Lee Plan overhaul: 125 residents pack North Fort Myers meeting

More than 125 people turned out in North Fort Myers to ask what Lee County is about to do to the community plans that hold back development in Buckingham, Bayshore, Lehigh Acres and North Fort Myers, and the county says the rewrite adds no density

Money & World

The Editorial Team · August 26, 2026

Empty dark leather armchairs along a row of wooden desks fitted with slim microphones inside a wood panelled legislative chamber, the far end of the room thrown out of focus. No person is in frame and no lettering, seal or sign is legible. Stock photo, not a photograph of this event.

Stock photo

Stock photo. Not the actual scene. Photo: Héctor Berganza / Pexels

What it changes

The sentence that matters in Lee County's own file is the last one on the case: the proposed amendments will not change allowable densities and intensities within Lee County. That is the county saying, in writing, that this is a reorganisation and not an upzoning. It is also not the whole of what a comprehensive plan does to the value of a lot. Density is the ceiling on how much can go on a piece of ground. A community plan is the set of extra conditions that sit under that ceiling, and in Buckingham or Bayshore those conditions are the reason the ceiling has not been reached. Rural character language, minimum lot sizes, limits on where utility lines may run and restrictions on what kinds of business may open are not density numbers, and a rewrite can move, consolidate or delete them while the density table stays exactly where it was. That is why residents at the North Fort Myers Community Center were asking about removals rather than about numbers, and it is why 'no additional density' and 'nothing changes for my street' are not the same statement. The one concrete example in the report points straight at this. Gulf Coast News says the updates include removing older rules about where water and sewer lines can go. Where the pipe may go is where the subdivision may go. In a county with large rural pockets, utility extension policy has historically done more to shape the map than the density table has, because a five acre parcel with no sewer is a five acre parcel regardless of what the future land use category permits. This desk did not read the amendment text and cannot say which policies are proposed for deletion, but the county's own cleanup case, CPA2026-00003, lists Lee Plan Policy 6.1.2 among the policies it amends, and that is a public utilities policy. Anyone who cares about this should read the actual policy list rather than the summary. The second thing worth pricing is timing, and it is short. Per Gulf Coast News the local planning agency takes this up on 31 August, which is next Monday, and the county commissioners hold a public hearing after that. In Florida a comprehensive plan amendment then goes to the state land planning agency for review before adoption, and Lee County's own case list shows two 2026 cases already sitting at DEO Review, so this cycle is already partly out the door. The practical consequence for a property owner in one of the four named areas is that the window to say something on the record is the local planning agency and the commission hearing, not the adoption vote and not afterwards. Objections that arrive after a plan is transmitted to the state are objections to a document that has already moved. The quality of life argument the residents made is the one that usually loses at this stage and wins later. Michael Musho's complaint was traffic, two or three hours a day of it, and Cheryl Fischer's was the pace of building around her. Neither is a legal standard. What the plan is required to do is provide for infrastructure concurrency, which is the requirement that roads, water, sewer and schools keep up with what is approved, and Becky Swigert of Lee County Community Development framed the amendments as improving the county's ability to plan for infrastructure and safety needs. Whether that is what the text does is a reading question and this desk has not read the text. But it is the hook. A resident who wants to be heard on overdevelopment has a better hearing arguing that a specific policy deletion weakens the county's ability to match roads to rooftops than arguing that growth feels like too much, and the county has just put that standard in its own mouth. Terri Lodge's objection, that the public is told it has input while the plan is overseen and changed anyway, is the oldest complaint in comprehensive planning and it is not answerable by this desk. What is answerable is where the record gets made. It gets made on 31 August.

More than 125 residents packed the North Fort Myers Community Center on Tuesday evening to press Lee County on proposed changes to the Lee Plan, the county's long term blueprint for managing growth, Gulf Coast News reported.

The concern the outlet reports is specific. Communities including Bayshore, Buckingham, Lehigh Acres and North Fort Myers currently have their own rules inside the Lee Plan, and residents say those rules are what protects them from overdevelopment. What they came to find out was which of those rules the county intends to change or remove.

Cheryl Fischer, a Buckingham resident, told the outlet:

"We're just tired of the overdevelopment. I mean, it's crazy. I don't want it to affect my way of life. And that's what it's doing."

Bayshore's current plan, per the report, is built around keeping a rural character of farms, horses and fewer homes.

Michael Musho, who lives in Bayshore, put his objection in hours:

"We can't make it to kids' ball games. We can't coach a team because we end up having to sit in traffic, burning gas for two, three hours a day. So where's the quality of life with all this growth?"

What the county says it is doing

County staff told the meeting the changes are meant to simplify and standardise the planning process across Lee County without increasing the amount of development currently allowed, the outlet reports.

The examples Gulf Coast News lists are removing older rules about where water and sewer lines may go, allowing more types of business in designated parts of Lehigh Acres, and planning for mixed use development in North Fort Myers, where homes, shops and services could be built closer together.

Becky Swigert of Lee County Community Development framed it this way to the room, per the report: "Our goal tonight is to help improve clarity and consistency. The goals of the amendments create predictability for everyone, improve the county's ability to plan for infrastructure and safety needs, and it maintains the protection of the public health, safety, and welfare of the residents." She added that the Lee Plan remains a broad protection that stays in place.

Not everyone accepted it. Terri Lodge of Buckingham said:

"If the public is supposed to have input, why should we think that they can oversee that change and all of their plans so that we have no voice? I mean, it's our county. We have no voice."

The case file, and what it says in the county's own words

Gulf Coast News does not give a case number. Lee County publishes its 2026 Lee Plan amendment cycle as a public case list, and this desk read it directly on this run. It carries five cases.

Only one of them is a county wide rewrite of the plan's elements rather than a single site application, and only one is marked as being in public preparation rather than private staff review: CPA2026-00005, Future Land Use Element Update. The county's own description of it says the amendments were directed by the Board of County Commissioners, that they are meant to increase efficiency and reduce unnecessary regulations while maintaining the protection of public health, safety and welfare and meeting state requirements, and that they reach the Lee Plan Vision, the Future Land Use Element, the Transportation Element, the Conservation and Coastal Management Element, the Historic Preservation Element, Administration, the Glossary and the plan's appendices in order to relocate certain provisions.

It ends with this sentence: "The proposed amendments will not change allowable densities and intensities within Lee County."

That is the county's written version of what staff told the room. Identifying CPA2026-00005 as the amendment behind Tuesday's meeting is this desk's own match on scope and status, not something the county or the outlet has stated.

A second case on the same list, CPA2026-00003, Lee Plan Cleanup Amendments, is already at state review. Its published description names the specific policies it touches, among them Lee Plan Policy 6.1.2, which is a public utilities policy. That is consistent with the water and sewer example in the report, and that connection is likewise this desk's reading rather than a county statement.

What has not been established

No agenda, staff report or amendment text was obtained for any case in this cycle, so nothing here describes what any policy would actually say after the rewrite.

The 31 August date comes from Gulf Coast News, which reports the local planning agency is scheduled to review the proposal that day, with a public hearing before county commissioners to follow. It was not confirmed against a county agenda: the county's events calendar renders through script and carried no agenda text, the local planning agency committee page returned an error, and Lee County Community Development is carrying a notice that its document and committee search is under maintenance this week.

WINK News also covered the meeting. Its report was not read here, because winknews.com returned a rate limit error to two attempts on this run.

More than 125 people turned out in North Fort Myers to ask what Lee County is about to do to the community plans that hold back development in Buckingham, Bayshore, Lehigh Acres and North Fort Myers, and the county says the rewrite adds no density

What the county says it is doing

The case file, and what it says in the county's own words

What has not been established

Lee County logged three more boil water notices on Tuesday, two of them at the same Heron Coach Way address three hours apart, and lifted the Chandler Avenue notice after ninety six hours

Twelve of the 163 children recovered in Florida's largest child recovery operation are credited to the Fort Myers region, and the state's own release does not say the twelve were found here

Northbound Interstate 75 at Naples is open again, the state's remarks field on the mile marker 111 fatality now reading roadway open, ending a second full closure that stood for about an hour and a quarter