Lee County holds a community forum with future neighbors

Lee County held a community forum Tuesday night for their proposed recycling facility. This comes after County Commissioners deferred their decision to close on the 50-acre land parcel.

This meeting was a public meeting and was held in the Pelican Preserve community.

If approved, the county’s new recycling facility would be just 1000 feet from the Pelican Preserve community. Their goal tonight, was to be transparent about this process with their possible soon to be neighbors.

Assistant County Manager Christine Brady says in order to be good neighbors to this community, they need to listen to the community.

“The board wants to hear from the community, they want to know what their concerns what their impacts are. They want staff to be able to have transparent conversations, so that there’s not a lot of ambiguity into what a project is, and how it may affect their community” said Brady.

Transparency’s the name, a new Recycling Facility is the game

With the county working hard to make sure everyone’s on the same page with the proposed project, they’ve created a webpage for the project on the county’s website. This, alongside public forums and answering questions from residents, is how they’re working to keep everyone informed.

In this process of hearing community members’ questions and concerns, Brady says the county has been able to learn just as much from the experience.

Brady says, “I think they you know, the thing that we’re pleased with is that there has been an ongoing dialogue with the community. They’ve been very proactive in providing some of their questions at a community level, which is great for us. Because from a staff level, it gives us the opportunity to do research to get our subject matter experts, so that we’re prepared when we have this conversation this evening.”

Some questions that neighbors and community members asked tonight at the forum involved project timelines, construction, traffic studies and noise levels.

FAQ’s on the Project

• The proposed site will be 1,000 square feet from Pelican Preserve
• This is a recycle only facility, they will not be dealing with garbage or trash
• Berms and vegetation will work as a sound barrier for the facilities surrounding

For more FAQ’s on this project you can visit the FAQ section on the county webpage for the project. You can also send unanswered questions to the following email, SolidWaste@leegov.com.

From one Homeowner to the County

Ken Garafano has been a homeowner in the Pelican Preserve community for over a decade. He says when it comes to a project like this, he wants to see more footage for that barrier in between.

“The issue is, and and we’re talking about 1000 feet, you’re talking about a fifth of a mile, right? That’s not very far” says Garafano.

He like many other homeowners WINK News has spoke with is worried about his property value as well. What does putting a facility like this within a mile of his home do to its value?

“So I think that when you put a facility like this, and and you know, this, the average property value is well over half a million dollars, this 2500 homes to jeopardize that kind of value” says Garafano. “

The county has not bought the land proposed to be used for this project yet. They did not give a timeline to WINK of when they expect to officially propose this land to be used for the project.