FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Pete Winton, Lee County Administration
              (239) 335-2777

BOARD OKs BUILDING MORATORIUM/ACTIVATES POST-DISASTER RECOVERY ORDINANCE

FORT MYERS, Fla. (August 17, 2004) - The Board of Lee County Commissioners today approved the following items during its weekly meeting:

State of Local Emergency - Extended the state of local emergency already in place for another seven days. The declaration allows the county to use emergency funds.

Disaster Recovery - Activated a Post-Disaster Recovery Ordinance (No. 95-14, seek link
http://www.lee-county.com/ordinances/PDF/1995/95-14.pdf). The ordinance allows county government greater latitude in getting things done, devoting resources and expediting processes to help in the recovery process. It also activates the Post-Disaster Recovery Task Force, which sets up a structure for providing recommendations to the Board of County Commissioners about recovery.

Building Moratorium - Enacted a five-day building moratorium (where Lee County has jurisdiction) in order to devote all resources available in the county's Community Development Department to damage assessment and reconstruction efforts. That means if, prior to the storm, you had permits, reviews, or inspections scheduled this week, those have been put on hold. The five days will end next Tuesday. Reconstruction permits will continue to be issued.

Services Update - Received updates from various county departments. Lee County Utilities' water and sewer operations are all working. The county hopes to have all traffic signals operational by next Tuesday. The county also will likely reinstate tolls on the Cape Coral and Midpoint bridges by the end of the week and on the Sanibel Causeway sometime early next week. The Causeway weigh station will begin operations Wednesday morning. Tarps are being shipped from FEMA in the next 24 to 36 hours and will be staged on Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel, Captiva and Cape Coral. Locations will be published when they become available. The electric companies - LCEC and FPL - both reported major progress on reinstating power with the good weather Monday. LCEC has 17,000 customers to go (excluding the barrier islands) and FPL has about 40,000 customers left in Lee County. Most of the power should be back on by late Thursday or sometime Friday. FPL has asked customers who do not have power by Wednesday morning to report the outage to 800-4-OUTAGE.