliantly functioning democracies: Making the Lee Plan and the LCD more user friendly. Only the truly stupid would question that goal.
Perhaps the staff can accomplish its goals simply by inserting footnotes [(n red if it wishes) to the existing Plan and LDC: i.e., “this policy expressly passed for Greater Pine Island can also be found at Policy XX.123(a)”; “see also Sec. XX.123(a).”
We will be told by the staff, by the Local Planning Agency, and by the Commissioners that we have received all the notice of these changes required under Florida law. And all the proposed changes were put up on a website a few days ago. Even though staff has orchestrated this coup over a year, our voices must be heard in a total of 21 days or be gone.
A final decision by the BOCC, which is likely to be scheduled for Sept.16, 2026, can be appealed to the Florida Division of Administrative Hearings within 30 days. In order to participate in an appeal, you must have “standing.” In order to have standing, you must send a comment or objection (I recommend you do so in writing) to the following:
Community Development and Local Planning Agency
• Mikki Rozdolski, MRozdolski@leegov.com
Director, Community Development
• Janet Miller, JMiller@leegov.com
Administrative Specialist
Lee County Commissioners
• Cecil Pendergrass (Chairman), Dist2@LeeGov.com
• David Mulicka (Vice Chairman), Dist3@LeeGov.com
• Kevin Ruane, Dist1@LeeGov.com
• Brian Hamman, Dist4@LeeGov.com
• Trish Petrosky, Dist5@LeeGov.com
Vote the bums out.
— J. Michael Hannon is an attorney and resident of Matlacha.