Lee County has touched off a whirlwind of protest with residents and virtually every environmental group in the county protesting proposed changes to the Lee Plan they say will eliminate every individual community plan throughout unincorporated Lee County.<\/p>\n
The changes address both the Lee County Comprehensive Plan, which \u201cProvides the long-term vision for how the county should grow\u201d and the county\u2019s Land Development Code, which \u201cContains the specific rules and regulations that make that vision possible,\u201d as stated on the county\u2019s Facebook page. <\/p>\n
\u201cThink of the two as a puzzle,\u201d the explanatory post states. \u201cThe Lee Plan is the complete picture and the LDC includes the pieces that help that picture come together. Collectively, they ensure that growth in Lee County is thoughtful, coordinated and consistent with long-term community goals.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCommunity\u201d being a broad stroke of consistency that bundles Buckingham and Lehigh with communities like Captiva and Pine Island, critics say.<\/p>\n
Those critics maintain that individual community plans \u2014 of which there are 17 \u2014 have protected, well, individual communities for decades. The picture that snaps together when the new pieces are connected is one that disenfranchises local planning for a one-size-fits-all development process. Emphasis on development.<\/p>\n
If county officials were hoping for some standardization countywide, they got it \u2014 in addition to heavy hitters like the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation, a handful of community organizations led by the Greater Pine Island Civic Association have banded together as The Lee Communities Coalition to stop the process in its tracks.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolicies in place for 40 years that were developed through careful planning and the input of hundreds of thousands of Lee County residents should not be deleted with the simple strike of a red pen,\u201d said Bokeelia resident Nadine Slimak, in a commentary on behalf of The Lee Communities Coalition published in The Breeze last week. \u201cThis major change in community planning philosophy requires \u2014 in fact, demands \u2014 a careful and measured review by the residents that Lee County serves. We\u2019re not taking this lying down. The Lee Communities Coalition is saying in one voice that we will not go quietly into the night, that we will not go down without a fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
We are unapologetically \u201cpro business.\u201d <\/p>\n
We support private property rights.<\/p>\n
But not a one of us gets to build what we want where we want, and rezoning is not an entitlement that comes easy with the purchase of property whose current zoning is so designated for a reason.<\/p>\n
We agree, one size does not fit all.<\/p>\n
Lee County needs to put in a lot more time on this one.<\/p>\n
Breeze editorial<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lee County has touched off a whirlwind of protest with residents and virtually every environmental group in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-396801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}