Lee Plan paused after pushback

The Lee Board of County Commissioners will pause the process for proposed amendments to the Lee Plan and corresponding updates to the Land Development Code. As a result, the amendments will no longer be considered at the Board’s Oct. 7 meeting.

Commissioners directed staff to develop a revised timeline and conduct additional community outreach. The pause applies to Comprehensive Plan Amendment CPA2026-00005 (also called Lee Plan changes for specific communities). It does not apply to CPA2026-00004 (also called the Southeast Lee Plan).

At their Sept. 15 meeting, commissioners voted unanimously for the delay, including Commissioner Kevin Ruane.

“It just requires a lot more work,” he said. “There were over 100 people at LPA [Lee County Local Planning Agency], and I just want to make sure the public feels like they’re getting their opportunity.” He said at the meeting that he had “28 to go” regarding visits with the public who were concerned.

“The community is as enraged as I’ve heard the community before,” Ruane said. “So I don’t want anyone to feel like we’re rushing it.”

Commissioner David Mulicka said that with the speed and size of the document, “if it’s that hard for us to get the information to be able to evaluate it, to answer people’s questions intelligently, to know what is in there, to me that’s a challenge.” He asked for more time, and community meetings.

“I’d love to see staff have 17 community outreach meetings with whoever’s going to be affected by this, to give them the chance to be heard and to be able to reconcile their particular plan that they invested a lot of time [in],” he said.

Mulicka said he did not want people upset at the kitchen table that otherwise wouldn’t be. “I never in a million years would have thought that it would mean deleting the names of the communities out of the plan altogether,” Mulicka said. 

Commissioner Brian Hamman said he even had someone come up to him at church.

“The sweetest lady came up to me, and she’s like, ‘You’ve got to save Pine Island,’” he said. “And I said, ‘We are going to make sure we absolutely keep Pine Island the way it is.’”