{"id":59017,"date":"2023-11-30T16:58:01","date_gmt":"2023-11-30T21:58:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=59017"},"modified":"2023-11-30T16:58:09","modified_gmt":"2023-11-30T21:58:09","slug":"will-you-be-governed-by-elected-or-appointed-leaders-in-lee-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2023\/11\/will-you-be-governed-by-elected-or-appointed-leaders-in-lee-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Will you be governed by elected or appointed leaders in Lee County?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The big question in Lee County is who will run the government and make the decisions that impact your life. An elected official or an appointed one?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The future of the Lee County government is going to look like it has for the last three decades, but that doesn\u2019t mean change is off the table. Think of it more like it\u2019s on hold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

State lawmakers are not backing off their push to have Lee County voters decide whether they want to elect a mayor and\/or single district commissioners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Instead of passing a law creating a referendum, they\u2019re going to hold a series of public meetings with the commissioners starting as soon as next month, but getting to that point proved to be a bit testy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

State Representative Mike Giallombardo wanted to set the record straight with Cecil Pendergrass.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cSo, you don\u2019t want people to be able to vote on how they elect county commissioners?\u201d Giallombardo said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cWell, they did that in 1996 with our current charter,\u201d Pendergrass said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lee County\u2019s current charter says voters elect five at large commissioners. Giallombardo thinks that\u2019s outdated and doesn\u2019t work for a county growing as quickly as Lee County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He thinks their commissioners should represent specific districts like Lehigh, Dunbar, Cape Coral, Fort Myers Beach and Estero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pendergrass likes things the way they are. That\u2019s why he sent Giallombardo and the rest of the Lee County delegation to Tallahassee a resolution opposing any changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat you did essentially say that you don\u2019t want the people that we voted on to have an opportunity on these issues yesterday,\u201d Giallombardo said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot at all. We have the opportunity, with the resolution, know the opportunity to do their charter review commission. We have a meeting monthly. Anybody can come speak on any subject,\u201d Pendergrass said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pendergrass said state legislators shouldn\u2019t be in Lee County\u2019s business. If the voters want to elect district-only commissioners, they can petition. They can work through the charter review commission or the current commissioners to put the question on the ballot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy would you want to increase government and at the same time suppress people voting? You can only vote for one commissioner in a single-member district,\u201d Pendergrass said. \u201cIf you look at how the system is set up, we have five commissioners voted at large, and they\u2019ve got to campaign countywide. They cannot focus and help with the constituent services that is needed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thursday\u2019s meeting was packed with people who wanted to get their points across.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The big question in Lee County is who will run the government and make the decisions that impact your life. An elected official or an appointed one? The future of… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":59018,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,32],"tags":[2612],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59017"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59017"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59020,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59017\/revisions\/59020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}