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. 

Lee County Commissioners will be discussing an extension of the contract for beach renourishment that Gasparilla Island has with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at their meeting on Tuesday, May 17. 

Artist, environmentalist, lover of people and nature, longtime Boca Grande institution Carroll Swayze is moving. She is closing her Englewood studio and moving somewhere not too far away. She can’t be too specific because the deal is still in process, but she is looking forward to whatever is around the next corner.

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.