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Town manager fields tough questions from civic group

By Staff | Jan 22, 2009

Fort Myers Beach Town Manager Scott Janke updated Beach Civic Association members about upcoming projects and took questions from the audience at last week’s monthly meeting at St. Peters Lutheran Church.

In response to a question from the audience about the town hiring former community development director Jerry Murphy as a consultant after he resigned last year, Janke defended the move.

“Let me put it this way, Mr. Murphy left,” he said. “I’m not going to get into the reasons of why that happened.”

Janke said he hired Murphy in response to a request from the Local Planning Agency for help.

“The consultant that they typically use, Bill Spikowski, was in my office and I said, ‘Bill, can you get this work done?’ And he said, ‘No, I don’t have any time.'”

Janke said after trying to find a consultant to work on the LPA projects he determined Murphy was the best person for the job.

“Whether or not you liked Mr. Murphy in his role of community development director I don’t think really matters,” he said. “I feel good about it and I’ll defend it to my death. The man knows his business.”

Scott said the town will launch a new web site in early February that will be much improved over the current site.

“It will be much more user-friendly and I think you will really enjoy our new web site,” Janke said. “

Janke said plans are underway to make town hall more accessible to south island residents.

“We’re going to bring town hall to the south end of the island once a month, using our public information and cwomunnications trailer,” he said. “We’re going to park it in the Santina Marina Plaza the last Wednesday of each month from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. You can go in there and get your reentry passes and I’ll hold open door office hours from 10 until noon each of those days.”

Janke said town council members will also participate in the program.

“We thought we would bring it to you because this time of year it’s so hard to get to town hall from that end of the island,” he said. “We want to provide better service to the community.”

Janke said that though the economic climate throughout the U.S. is dismal, Fort Myers Beach has not been affected so severely.

“On this island I think we’re better off than most places, but we certainly have challenges ahead” he said.

Construction is set to begin this year on the North Estero Boulevard road project, Janke said.

“That should break ground sometime this spring as soon as the main season is over,” he said, adding the the project should take about 18 months for completion. “The town council has committed money in the budget this year and has stood right behind it. That’s going to happen.”

Janke said the project could be delayed slightly to explore federal funding.

“President Obama has come out with an idea to infuse money into infrastructure projects that are ready to go,” he said. “This is ready to go. And if we can get all the money from the fed to do this, it’s kind of like, ‘Why use your money?’ We may ask the council to delay and see what happens with President Obama’s plan.”

Janke said a canal dredging project for the Laguna Shores neighborhood has started.

“You may have noticed that the Laguna Shores dredging project is actually underway and is being dredged as we speak,” he said. “That project should be completed within two or three weeks. It was long in the works.”

Newton Park will be completed this year, Janke said.

“My expectation is in the fall of 2009 it will be done – it will be completely done and open to the public,” he said.

Janke said the town has been given a commitment from Lee County commissioners to repave about one third of Estero Boulevard this year, which should begin after season.

council members will submit a request for approximately $1.5 million for improvements on Estero Boulevard to Lee County commissioners for next year’s budget, Janke said.

“We’ve had an engineer who has identified the cost of doing some trolley pull offs, some storm water improvements along Estero Boulevard, undergrounding of some of the cross wires that are so unsightly and connecting some sidewalks on the gulf side,” he said. “That should make transportation safer for pedestrians and bicyclists and maybe help traffic flow just a little bit better. I think we’ve got a commitment that they will do something like that for us over the next few years.”

Next month the featured speakers for the Beach Civic Association will be Lee County director for transportation Scott Gilbertson and public works director Jack Green.