Fort Myers, FL.
Any reasonable person looking at the wetland 47 debacle would come to the rightful conclusion that the Gateway Golf & Country Club is screwing this entire community and that a gullible Board of Supervisors was negligent in their responsibilities to represent residents.
The Gateway Golf & Country Club has been maintaining and mowing Wetland 47 for its golfers for decades. That is backed up in an Ed Tinkle public audio tape that I can e-mail to anyone who wants it. The Gateway Golf & Country Club hired the contractor that did the damage toWetland 47 that resulted in a fine that we paid and legal fees we continue to pay. The residents have done nothing - nothing - throughout this entire process to deserve losing $100,000.
Of course it takes an engineering degree for anyone to figure all of this out, and just when you think you do, a real engineer starts speaking and your eyes roll into the back of your head. I will do my best to explain this to you and back it up with documentation from all parties involved. Keep in mind I am merely the publisher of a piddly diddly newsletter and have zero engineering experience.
Here are some facts. The Gateway Golf & Country Club owns Wetland 47, and for some unexplainable reason, the district (all of us) are the permitee. All that means is that if something goes wrong on a wetland, we get fined, not the owner. In 2008 the Country Club hired a contractor, Friendly Fire, who ran a tractor through wetland 47. That's a no-no. Wetlands are precious on this planet, like manatees children under 3, and we mustn't soil the vegetation. Those are not weeds people. They are exotics. Check.
The agency that looks after the precious wetlands is known as SFWMD, South Florida Water Management District. They caught wind of the damage and issued a fine. To us. Not the country club. To us. Read the violation. Note the signature on the bottom. Dear old Bob, your unelected and charistmatic board chairman. Keep in mind, Nielson is a member of the Gateway Golf & Country Club. Nothing fuzzy about that though? Nahhh!
For the last 6 months or so the district and the country club have been holding meetings, chatting with each other on the telephone, probably having frocha lattee's at Starbucks for all we know. They were supposed to be working out a deal so this one small piece of property did not continue to cost the residents money. Not only were you fined $11,800, but SFWMD has kindly asked you to put the wetland back the way it was. Now get in their and figure out how to make those weeds, uh, I mean exotics grow back. And of course that "remediation" will cost tens of thousands of dollars. Who's going to pay for that? I'll give you one guess.
To make matters just a tad more confusing, SFWMD wants a Conservation Easement. A CE is a legal agreement between a landowner (the country club) and a qualified organization (The CDD. Although with Nielson as the chair, think of it as a loosely qualified organization) that restricts future activities on the land to protect its conservation values". OK, got that? The problem is that the word agreement is in the definition and that's not going to happen being that the country club just this week told the district to pound sand. Ed Tinkle wrote the following e-mail to the district and SFWMD: " I thought we made it perfectly clear with Brian (Lamb) and the rest of those present at the meeting, ie no inter-Agreement between the Club and the CDD----NO conservation easement. How can it be made any simpler? Ed.
That sounds pretty simple to me. Sounds like he's saying SCREW YOU! SFWMD has given the district until April 15th to submit the CE and other paperwork. If not, more fines are coming our way.
