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Panel prepares to survey community on land development code

By Staff | Aug 11, 2010

Throughout September, Captiva property owners and registered voters will receive a postcard in the mail with instructions on how to provide input and comments on changes made to Captiva’s land development code over the course of the past year.

“We really tried to drive the survey based on questions and comments from people at the workshops, and some of the language is kind of long, but we wanted to keep it so that it wouldn’t take more than 15 minutes to get through,” said Panel Administrator Ken Gooderham.

The online survey will contain a series of pages, beginning with an introduction, the stated objectives of the land development code and a security mechanism to ensure that people can’t fill out multiple surveys.

“The postcards will include either their strap number, which comes from the property appraiser’s records, or their voter i.d., which would come from the elections office,” Gooderham said.

The security page will also ask the survey-taker to fill in a series of questions, such as if they own property on Captiva, where on the island they live and if they’ve attended the Panel’s workshops and read the final draft of the land development code.

Survey takers can find the final draft of the land development code at the Panel’s website, www.CaptivaCommunityPanel.com.

After the security page, the survey-taker will move on to four sections

“Our decision was to go with survey questions only on the items that we held workshops on to try to keep the language under control, so we cut out some of the things that were included in the land development code but hadn’t been focused on as much to try to get to the four items that have really been a concentrated effort in the past year,” Gooderham said.

The survey will cover changes made to language in the code regarding mangrove protection, water quality, signage and height restrictions. The first three items will display only the current regulations regarding each issue and the proposed language changes in the survey. Height restrictions will be accompanied by a chart denoting building restrictions corresponding to certain flood zones.

“If someone wants to know where their lot is, it will be available through a hyperlink,” Gooderham said.

Each section will ask the user whether they “Support,” “Don’t support” or “Don’t know” about the changes, and will provide them with the opportunity to make comments.

At the end of the survey, users will have another opportunity to provide comments.

After the survey concludes at the end of September, the Panel will review all the input provided by the community and will decide how to proceed with the land development code.

For more information about the land development code, Captivans can go to the Panel’s website, www.CaptivaCommunityPanel.com.