Fort Myers, FLIn a long and rambling 5-page letter to the Gateway Board of Supervisors, Gateway Golf & Country Club General Manager Greg Wetzel and the Club's Board of Governors continued with its cry of denial regarding its destruction of Wetland 47.
The Club has also made a new proposal to the residents which appears to be $15,000 LESS than a proposal the G.S.D. scoffed at several weeks ago. In Wetzel's letter there is nothing that states, as a "goodwill gesture", we would like to pay the residents back the $11,000 for the fine we caused. In other words, they still refuse to man up and admit they did wrong.
Wetzel, in the letter, patronizes the entire community and the Board of Supervisors as if we were 3rd graders in need of a detailed historical exotic plant lesson. Wetzel, of course, thinks the club made a "goodwill gesture" with its first insulting proposal to the community. And now the club appears to be asking the community to take even less. But that's the way life goes when you eat off gold plates and wipe away caviar with silk napkins. The board of supervisors will take up the letter tomorrow night at its 5:30 meeting. And they are already indicating it has "misstatements".
Wetzel accuses me as well as G.S.D. chairmain-on-hiatus Pete Doragh of "believing exotics need protecting". Hey Greg, I didn't write the fine. And whether or not I know the difference between a fern and a pepper tree has nothing to do with what your contractor did (see picture above). When I was given a tour of the wetland by a G.S.D. employee, even he stated "taking a tractor through a wetland is a no-no". That tractor was owned by a contractor you hired. As how does my limited knowledge of a certain class of weed have anything to do with the fact that you are basically stealing money from us. Let us not be cloudy about one big fact that all of us too-dumb-to-realize simple-minded meat-eating beer-drinkers do understand. As the American Express commercial goes...The Country Club hired the contractor that started the mower that damaged the wetland that caused the fine. Enough of the bob-and-weave.
It's amusing to me, and many others, that some $100,000 later for us - not them - Wetzel and his bosses
NOW decide we need a historical timeline of events. And, of course, that's because the board of supervisors suddenly got a spine and decided it wasn't going to be told what to do by former club president Ed Tinkle anymore. They also appear to be listening to the shouting from the community to stop spending our money on the country club. And perhaps they are finally going to try and recoup some of our wasted money. The jury is still out on that one. Residents should pay close attention and demand that the supervisors stand up for all the constituents of Gateway and not only the privileged few.
The bottom line. The country club needs to provide the district with a wetland 47 Conservation Easement in order for the district to avoid possible future fines with SFWMD. That's the clubs ace in the hole and the last we heard the club was not ready to hand the CE over to the district. Why doesn't the club just hand over the CE, apart from all the other issues in proposal number two? Let's separate that one issue from all the others. Give us the CE Greg. Are you willing to make that "goodwill gesture"? You know where the GSD office is. You know there is a meeting tomorrow night at 5:30. Why don't you deliver it with a big red bow on it? The answer is you won't because you guys don't really care if we get fined again do you?
