At its spring quarterly meeting Thursday, May 5 the Gasparilla Island Bridge Authority had some interesting news about the traffic flow in recent days, particularly about two days this past March. GIBA Executive Director Kathy Banson-Verrico gave a report on the traffic passing through the toll booths during the first six months of the fiscal year. She reported that traffic numbers were up. Cash tolls were about 13 percent above the same time last fiscal year. Customer service tolls, or bridge passes, were up by about 10 percent, and overall traffic was up eight percent. She said this represented about 47,000 more vehicles than the number from the same period last year. 

Among those items that were discussed were solar panels. Board members had asked Lee County at their last meeting to do some research into how other counties and localities deal with the visual impact of solar panels, to which Lee County Attorney Amanda Swindle responded.

Now is the time to be diligent in picking up all furniture, toys, tents … pretty much everything from the beach. Turtles – both adults and hatchlings – can get stuck on or in these items and cannot turn around. If left out of the water too long, they will die. That includes trash, so please pick up after yourself if you are spending the day on the beach.

“Joe will be conducting activities for our guest families during season,” he said, “and when The Inn is closed for the summer, he will be conducting a camp for employees’ children. We needed a family program: It’s one of the things that was missing here. We had kids’ activities, but not as much for families. Kids are coming more and more throughout the entire season, not just for spring break, and Joe is a perfect fit. He spent more than two decades with Lee County and we know how well he deals with kids through our own experiences with him, and watching how he interacts with our own kids and how much they love him. So many families have built relationships with Joe on island, so we knew it would work out very well.”

Concrete artificial reefs have been used for many years, including at the environmental restoration of the Mercabo Cove at the northern end of Gasparilla Island. The new aspect of such reefballs is the inclusion of cremated remains. This allows people to have a final resting place that can help in the effort to restore marine enviroments and establish new habitat for fish and other sea life.