NAACP files ethics complaint against four Fort Myers officials

Did Fort Myers city leaders wrongly fire a minority owned business?

The NAACP has joined forces with the owner of Classy Chics Event Planning and Catering to file ethics complaints against four Fort Myers officials of discrimination, harassment and bullying.

These are strong words used in the ethics complaint directed at four Fort Myers city leaders, starting with the assistant director of public works.

“I was called an angry black woman by Donna Lovejoy,” said La’tasha Mann, CEO of Classy Chics.

With a 5-2 vote on April 17, the Fort Myers City Council terminated its contract with Classy Chics Event and Catering LLC, a black-owned business hired to provide catering services to the city owned Eastwood golf course.

The reason, Elgin Hicks, the director of parks and rec, gave city leaders at that meeting: “We just want to give our constituents the true golf experience that the course deserves.”

“What is making the golf course ‘a golf experience,'” Mann said.

Mann claims city leaders treated her unfairly as a minority owned business and said things like, “We were going to attract the wrong crowd,” Mann said.

Now, Mann, along with the NAACP, have filed ethics complaints against Lovejoy, Hicks, assistant city manager John Lege and senior supervisor Densie Finn.

“They terminate her contract, within a matter of 72 hours,” said James Muwakki, president of the Lee County NAACP. “They had brought another vendor in that’s white, so this was a conspiracy where they grouped up and attacked this black business.”