Lee County School Board Tax Payer Meeting regarding Gateway High School – Tuesday, June 6th from 6PM to 9PM

This Tuesday, June 6th, at the Lee County Public Education Center from 6PM to 9PM there will be a community forum for the high school site selection.

The Gateway High School Group is asking for supporters to come out to this school board meeting and show the community backing for the Gateway High School.

 

The Gateway High School Support Group referenced the following tax ramifications affecting all Lee County residents in regards to the high school site selection of Alva versus Gateway:

1. Per LCSD: Alva has 185 students within 2 miles of the proposed site. Gateway has 1,825. Which means tax payers will have to pay for 35 school buses at $100,000 each plus an average $35,000 per year to operate each bus. Students within 2 miles of the school will not be provided transportation. Gateway will require significantly less busing saving tax payers millions of dollars.
2. Utilities: When Gateway was being developed, the proposed site was expected to be a school. Therefore, all the utilities are available right up to the site. The closest water main to the Alva site is more than 10 miles, requiring digging up 10 miles of highway and millions more of your tax dollars.
3. Water Treatment: Gateway has a sewer system. Alva does not. LCSD said it would need to build an on-site water treatment plant to handle sewage. That water will then be released into the ground. The expected cost to tax payers is “estimated to be $10-$15 million” just to build the plant on site.
4. Fire Service: Gateway has water mains and fire hydrants up to the property. Alva does not. The Alva site would require “storage tanks be placed under ground” to provide water in the event of a fire. These tanks will require maintenance. More expense to the tax payer. And how much water is required to put out a fire of a 2,000 student High School? Will there be enough water in the tanks? What about massive brush fires?
5. Safety: Alva is a rural community with country lanes. There are no sidewalks, shoulders, bike paths or medians on most of these unlit, winding lanes and the county has no plan of upgrading these roads currently. One Alva resident said the road the school would be located is “not wide enough for 2 pickup trucks to pass without one yielding to another.” We have heard of too many fatalities on these type roads in Lee County recently. How long before an inexperienced student driver dies due to a head-on collision on a dark, foggy morning on one of these roads. Gateway has, wide, fully lit, county maintained roads, bike paths, sidewalks and wide shoulders for student and driver safety.

Safety of our children and grandchildren are paramount, of course. And there are numerous other reasons Gateway is a better choice for this school besides the additional tens of millions of dollars to build in Alva and the massive additional maintenance and up-keep cost required each and every year. In fact, I cannot think of a single reason to build a school of this size in a community who largely doesn’t want it, with a population that can’t support it, at a cost that will be millions of dollars over and above the cost of the Gateway site just to satisfy the selfish interests of a few.

Please join the Gateway High School Support Group at the School Board meeting on June 6th and show your support for fiscal responsibility and to tell our elected school board officials to do the right thing for Lee County students, families and tax payers.

 

 

More information can be found at the Gateway High School Support Group Facebook page – www.facebook.com/groups/718393188323114

The Lee County Public Education Center is located at 2855 Colonial Blvd, Fort Myers, FL 33966.

 

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