Here we go again
To the editor:
Another of our island NGOs, FISH, has again bought property for another overly dense and large non-conforming building before obtaining the necessary zoning variances.
Right on schedule the Planning Commission again recommended approval. Again too, this building is unnecessary and comes with yet another $6.9 million grant from Lee County.
This massive FISH office building and distribution center will be erected on Periwinkle near Palm Ridge Road. We don’t need this massive building. FISH is a community service organization for Sanibel, and I support its work of providing a safety net for residents of Sanibel. FISH however has overstepped its role by providing social services for residents of other communities. As a matter of fact, its main function has become serving residents of mainland Lee County who have only a tangential connection to the island. It is wrong to use our limited community resources to do the job of Lee County. FISH has 10 full time employees and 10 volunteers working every day. That is more help than the residents of Sanibel need. This building is designed to accommodate this oversized staff. At some level of abstraction, all in the world are our neighbors, but this small community should not be tasked with educating, feeding and providing social services for the world, or even mainland Lee County residents. The point is the community in which these visitors reside is in the best position to aide them. So even if they voluntarily attend our school, they are still residents of the mainland and should seek their benefits there. What I oppose is creating a giant office building that provides better and possibly duplicate benefits as those provided in their home communities, thereby attracting to the island people who live and work on the mainland even if they sometimes work here.
The extra space and large size is purportedly designed to accommodate disaster relief, and conduct classes for its clientele who almost entirely live in Lee County beyond the causeway — at least that is what I gathered after listening to the Planning Commission hearing and FISH’s less than precise answers to direct questions.
The building is unnecessary because the island is already prepared to do handle both missions. In the aftermath of Helene and Milton, FISH served this community well by providing meals to the construction teams and residents and they did so in trying circumstances without this building. FISH could do that again without this monstrous building.
However, if FISH needs a new building, it should not be the proposed building which is over 12,300 square feet which makes it something like 3,745 square foot over that allowed by our zoning laws.
There is plenty of room in our other island facilities to conduct classroom and training work without the need for the proposed oversize rooms of this project.
During Ian, the Recreation Center served as a headquarters and in Milton and Helene which is not as severe, City Hall served as headquarters with other public buildings serving as relief centers. So this building is not needed for resilience.
FISH in those later two disaster arranged for a contractor to serve meals for construction workers, relief workers and residents. Clearly, FISH could play key role as a potential command center and relief distribution center but it does not need a building this size to accomplish that. Because relief will originate from outside the island, field facilities will clearly be necessary.
In the aftermath of the World Trade Center collapse on 9-11, NYC fed thousands of relief, and construction workers 24-hours a day for months from field kitchens and a dining hall erected in a large tent. The regular Army and our amazing Florida National Guard have units whose mission is exactly that. The military also provides field showers for its troops — remember MASH? The showers provided in the proposed building are in the open bays of the ground floor of the building, so field showers are no worse than the showers provided in the new building and the showers located there are likely to be swept away if there is another surge.
A building this size is simply unnecessary.
Amazingly, FISH was confident enough of Planning Commission approval to present only one non-conforming structure. FISH did not bother to provide the Planning Commission with a conforming alternative although a couple of the Planning Commissioners to their credit asked to see one. Also to their credit, a couple of commissioners asked direct questions about the community served by FISH, but the answers they received were frustratingly imprecise and vague. Yet, despite the fact that FISH did not offer to present a conforming plan and its imprecise answers, planning approved the project.
Again, as with Riverview 2, will we have to endlessly interrogate the City Council and FISH to find out if the city will again be required to guarantee another huge loan from Lee County at a time when our tax base has shrunk and the economy is uncertain? This is a time for fiscal restraint not profligacy.
Neither this project nor Riverview 2 is business as usual. We are experiencing stringent enforcement of our zoning laws against our citizens and lax to non-existent enforcement of our zoning laws when it comes to NGO proposals – no matter how unnecessary they may be. This should concern every taxpayer of Sanibel, especially those who cherish the small town character of our community and its goal of protecting its fragile eco-system.
With respect to FISH’s social welfare role in connection with the citizens of this polity, I would note that FISH provides Meals on Wheels to only 15 senior citizens residents of this island. The vast majority of its work is to provide food and other services for non-resident students and visiting workers — not workers who reside on the island.
Its school program is designed primarily and perhaps almost entirely to serve children who attend our school, but who don’t live on the island. These same services are mostly available in Ft. Myers as well through Lee County Social Services and the United Way with which FISH is closely affiliated. This project again puts the city in a precarious financial position of having to guarantee yet another Lee County loan for people who do not live on the island.
Lee County’s offers of “free money” is co-opting our local NGO’s which are integral to City of Sanibel self-government. By doing so, these agencies will be governed by contracts with Lee County which will severely constrain the discretion of the City Council of Sanibel to govern Sanibel in these areas which are critical.
Why have we become so focused on building untypically humongous and unnecessary projects on Sanibel? What is going on here? It seems to me that Lee County is looking for a new location for a social services office on this side of Ft. Myers and this will be it. FISH has become a large social services organization, larger than any conceivable need on Sanibel. Is FISH serving Lee County residents or the citizens of Sanibel? Servicing Lee County residents on this fragile island means more traffic when we are already overwhelmed with it during the months of the high season. This is a building for the other side of the causeway not here. I fear the next thing will be a proposal from City Council to fundamentally change the goals of the Sanibel Plan which to date has served us so well.
If this building is approved it should be approved without the requested variance.
Jamie Brunn
Sanibel