Lee County mayors meet, discuss challenges
The mayors of all six municipalities that make up Lee County gathered at the Lee Republican Women Federated September lunch meeting Monday to rub elbows and touch upon successes they’ve had and challenges they are facing.
Mayor Anita Cereceda of the Town of Fort Myers Beach, Mayor Bill Ribble of the City of Estero, Mayor Peter Simmons of the City of Bonita Springs, Mayor Randy Henderson of the City of Fort Myers, Mayor Joe Coviello of the City of Cape Coral and Mayor Kevin Ruane of the City of Sanibel all were in attendance.
Amira Fox, State Attorney for the Twentieth Judicial Circuit, served as emcee for the panel of mayors during the lunch and discussed hot topic issues and what each leader envisions for the future.
The most pressing topic discussed by Cereceda was the construction of Margaritaville on the Beach.
Cereceda said the town is waiting on a Writ of Certiorari, which is procedural, related to a filed challenge. This means that a lower court will deliver its record in a case so that a judge may review it and determine if there were any mistakes made.
“There’s never been a project, a concept, an anything you can talk about that has more impacted our town than this resort project,” Cereceda said. “This encompasses both bayside and beach side. This is a developer that actually lives on the island.
“It was discussed, trampled on, redone, revisited, discussed some more and then approved unanimously by the town council last spring after two public hearings.”
Cereceda said that a Beach resident decided to sue on two fronts: a writ of and a civil lawsuit citing violated rights.
“This has cost this developer in excess of $10 million dollars. Lets not forget what it’s cost tax payers of Fort Myers Beach in funding this legal battle,” said Cereceda. “It’s my greatest hope that this will be resolved in some sort of expeditious manner.”
Cereceda is looking to take the popular tourist destination, which sees a dramatic rise in population during the season months, into the next generation.
“The Town of Fort Myers Beach is in a new life phase,” Cereceda said. “(I) remember Fort Myers Beach as very much a fishing village — everybody’s island. It still is that, but it’s also being populated by people who are looking to retire in the future. They’re buying homes, they’re redeveloping residential properties and the nature of the town is changing.”
Cereceda said town officials have new changes in the works as well.
“The town council is going to be involved in a new re-branding of the Beach,” she said. “Which will be a really dynamic exercise for our town and this Margaritaville project will obviously have some great impact on that. It’s a very exciting time for me and for, I would say, most of the residents of our community because we are embracing this next period of our lives.”
Cereceda said a major challenge for the beach is “impact — how we fund it, manage it and change.”
“The nature of our community is changing. It’s market driven in large part, but it’s changing,” Cereceda said. “I think as a government, our biggest challenge is how do we do more for less and how do we provide for the 60,000 people (that visit) that don’t even live on Fort Myers Beach.”
The mayor discussed the challenges that come with an influx of population, which included taxes, construction and even trash removal.
When asked about the Estero Boulevard road project, Cereceda said she is hopeful that the county project will be completed in three years time.
To end, all mayors were asked if they had to describe their city’s biggest need using one word, what would that be?
Cereceda said “home rule.”
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