Fort Myers Beach independence on the ballot, vote against Tallahassee’s merger referendums and charter changes

Botana and Giallombardo's bills are strikes at Fort Myers Beach sovereignty and home rule

Check your ballots very carefully. At least one Fort Myers Beach voter has been confirmed to have received a ballot that did not have all of the local ballot questions on their printed ballots, requiring the Lee County Supervisor of Elections to print out a new ballot over what was described as a printer error. If your ballot does not contain questions including the merger of the local fire district, merger of the local mosquito control district and all six town charter questions, make sure to alert the Lee County Supervisor of Elections so they can print you a new ballot.

On Tuesday’s ballots Fort Myers Beach voters will have many important questions and races to decide. Governor, Senator, Congressman, County Commissioner. As important as all of those races are, it will be the local referendums which will ultimately decide if Fort Myers Beach wants to still be a town or not.

The questions may not directly ask voters if they want to keep their town, but they are really the first jab at the town’s own independence, on the 30th anniversary of the town’s founding, on the 250th anniversary of our nation’s Declaration of Independence.

Among the questions Fort Myers Beach voters are being asked Nov. 3 (or earlier if you vote early) in a referendum for all county voters is whether to merge the Fort Myers Beach Mosquito Control District into the Lee County Mosquito Control District. Keep in mind this merger was not requested by the Fort Myers Beach Mosquito Control District commissioners or by any official request from the Town of Fort Myers Beach Council. Instead, it originated in 2023 from the town’s own State Rep. Adam Botana (R-Bonita Springs), before failing to get through committee. It then re-emerged last year from State Rep. Mike Giallombardo (R-Cape Coral), who not only doesn’t represent the district and hasn’t returned messages as to why he introduced and sponsored the bill, but has never appeared before any of the Fort Myers Beach district commissioners he is seeking to eliminate, or appeared in front of the Fort Myers Beach Council to discuss his bill. The referendum requires a majority of voters in the Fort Myers Beach Mosquito Control District and a separate majority of voters in the Lee County Mosquito Control District to agree to the merger.

This merger is being proposed even though it would nearly double the millage rate of Fort Myers Beach Mosquito Control District taxpayers since the Lee County Mosquito Control District has a millage rate approximately double that of Fort Myers Beach. For the rest of the county in the Lee County Mosquito Control District, their millage rate could potentially come down slightly though that also depends if voters approve Amendment 3. If voters approve Amendment 3, which raises the homestead exemption from $50,000 of property tax value to up to $250,000 of property tax value, all bets are off as to how much the millage rate will go up in the Lee County Mosquito Control District to make up for all of that property tax value loss. In Fort Myers Beach, the impact would be far less since the majority of property in the district is not homesteaded. The Fort Myers Beach Mosquito Control District has the lowest millage rate in the state with a rate of .1123 per thousand dollars of property tax value. The district dates back to 1948 and its headquarters (which are set to be rebuilt after being destroyed by Hurricane Ian) are located mid-island off Sterling Avenue. If a mosquito issue breaks out, the district’s technicians are a phone call away from jumping in and spraying the problem areas. They meticulously check up on hot spots and water buildups to spray before a problem grows. This season, with the merger on the line, the Lee County Mosquito Control District didn’t do its usual spraying off island in the salt marshes on the edges of the district, where the Fort Myers Beach Mosquito Control District has relied for years on the county to aerial spray. Delays caused by the county requiring a signoff on new borders and signing new agreements with an increase in the fee from $60,000 to $80,000 generated headlines on social media though the spraying was ultimately completed. The Fort Myers Beach Mosquito Control District commissioners are now looking at an alternative resource for the spraying. The Lee County Mosquito Control District’s headquarters are out in Buckingham, a very long drive to Fort Myers Beach if an issue ever pops up here involving mosquitoes. And we know it will. Fort Myers Beach residents simply would not have the quick response times to any mosquito outbreaks. They would be in line waiting with Sanibel, Lehigh Acres, Estero and every other municipality for a call back. Good luck with that.

In Fort Myers Beach, if Amendment 3 passes, the impact would be an estimated $294,326 in lost property tax revenue in the second year based on State Department of Revenue statistics provided to the town. While that may not sound like much for one year, that amount of missing revenue was enough to make the town to misguidedly raise its parking meter rates from $5 to $6 an hour this budget season, over the objections of local businesses. Multiply that amount over 10 years and that is nearly $3 million in lost property tax revenue the town will lose for fixing sinkholes (like the one in today’s paper), fixing water lines, roads, operating a community pool, operating Bay Oaks Recreational Campus, or running a charter school like some hope to. Amendment 3 is just another way of asking town voters if they want to have a town or if they want to spend each year begging Tallahassee to keep the town alive.

Then there is the referendum on the ballot to merge the Fort Myers Beach Fire Control District with the Iona Fire District. Again, none of the Fort Myers Beach fire commissioners publicly requested this. This started out similarly with Rep. Botana proposing in 2023 to merger the district with the Bonita Springs Fire District. This came as a shock to Fort Myers Beach Fire Control District commissioners, who were not first approached at any public forum by Botana to do this. Keep in mind, these proposals from Botana came within weeks after the first anniversary of Hurricane Ian and a ceremony at Bayside Veterans Park in which the town thanked state officials for their help to the town after the storm. When Botana’s idea fell flat. He changed the proposal to merge the Fort Myers Beach Fire Control District with Iona. A merger study funded by both fire districts found no significant financial or operational savings from such a merger.

Botana said he wanted to leave it up to voters to decide, but he also transferred $150,000 from the Conservatives for Clean Water PAC he controls to another political action committee he controls called FreeLee to produce thousands of dollars worth of flyers bombarding voters and telling them a merger of the fire districts would be a better use of taxpayer funds and better services. Giallombardo and Rep. Tiffany Esposito (R-Fort Myers) funneled $100,000 of funds from political action committees they control to FreeLee as well, raising serious questions as to why these legislators want to influence voters into ridding Fort Myers Beach of its independent fire and mosquito control districts.

Neither Giallombardo or Esposito have ever had the courtesy of appearing in front of the Fort Myers Beach Council or making any public outreach on why they think its their business to force a referendum on the future of Fort Myers Beach.

The flyers sent out by FreeLee, which has a Tallhassee address on the mailers, also tell voters that merging the mosquito control districts will save taxpayer dollars and provide better protection, though that will not be the case for Fort Myers Beach residents.

Before the merger proposals and county charter measures went through the state legislature approval process to get on the ballot, they were first approved at a meeting of Lee County’s Republican state legislative delegation where speakers from the Fort Myers Beach Mosquito Control District and Fort Myers Beach Fire Control District speaking out against the proposals were limited to 90 seconds by Esposito as part of the public comment rules for the meeting. The commissioners approved the merger proposals anyway because they apparently know better than their own constituents who live in towns they don’t live in themselves.

That’s not all Fort Myers Beach voters are being asked though.

They are also being asked by Lee County’s legislative delegation through another referendum if they want to have less say over who their Lee County commissioners are. Currently, Fort Myers Beach voters get to vote on all five county commissioners. Under the single-member district referendum on the ballot, they would only have a direct vote for one commissioner representing their district (currently District 3 Commissioner David Mulicka).

But the arrows at political self determination on Fort Myers Beach are not only slinging from Tallahassee.

A town charter referendum that originated with the Fort Myers Beach Charter Review Commission, who were appointed by the Town of Fort Myers Beach Council (and which didn’t include the town’s first Mayor Anita Cereceda as a voting member even though she had applied to be on the commission) asks Fort Myers Beach voters if they want to give up their say on Town Councilmembers who are appointed by the Town Council. Under the charter amendment proposed by the commission, which was chaired by Jim Dunlap and approved by the Town Council, if a seat becomes vacant on the Town Council the council’s appointed replacement would get to serve out the remainder of the full term. The current practice puts the appointed seat up for a vote at the next regularly scheduled election. That’s why on Nov. 3, voters will have a say on three open seats, because one of those seats was vacated by Jim Atterholt in January. The Town Council voted to appoint John McLean to fill the seat in February. McLean had to run Nov. 3 to keep the seat for a new four-year term. While McLean initially entered the race, he ultimately pulled out (though his name will still be on ballots). Under the new proposal, McLean would have been allowed to serve the rest of Atterholt’s term through 2028. That means under the new charter amendment proposal, a councilmember could technically be elected in November, resign their seat in December, and the Council could appoint a new councilmember to serve on the board for nearly four years without a vote by the residents. Another charter amendment on the ballot would allow the vice mayor to assume the mayor’s duties if the mayor resigned, without a vote by the Council. An additional charter amendment also establishes a salary compensation review for the Town Council’s salaries, which the Town Council could use to give itself salary raises.

Our advice to voters is to vote no on all of these measures. Vote no against the merger of the Fort Myers Beach Mosquito Control District into the Lee County Mosquito Control District, vote no against the merger of the Fort Myers Beach Fire Control District into the Iona Fire Control District, vote no against single-member county commissioner districts, vote no against extending terms of appointed town councilmembers, and vote no against defaulting the town’s mayorship to the vice mayor upon a vacancy.

And tell Rep. Adam Botana and state legislators to instead spend their time ensuring that a $11.9 million state loan given to the Town of Fort Myers Beach by Gov. Ron DeSantis as a lifeline after Hurricane Ian shouldn’t be used as the Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of the town’s taxpayers, who will not be able to repay this favor. That’s the kind of help the Town of Fort Myers Beach thought would be given without a demand for a payback after the world saw the utter devastation that took 16 lives from the island and destroyed hundreds of homes and uprooted countless families. If these same legislators pushing this referendum on Fort Myers Beach, their first priority would have been ensuring this loan is a grant. The town doesn’t need another order from Tallahassee as to how to run its affairs. The town has seen enough of that from the state legislature’s actions limiting home rule over the years.

Also, we think that an organization chaired by Botana like Conservatives for Clean Water should be spending their precious, and apparently abundant resources on fixing our ongoing clean water issues. Those who send their money to Conservatives for Clean Water shouldn’t wonder why that money is being turned around and being spent on flyers to tell residents how to vote on their fire districts and mosquito control. That has nothing to do with conservatism or clean water.

Vote no against the Botana and Giallombardo referendums and show Tallahassee that Fort Myers Beach is still a town.

Fort Myers Beach Observer Editorial