Democracy Watch

Lee County applied this month for the Resilient Florida Grant Program, which aims to provide money to counties for coastal resilience planning. The purpose of creating a coastal resiliency goal is to address impacts of flooding and sea level rise that face Lee County.

The City of Fort Myers has been trying to link Midtown to Downtown since 2018.Matthew Leger presented the Hendry Street Pedestrian Mall as a possible way to bring together the two communities. He did so at a recent Fort Myers City Council meeting.

The Charlotte County real estate market is booming. This is great news for realtors, but the influx of out-of-state buyers has been frustrating and often devastating for local people who are in the market for a home.

The Lee County Board of Commissioners met this week to talk about cost increases of their current and future road projects due to inflation. Currently the costs of non-residential construction are going up about 8% a year, according to county transportation planners.

A shuttered Tex-Mex, Spanish and American food store and rows of run-down trailers sit across the street from a construction site in Immokalee. This site at the corner of Lake Trafford Road and North 19th Street is the future home of the Immokalee Affordable Housing Project, started by the Immokalee Fair Housing Alliance.The alliance formed after Hurricane Irma in 2017 when several disaster relief organizations, faith-based organizations, non-profits and caring people came together to provide disaster assistance.

A Republican-sponsored bill that passed the Florida House of Representatives could make the Lee County Superintendent of Schools a partisan, elected position. One Democratic Party official believes it's an attack on educators, while a co-sponsor of the bill calls it a way to increase accountability in district leadership.

Baseball fans and Southwest Florida businesses are more worried than ever about the possible loss of spring training this year. Major League Baseball officially has postponed any spring training games until March 5 at the earliest.

There are 1.5 million veterans in the state of Florida, with veterans in Lee County making up 10% of the county’s population.“One veteran's experience in homelessness is one too many,” Michael Raposa, CEO of St. Vincent DePaul CARES, said.

Pamela Ayers is a teacher whose job has been made even harder by the teacher shortage that is affecting all of Florida.Normally vacancies drop as a school year progresses, but this year the staff shortage has ballooned. The situation is even worse compared to this time last year, according to the Florida Education Association.

The Naples Airport is looking for ways to reduce the noise that bothers some people who live and work nearby. A study that's just beginning is looking for measures to cut back on the noise affecting neighborhoods.