Fort Myers on Wednesday hosted its first of four community workshops that will help update the city’s comprehensive plan.
That is a document designed to guide the future actions of a community. It’s supposed to provide a plan to balance economic growth, resiliency, quality of life and character of the community.
The state requires the plan to be updated every seven years. Fort Myers last updated its plan in 2017.
The workshop was hosted by the City of Fort Myers Community Development Department and a consulting firm: Calvin, Giordano & Associates, Inc.
Over the next 18 months, the consultants will take into account the feedback they receive at the workshops. Luis Serna, the planning director for the Tampa Bay region of Calvin, Giordano & Associates, Inc., said the city wanted an outside consultant who's done this for other communities.
“We're working closely with staff, so it's not like we're driving the process,” Serna said. “They wrote the scope of work, and then we gave them ideas. So there was a lot of back and forth. So, we're really facilitating the city's process.”
Fort Myers officials and the consultants are hoping these workshops foster public engagement and give them input on what residents want their city to look like in the future.
“The city wants this document to be relevant to the city, relevant to the future. So we really want their (the community’s) input,” Serna said. “Every community has a comp plan, but most people don't know about it because it gets adopted, then it sits on the shelf until it's time to update it. There's very little public input when it is updated so we want this to be a relevant document to the community, and we really want to know what they're thinking.”
After the series of community workshops, the consultants will edit and update the current comprehensive plan. Fort Myers staff will review the plan before it goes to the Fort Myers Planning Board for recommendations. After this, the Fort Myers City Council will review it before sending it to the state government for approval. After approval, the City Council will adopt it.
Diana Giraldo, newly elected to Fort Myers City Council Ward 2, said these workshops are an opportunity to align the wishes of the community with a comprehensive plan.
“This involvement is so necessary and important, just because we want to make sure that we all base our opinions about the challenges and the opportunities, and if they're adding the comprehensive plan, then we're able to implement them into policy,” Giraldo said.
Some attendees agreed that flood prevention is one of their top concerns.
“We’ve all faced three major hurricanes in the past two years. The downtown, I don't know how, I don't know why, there's a business left. I would think they'd all like run off and set up somewhere else,” Ann Martindale, Fort Myers resident, said. “So, for me, this is an opportunity to make it really clear that this is a top priority, and I think they need to address it.”
Others agreed they were ready for changes to be made. Fort Myers resident Lynn Stewart is on the Fort Myers Historic Preservation Commission and the Dean Park Board. She said she believes the implementation of past projects could have been better. She added that she hopes that this will not be the case with the updated comprehensive plan.
“I think implementation of studies that have been done of improvement and development plans, like for Gardner's Park, for the East Fort Myers, for the MLK corridor, these studies have been out there. They probably cost thousands of dollars to do, if not a lot more money, and then nothing's implemented. They just sit there,” Stewart said.
She said she is eager to see change.
“Let's get up and go. Let's do something. I don't think any of us have seen anything done,” Stewart said.
Serna said he wants to dig into some of these issues more at the next workshops.
“We want to develop some themes and values for the community that we will roll into goals, objectives and policies in the comp plan,” Serna said.
The first workshop took place at the Collaboratory in Fort Myers, but Fort Myers staff said they are hoping to host the other workshops at other locations. A date for the next workshop is yet to be announced.