Guest commentary: Protect Captiva needs your help
In direct response to Lee County’s efforts to increase building heights and density on Captiva, Adam Botana, our elected representative to the Florida House of Representatives, has offered to sponsor a bill to create a Captiva Island Conservation Area to protect and maintain Captiva’s current building heights and density.
The legislation, modeled after the Gasparilla Island Conservation District Act which protects building heights and density on Boca Grande, would do the following for Captiva:
– Limit building heights to the current 28 feet above base flood elevation.
– Limit density (including hotels and motels) to the current three units per acre.
– Limit zoning to what exists currently.
– Permit the build back of nonconforming buildings damaged by natural disaster in compliance with updated federal flood elevations without a reduction in use, density, intensity, size or square footage of the damaged buildings.
In order to get the legislation to the floor of the Florida House and eventually approved by the full Legislature, we need an immediate show of support from our community. Our state senators and representatives in our local delegation will be meeting on Nov. 30 to discuss the bill, and they need to hear from us as soon as possible.
Please send an email with the following or similar message to each of our elected state officials.
“We support Representative Botana’s efforts to create a Captiva Island Conservation Area which will protect our fragile barrier island and its vulnerable infrastructure and population by maintaining Captiva’s current building heights and density. We ask our Local Delegation to do everything possible to assist in the passage of this vital legislation.”
Our elected state officials’ email addresses are listed below:
– Rep. Tiffany Esposito at Tiffany.Esposito@myfloridahouse.gov
– Rep. Mike Giallombardo at Mike.Giallombardo@myfloridahouse.gov
– Senate President Kathleen Passidomo at Passidomo.Kathleen@flsenate.gov
– Senate President Designate Ben Albritton at Albritton.Ben@flsenate.gov
– Sen. Jonathan Martin at Martin.Jonathan@flsenate.gov
– Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka at Jenna.Persons@myfloridahouse.gov
– Rep. Spencer Roach at Spencer.Roach@myfloridahouse.gov
– Rep. Adam Botana at Adam.Botana@myfloridahouse.gov
Thank you for helping to protect Captiva.
The Protect Captiva Coalition represents a group of stakeholders on Sanibel and Captiva, including the Captiva Civic Association. For more information, visit the CCA at https://ccacaptiva.org/.