Panel hears variance request, keeps track of TDC funding
During the Captiva Community Panel’s May meeting, members heard a request for a variance on a home on Dickey Lane, received an update from the Captiva Hurricane Response Committee and briefly discussed the possibility of the Tourist Development Council funding the panel for the second year of their water quality study.
Engineer Ahmad Kareh addressed the panel about the Scott residence on Dickey Lane, requesting that the minimum street setback, designated as 20 feet by the Lee County Land Development Code, be reduced to a minimum of 15 feet for this particular single family residential house.
After several Dickey Lane residents said they had no complaint in regards to the request, the CCP unanimously voted in favor of granting the variance.
Panel member Nathalie Pyle then provided an update about the Hurricane Committee.
“The Hurricane Response Committee met last week [and] the plan is very well established and in place. There is, five years after a hurricane event, a bit of complacency going on in the community,” Pyle said, noting that the structural safety inspection yielded no new volunteers and committee members are working on establishing a meeting place in the event of an evacuation due to a hurricane.
“We have a communications committee that is ready to put out notices across the community should there be a threat of a hurricane. The next meeting will be July 10, just to have a summer check up on what’s going on and as always, www.MyCaptiva.info is the Web site that Beth Oden is maintaining and there is a wealth of information there, and so please use that as you’re planning,” Pyle concluded.
The last item on the agenda focused on the panel’s request to the TDC to grant funding for their water quality study through the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation from the TDC’s Beach & Shoreline Fund.
The final decision regarding funding will take place on Thursday, May 28, but CCP administrator Ken Gooderham and panel member Dave Jensen are working until then to convince the TDC that water quality is essential to health and well-being of the area’s tourist economy.
“They have a number of projects that are going to be on the table and I think we’re going to have to make a very strong plea to the TDC that water quality is in fact a tourist development issue,” Gooderham said.