Local government: out of control
To the editor:
I believe that our Lee County Commissioners are not being good stewards of the taxpayer’s money. They are worse than drunken sailors. Drunken sailors spend money on strange and frivolous things, but they do spend their own money. The Lee County Commissioners are spending money like Drunken sailors, but with the taxpayer dollars. They are spending money like they think there is no end to its supply.
Here it is August 2009, and I thought that the economy was in trouble: unemployment is up; business is down; tax revenues are down; housing values are down;, etc. Well, I can tell you of one industry that is still booming. The Lee County Commissioners/part time landscapers are hard at work on Summerlin Road from Gladiolus Drive to Sanibel Island. They are currently installing a multi-mile sprinkler system, and it looks like they will be planting trees, shrubs, and putting down mulch in the near future. From what I have found on the Lee County Web site, it looks to me like Lee County has already awarded $2,372,039.34 in contracts for the landscaping of Summerlin Road, including the first year’s maintenance. The second and future year’s maintenance is scheduled to be $210,000 annually.
One person I talked to at DOT said we need to make the roads beautiful so that tourists will want to come to Fort Myers on vacation. I disagree. They come here for the beaches and other attractions -not to drive down beautiful roads. Grass is used on the side of 99 percent of the roads in the USA. Is there some reason that grass is not good enough for Lee County? Projects like this unfortunately build a bigger Lee County bureaucracy and increases the tax burden on all of us.
I thought we were having a water shortage problem in southwest Florida and yet our Lee County Government thinks it wise to sprinkle the middle of the street. – GOOD JOB LEE COUNTY GOVERNMENT.
If you look at the Board Of County Commissioners Meeting Agendas for 2009 you will find $3,593,136.06 approved for landscaping this year and $291,320 committed for maintenance in future years ($3.88 million). In less than eight months they have spent over five dollars for every man, woman and child in Lee County for landscaping the roads. I feel confident that I have only found the tip of the Iceberg in looking at landscaping expenses. This is not the way I want my tax dollars spent!
I thought that somewhere in the project-approval process that someone would have asked:
n Is this a project that makes good use of the taxpayers dollars?
n Are we giving the taxpayer a good value for his/her dollar?
n Could these tax dollars be put to better use somewhere else?
n Would the taxpayers want their tax dollars spent on this project?
n If this was my money, would I spend it on this project?
Apparently the above questions where never asked.
This is just one example of how the Lee County Government is wasting our hard earned tax dollars. I don’t mind paying taxes for roads. I do mind paying for projects like this that don’t improve the road itself or improve traffic safety. I feel confident that the money spent on these landscaping projects plus the future maintenance dollars could have been better spent on other more important county needs. I believe that this example shows a local government out of control.
I think that it is time for the Lee County Commissioners to get out of the “Build government bureaucracy via the landscaping business.” Its time to get back to doing the work of the Lee County taxpayers. I voted for Ray Judah as Commissioner believing he was going to be a good steward of my tax dollars. I’m starting to think that I voted for the wrong guy.
I E-mailed Commissioner Ray Judah the above letter in July 2009 asking for his input on the subject and never got a response. I guess that tells me something.
Mike Morgan
Fort Myers Beach