Lee Commissioner asks for island meetup on parking

Church land use attorney addresses Lee Commission

During the regular Lee County Commissioners meeting on Tuesday morning, March 4, several members of the Boca Grande community, as well as an attorney hired by the churches, spoke on the parking issue during the public comment period.

“We need to have them welcome this, the changes, and understand why the changes are being taken place, and hearing both sides of it will obviously help staff prepare that,” said Commissioner Cecil Pendergrass.

Commissioner Kevin Ruane was not in attendance this week; he has been leading the county staff in drafting a parking ordinance.

Lee County Manager Dave Harner confirmed that the Boca Grande parking item will be back on the agenda for the March 18 meeting to direct the ordinance change to a public hearing which would be two weeks from then, on April 1. Pendergrass suggested having a meeting in Boca Grande at the Community Center. “Yes, we can,” Harner said. 

“How do we inform the public, the community, which is an hour and a half away drive, but how do we inform them, so they don’t feel like they’re not being heard?” Pendergrass said.

Gary Cross, executive director of the Boca Grande Chamber of Commerce, spoke during public comment representing the island businesses. He read from a previously drafted letter from the chamber, expressing that they put “extreme value” on every parking place.

Larry Hannah followed Cross, speaking as a representative of “the community of Boca Grande with the exception of The Gasparilla Inn and the residents on the Gilchrist median that live adjacent to it,” he said. Hannah, who was a custodian of the Boca Grande Disaster Fund, spoke on behalf of the businesses on island that suffered damage from last hurricane season. “I delivered almost all those checks to those businesspeople, and they are scared to death of this parking issue,” he said. “They’re scared that they have had no input.”

Kimberly Whipple spoke to commissioners, also expressing the need for more community input. “We, as stakeholders, have not had the ability to give full input,” said Kimberly Whipple, who is the senior warden of the vestry at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church. “You all need the facts that are going into this … It seems to be a bad time. Right now, we are in a perfect storm of parking issues on the island because of parking being closed. The state park, two of the nearby beaches are closed. We have closed down public parking lots on the island because of construction that is being done at the Community Center … churches have been providing space for public events that happen normally on the island.”

Jay Whipple addressed the need for signage and enforcement, adding that there are 300 parking spots on island that are currently not available, not including at the state park at the south end of the island which has been closed since the hurricanes last fall.

Michael R. Whitt, an eminent domain and real estate attorney with Hahn Loesser who was hired by St. Andrew’s and the Lighthouse United Methodist Church, was also in attendance. 

“As I understand it, the ordinance is drafted, it’s moving through the process, this is going to be on an agenda on the 18th,” Witt said. 

“On behalf of my clients, we would like to be able to speak into that process now … please let’s slow this down, let’s hit a pause button and instead of having this go to public hearing on an ordinance that’s drafted that nobody in Boca Grande really has seen, viewed or had the chance to speak into, that you can pause it, maybe direct staff and the county attorney’s office to coordinate having a stakeholder meeting with the community in Boca Grande.”