Lee County resident Marsha Ellis took her turn with a microphone. She was limited to three minutes during the public input portion of one of a number of Resilient Lee meetings. She used every second of that time—plus a few seconds more, as her comments ran into overtime.

It was precisely the type of input Lee County Commissioner and Resilient Lee Task Force leader Kevin Ruane expressed hope for receiving, and the type the federal government requires. The first of dozens of public forums regarding up to $1.1 billion in federal grants to help recover from Hurricane Ian began in April and continued through May. There also were more than 4,000 responses to an online survey about how Lee County should prioritize hurricane recovery funds.

By Nov. 19, the Department of Housing and Urban Development will review the task force’s recommendations. Grants will be awarded within the next six years. But as of May 26, the final installment of the first round of meetings, no one knew exactly how or where those funds would be awarded. That day also marked the deadline for submitting proposals for the grant money.

“I want to emphasize,” said Matt Caldwell, Lee County Property Appraiser and a member of the task force, “the action plan is not the end-all, be-all.”

Cape Coral Mayor John Gunter, one of 13 elected officials within Lee County and its municipalities on the task force, added: “We have to make the argument that $1.1 billion isn’t enough. It’s very important for us to do our homework.”

HUD requires 70% of the funds go toward housing for people making the median income of $85,000 or less. The remaining 30% can be dispersed to other causes, such as infrastructure hardening, parks and recreation, etc.

Lee County is also eligible to receive up to $848 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation and up to $483 million from the U.S. Economic Development Administration.

As Lee County continues to rebuild from the devastation of the Sept. 28 storm that especially decimated Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel Island, it will have to do so with the conflicting interests of the public and the task force regarding the complex financial math problem faced by developers. They often need more density to minimize financial risks—and maximize profits—when building apartment complexes.

Housing and homelessness (54%), economic development (38.5%) and environmental issues (35.3%) were the top concerns expressed by the public for how the funding should be spent.

The public also expressed concerns about storm gentrification. There were concerns relayed at the meetings about heightened costs in areas where recovery efforts would improve infrastructure and spur development.

The task force recommended deregulating and making it easier to increase density throughout Lee County—despite arguments against doing so from the public, as well as some of the task force members. Holly Smith, a Sanibel city council member and former mayor, and Bill Veach, a Fort Myers Beach town council member, reminded the public and the task force that their municipal governments were formed to guard against increasing housing density and that those regulations should be honored in the course of hurricane recovery.

Ruane assured them that they would be.

“We are in a high-hazard area,” Smith said during the public forum. “Our codes should be different. Deregulation to reduce costs of housing; I’m not sure that’s an actual item for us to consider. An increase in density is not something we would support. We have a referendum against that.”

The island on which most of Fort Myers Beach’s incorporated area sits just couldn’t handle many more people on it, Veach told Gulfshore Business.

“We have one, two-lane road,” Veach says of Estero Boulevard. “That’s really the constraint that prevents us from adding density. We have 10,000 potatoes in a five-pound bag.”

Lee County also could take this as an opportunity to further reenvision lands known as the DR/GR, said Chris Corrie, a Bonita Springs city council member.

The DR/GR was about 80,000 acres designated in the 1980s as a “Density Reduction/Groundwater Recharge” area, where only one house per 10 acres was allowed to be built, according to Lee County land development codes. Those codes were changed in 2015, allowing one home per acre. A 10,000-home subdivision is being planned for that area.

“We should reassess the DR/GR for affordable and workforce housing,” Corrie said. “We really need to assess whether or not there’s a responsibility. If we want to control how housing is built … I think we need to have a serious conversation about that.”

In addition to the Resilient Lee Task Force, there were eight related branches covering different topics that met throughout April and May to provide feedback in addition to the public forums, which were held in communities across the county.

Those other task force branch topics included planning and capacity; economic recovery; infrastructure; housing; education and workforce; natural resources; health and social services; and cultural resources.

Tanya Shannon, the deputy director of recovery for Hagerty Consulting, ran the two-hour slideshow presentation at the May 26 meeting. She is one of up to 25 staff members from the consulting company working on a contract basis for Lee County. Hagerty is charging the county $60 to $235 per hour for each staffer, depending on their role, for their expertise in navigating the federal funding that involves at least 26 government agencies.

Lee County Director of Communications Betsy Clayton did not know how much of the $1.1 billion would go toward paying consulting fees. The county had not tracked the hours worked by Hagerty as of May 26.

“Lee County has used a cost recovery consultant for every major storm going back to Charley (in 2004),” Clayton wrote in an email to Gulfshore Business, as requested by Lee County Commissioner Brian Hamman, whose signature is on the document approving Hagerty as the consulting firm.

“The county doesn’t have the in-house expertise nor manpower to entirely put together the massive amount of backup information required by FEMA, the State and HUD to receive cost reimbursement and federal grants. Each program has a percentage that is reimbursable for administrative costs, and Hagerty will be well within those parameters.”

Hagerty employees declined interview requests about its efforts and methodology. But Jessi Widhalm, the company’s director of communications, responded via email.

“Rebuilding and recovering from major disasters, such as hurricanes, can take years—often due to the breadth and overlap of federal programs,” Widhalm wrote. “Currently, more than 30 federal agencies support over 60 disaster recovery programs. So, while significant federal funding is available to disaster-impacted communities, it is often difficult for recipients to navigate the complexities and compliance requirements. We help our clients gain access to, manage and maximize the various federal resources they are eligible for and entitled to receive so their community can recover in a compliant, results-driven manner that increases their resilience against future disaster risks and losses.”

The county government selected Hagerty in 2019 out of five applicants. Only eight are qualified to do work in Florida, said Ruane, who was elected in November 2020.

“It allows us the opportunity to maximize our funding,” Ruane said.

Ruane described Resilient Lee as a great collaboration.

“Working together is how we came back on Day One, on Day Two, on Day Three and on Day Four,” Ruane says of the storm’s immediate aftermath.