Collier County Board of County Commissioners

Collier County Commissioners held a town hall Tuesday night with representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), and the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). For nearly three hours, residents asked questions and expressed their frustrations as they seek help recovering from Hurricane Ian’s catastrophic damage.

Throughout Southwest Florida, primary voters will cast ballots in a number of county commission and city council races including seats for Lee County Commission, Fort Myers City Council, Cape Coral City Council, and a number of local ballot referendums for voters in Cape Coral, Marco Island and Collier County.

As drought grips Southwest Florida, and the threat of wildfires grows stronger, forest managers are issuing burn bans so that campfires don’t become wildfires. Collier County has joined Lee, Charlotte and Hendry counties in putting in temporary rules against burning stuff. Sarasota County has a year-round rule against burning yard waste. And the South Florida Water Management District has banned most burning on its lands, too.

The Collier Board of County Commissioners unanimously approved adding 12 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) positions to the county’s Emergency Medical Services (EMS) division.The hiring of 12 people is supposed to ensure the county’s EMS operations has sufficient staffing to support ambulance services, reduce overtime for paramedics and Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and to provide plans for EMS expansion throughout the next two years.

Marshall Goodman, 64, recently promised government officials that he can “spark a revitalization” of private enterprise in rural Central Florida. In order to do that, he told officials that he needs taxpayers to finance his $40 million plan to build and operate five 20,000 square-foot business incubators — where fledgling companies can pay a fee for office space and management training — in small towns in Polk County. It's similar to a claim he made in Collier County a few years ago.

Collier County Commissioners have unanimously approved spending nearly $5 million on three beach renourishment projects to mitigate the normal effects of erosions along shorelines in the county.

Collier County has started making improvements to high traffic roads as part of a multi-million-dollar plan to accommodate its growing population. Commissioner William McDaniel shares a detailed layout of the plan that will improve three key interchanges in the county’s urban area.

At the Sep. 9 public hearing, Collier County commissioners passed a motion to set Conservation Collier’s new amended budget for 2021-2022 at $25,182,400. This amended budget is nearly a $25 million increase from its 2020-2021 adopted budget of $385,100.

We are all connected by the environment we share. The Earth is our home. This is the space where we share the environmental stories that caught our attention this week in Florida and beyond.

State health officials reported 4,115 new COVID-19 cases, Wednesday, for a total of 790,426 cases. The Florida Department of Health also reported 66 new coronavirus related deaths, Oct. 28, increasing the statewide death toll to 16,775 fatalities.Over the past seven days, the single-day average number of new infections reported stands at 3,983 cases. The average number of daily deaths reported over the past week comes to nearly 52 fatalities a day.