BLOCK FIDDLERS CREEK APARTMENTS ON SEC 29 PRESERVE

Hello again fellow RPGE neighbors, Auto Ranch Road residents, and all others who share our concern for properly administered growth management policies in Collier County. One year ago in July 2022 this GoFundMe page was launched in the hopes of raising $10,000 to help cover the cost of opposing the Fiddler's Creek applications to rezone Section 29 for residential construction of a 750-unit, 8-building apartment complex. Thanks to all of us, that goal was met! The funds you contributed allowed us to investigate, oppose, and eventually remedy Fiddler's Creek's non-compliance with their 2018 federal permit. With the help of our legal counsel and several conservation groups, 9 months of high level communications with the US Army Corps of Engineers and the US Fish & Wildlife Service came to fruition in November 2022. Conservation Covenants were finally filed by Fiddler's Creek that placed Section 29 into the protected status that was supposed to be in place since 2017. But we are not finished. We may have won that battle, but the war is now scheduled to play out before the Collier County Planning Commission and the Board of County Commissioners in the coming months. And we need to come together again to make sure our voices are heard.

For anyone coming to this page for the first time, Fiddlers Creek is in the process of applying to the Collier County Board of Commissioners to rezone Section 29 (the approx 330-acre tract of land south of Royal Hammock Blvd on the other side of the canal) from Preserve to Residential. There is also a concurrent application to construct multi-family housing on 58 acres of the newly redesignated tract. They claim to be following a legal process that allows them to make such an application to the county. However, both an existing Conservation Covenant filed in November 2022, an Offsite Preserve Management Plan created in 2016, and a BCC Ordinance in 1998 that added Section 29 to the Fiddler's Creek Land map all expressly state that no residential construction was ever to be contemplated or allowed in Section 29, and that this land must be maintained as a Park or Preserve.

This fundraising effort is to raise an additional $15,000 to finish the task we started last year to protect Section 29 from the applicant's egregious attempt to redesignate and repurpose Section 29 from a Preserve into a multi-family residential housing complex. The funds raised will be used to prepare for upcoming Planning Commission and County Commission public hearings, and continue to fund the efforts of our attorney in this effort. In order to be heard and recognized at the hearings we will need to engage the services of several experts to testify on our behalf in the fields of Environmental, Land Use and Traffic planning. Without expert testimony, community voices that are unsupported by expert testimony will historically be dismissed as "not in my backyard" whining. The Planners and County Commissioners are not typically responsive or sympathetic to emotional objections from the community. Even though we can all agree that these objections -- such as the loss of an established haven for our treasured wildlife, the incompatibility of this large complex to blend with the surrounding homes, the adverse effects on our property values, the change in quality of life in the form of increased traffic & noise, the unknown and expected negative impact on flood control due to storm surge, loss of bird & animal habitat, etc -- even these passionate objections will likely not hold sufficient weight with the Commissioners to prevent this application from being approved without strong legal representation and expert witnesses on our side.

We are all working pro-bono on behalf of you and no individual working on this effort will be compensated. All donated monies will be used to fund legal counsel and expert witnesses. Regular updates will be provided on all disbursements. Any unused funds will be refunded in proportion to the individual donation. To discuss details on how and when funds were disbursed, please email me using the CONTACT button.

We have one and only one opportunity to block this project from happening. We can make a difference if we act in unison -- as an intelligent and informed community. Any donation, whether $10 or a thousand, will get us closer to our goal. Some say that Fiddler's Creek is too big and we cannot prevail. However we know that all things are possible, especially when we have effective advocates and experts on our side. This is your fight individually and our fight as a community. Let's stop Fiddlers here and now from stealing land they promised to maintain as a Preserve. We can win. Please help now.

Sincerely,

Friends of Section 29