At last week’s meeting of the Lehigh Acres Community Planning Panel Lee County Lee County Commissioner Frank Mann told members that the group should consider disbanding or joining with another group in the community so that the county can get information from just one official group.
“I know I might get myself in hot water here,” Mann said, but we on the County Commission and staffers in the county get calls and messages from various groups in Lehigh Acres, and sometimes, one group asks us to do one thing, while another group may ask for something else different.
The LACPP began nine years ago when community volunteers offered to serve on a board to plan the future of Lehigh Acres as other communities were doing at the request of the county to be included in the comprehensive plan.
Since then, a number of people have come and gone as members of the group. Today there are 15 members on the board and they meet once a month on the second Wednesday.
Just last month, chairman Edd Weiner, resigned and said he was moving to Punta Gorda. That brought Thomas Pfuner as interim chairman to conduct the meeting.
This suggestion from Mann gave the group an opportunity to reexamine its purpose and listening to Mann was difficult for some who have served on the LACPP since its inception.
The request from Mann came hard pain to sallow for at least one member of the LACPP. It was Frank LaRosa who has served on the board since the beginning, and who has been active in other affairs in Lehigh, and once served a time on the Lee County Health Systems board of directors as an elected member for the hospital group.
“It’s a little bit of a sore spot with me concerning the Community Council,” LaRosa said. “We have been an active group and in my opinion have done more in our time than they have done in all the years they have been meeting.”
But Commissioner Mann said it was time, he thought, for the members of the LACPP “to fold their tents,” as he put it and become a part of the Community Council in Lehigh.
During the Community Council Monday members of the LACPP were there to discuss with both groups. After some time to was agreed by both groups to have a smaller committee to meet and try to hammer out the details.
According to multiple sources the small committee has met and has worked out the deal to disband the LACPP and possibly offer seats to the LACPP members to those how wish to join the Council. The agreement still needs both boards approval before its final.
Once approved the ARC subcommittee of the LACPP will become a subcommittee Community Council.