Responding to countywide opposition to the elimination of Community Plans from the Lee Plan, the Board of County Commissioners yesterday voted to cancel the scheduled Oct. 7 hearing and to send the proposed amendments back to staff to develop a revised timeline for Commissioner review and public outreach. The Lee Communities Coalition(opens in new tab) press release is attached here(opens in new tab).
The Motion to discontinue any action on the Lee Plan and related Land Development Code amendments that eliminated Community Plans (CPA2026-00005) was made by Commissioner Kevin Ruane and seconded by Commissioner David Mulicka.
Commissioner Ruane took the lead and explained that he has not had the time to review the hundreds of pages of amendments, that his office has been inundated with emails and people, that the community is as enraged as he has ever seen, and that he does not want to have a gun to his head on something so important.
Commissioner Mulicka explained that he has not received the information necessary to evaluate the amendments, that communities have invested a lot of time in developing their plans and they are part of their identity in Lee County, that staff should have outreach meetings to provide communities with the opportunity to be heard, and that when he approved a plan review more than a year ago, he “never in a million years would have thought that it would have meant deleting the names of the communities out of the plan altogether.”
There are 17 Community Plan Areas in Lee County – with many having their own Chapters in the Lee Plan and their own Articles in the Land Development Code to meet the needs and challenges of their special communities – whether rural, coastal or agricultural, or otherwise distinct.
Captiva is one of them – with Chapter 23 in the Lee Plan and Chapter 33, Article IX in the Code amended by the Captiva Community Panel(opens in new tab) over the years to limit density and building heights, to prevent the subdivision of properties, to limit outdoor lighting and sign pollution, to protect our beaches, mangrove fringe and waterways, and to guarantee that a public meeting takes place on Captiva for Captiva-specific Plan and Code amendments, and for rezonings or variances. The proposed amendments relax or eliminate these protections.