Advocate urges Lee County to replenish Conservation 2020 fund, points to counting and code obligations

An environmental advocate told the Lee County Board of County Commissioners on Sept. 2 that the county should replenish the Conservation 2020 Land Program Fund and that recent staff recommendations to pause replenishment were inconsistent with the county's code and voter intent.

Marsha Ellis said staff recently recommended not replenishing the program fund and proposed a new tier system that retroactively downgraded two nominated properties, one of which is on Sanibel Island and lies in a high‑hazard flood zone. Ellis told commissioners the program has received broad public support and that voters have approved the Conservation 2020 millage in 1996 and again in 2016.

Ellis said roughly $47,000,000 of property is currently nominated in the queue while only about $19,000,000 remains in the fund. She said that, in 2021, an ordinance changed the funding structure with provisions that the acquisition fund should maintain a balance of no more than $100,000,000 and not less than $40,000,000, and that once the fund balance drops below the minimum the county must replenish the fund. She cited "section 11,535 through 11,542 of the Lee County Land Development Code, chapter 11, article 8" as the legal basis for the requirement.

Ellis asked the board to treat Conservation 2020 as a statutory obligation rather than an optional program and to use available repetitive‑flood green‑space funding where appropriate. Her statement referred to a previous reallocation of Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG‑DR) action plan funds that, she said, left the program without awards despite earlier allocations to buy repetitive‑flood properties.

The board accepted the public comment into the record. No board motion or vote on changing the Conservation 2020 fund balance was recorded at the Sept. 2 meeting.