Town and County negotiate over Bay Oaks negotiations
The upcoming transition period slated for Oct. 1 between the Town of Fort Myers Beach and Lee County over Bay Oaks Recreational Campus is moving forward. County officials had their first chance to review the Town’s building inspection on Bay Oaks Recreational Center which showed the poor condition of its roof.
Town and County officials met in downtown Fort Myers for negotiating talks about their interlocal agreement for the popular Beach site. Bay Oaks is currently owned by Lee County Parks & Recreation and operated in cooperation with the Town of Fort Myers Beach. The center is located on Bay Street on Estero Island within the incorporated limits.
Interim Lee County Manager Karen Hawes, Parks and Recreation acting Deputy Director David Harner, interim Parks Director Barbara Manzo, Pete Winton and County Attorney Scott Coovert made up the transition team for the county, while the Town sent interim Town Manager Jack Green, Councilperson Jo List and Town Attorney Ann Dalton.
“Everybody in the room agreed what needs to be done, but we haven’t hammered out the details on how we are going to do it yet,” said List. “We know that the County is going to take responsibility for their share.”
List is optimistic about the transition. She believes both Town and County are forming a good partnership on this issue.
“There is a lot of legal “i’s” to be dotted and “t’s” to be crossed, but the actual nuts and bolts details still need to be addressed,” she said. “This is not an us-versus-them scenario,” said List. “All involved recognize we have a shared responsibility to our constituency, and we are going to meet it. This is the first time that Jack (Green) met with the negotiating team as the interim Town Manager, so it was the first time we really hunkered down since the (building inspection) report came in.”
Both Town and County officials will meet again after the County has another chance to view the recreational center’s structure.
“The next step is the property survey which should be coming out hopefully at the end of this week or early next week,” said Harner. “We’ve also contacted our facilities’ maintenance to look at some of the issues that were in that report and get back to us with the rough costs of what it would be to repair those in-house. Obviously, we’ll let the town know what that cost is, and what we plan to do and essentially negotiate the CIP after that.”
Harner is aware the center’s roof may need replacing over repairing.
“As far as I know, we do have estimates for both (jobs),” said Harner. “It’s open for negotiations at this point.”
The Town is still expecting to take over ownership and full operational costs of BORC on Oct. 1.
“The negotiations are not over,” said List. “We’re all on the same page. We share this facility and the County is going to make sure that the transition happens as smoothly as possible. It’s all very positive.”
Pre-negotiations preparation
Last Monday, July 20, then acting Town Manager Jack Green encouraged the Town Council to “sign on some actions in order to give the negotiating team some leverage.
“If we presume for a moment that the Oct. 1 date is the presumed date that the town takes over operation of Bay Oaks, then in order to do that, staff is going to need to have the personnel who are going to work there already in place on Sept. 1,” he said. “The reason for that is documentation training and becoming familiar with the operation of Bay Oaks while there is still county folks there. We probably need to be out advertising for those positions on or about Aug. 1.”
Green caught the attention of the Town Council with that statement.
“See, you’re starting to get the idea of what time constraints we are under,” he said. “If it is council’s desire to steer toward an Oct. 1 date of taking Bay Oaks over, then there has to be a lot of ground work that has to be covered.
The first order of business would be the Bay Oaks interlocal agreement with the county. I think in order to light the fire with the commissioners and the county staff, the negotiating team needs to have a solid understanding of what the council is willing to accept, and there has to be agreement among the council members.”
The Town recently had a building inspection on Bay Oaks Recreational Center which showed the poor condition of the building’s roof. Town staff consensus confirms that to fix the recreational center’s deficiencies, the interlocal agreement numbers should be no lower than $220,000 for capital reserves and $150,000 for operations.
“I think we have some leverage now with the recent building inspections,” said Green. “I think even (the County) was reluctant to do an inspection to see how bad that roof really is. Just to repair it means somewhere down the road, we’re going to be stuck with it.”
In his opinion, Green thinks the roof needs to be replaced as soon as possible because of its condition.
“Our inspector confirmed it,” he said. “I think it needs to be replaced and I’m guessing to replace the roof, do the undertreatment, fix the steel support system and the gutter problem, it’s probably going to need all of that $220,000. That’s a guess.”
Vice Mayor Herb Acken suggested a solution to the time constraint the town is facing.
“The fall back is to extend the interlocal one more year,” he said. “It gives us time to do the leg work and the engineering. We still hear people complaining about the water system.”
Councilman Tom Babcock went a bit further on that suggestion.
“We can continue to pay on a monthly basis,” he said.