Beautify our island’s entrance
To the editor:
Lee County is focusing hard on beautifying some of our roadways lately. All the trees and other shrubberies being planted along Summerlin Road are really making that four lane freeway attractive.
Everywhere, it seems, local roads are getting a face lift with nice landscaping. Everywhere, that is, but the road that brings people to our island from the mainland.
San Carlos Boulevard, a state owned road, is as unsightly an entrance to a community as there is in Lee County
Instead of appealing landscaping like Summerlin has been given, our island’s entrance is a long, ugly highway of dirty, yellow sticks in the middle of the road.
While Summerlin gets trees, we get plastic sticks.
Why is it that our island has to live with such a gaudy entrance while the state and county continue to beautify the entrances to other communities? Why isn’t our island’s representative on the Lee County Commission, Ray Judah, working with the Florida Department of Transportation to give our island – his district – the same beautification attention being placed along the routes to Sanibel and other communities?
Not long ago, the Florida Department of Transportation told the Fort Myers Beach Civic Association that it would be glad to discuss beautifying San Carlos Boulevard with the county. It’s a shame the state hasn’t initiated such discussion on its own. It’s even a greater shame that the county hasn’t done so.
Our island sends huge amounts of local property taxes and tourist taxes to the commissioners in Fort Myers every year. It’s the spot most of the people who come too Lee County want to come to and bring their families too. Why are we leaving its entrance barren of landscaping and filled with ugly plastic sticks?
Sandi Suter
Fort Myers Beach