George Mindling Column 4-16-2004 - Time to Build New Highways

Time to Build New Highways is Right Now

We loved it when the whole building would shake. Everybody would look around to see if any damage was done to the classroom. West Miami Junior High School was directly adjacent to the new Palmetto Expressway being built just a few hundred yards west of the band building. A canal, which ran from the Coral Gables Waterway to the Tamiami Canal, was between the new roadwork and the school, but that was it. Dynamiting went on during regular school hours, and we seventh-graders just loved it. The teachers tried to maintain their composure, but every once in a while, their eyes would dance around the room with the look of "Why now?"

Back then, the Palmetto was so far away from Miami, they didn't even build overpasses north of Okeechobee Road, still relying on stop signs on streets like 103rd Street, where cows still watched the sparse traffic whiz by. Today, the Palmetto is part of the main thoroughfare system in Miami-Dade County.  Huge shopping centers have stood for more than 30 years where pastures once dominated the countryside. Greater Miami has long since expanded past the now venerable expressway, being supplanted by the Florida Turnpike Extension, which parallels the old Palmetto several miles to the west.  It too is no longer outside the greater Miami area, being a regular traffic bearer for most people who work in downtown Miami but live in the communities such as Kendale Lakes and the Hammocks.

The growth and expansion of Florida's east coast is now catching up with Southwest Florida. Recent Sun editorials have highlighted the inadequacy of our current network of highways. The seemingly daily closure of I-75 due to traffic accidents proves constantly that alternatives are needed now, not just in 20 or 30 years.  When a single truck accident can close our one main evacuation route for days, warning flags should go up with every planner in the area.

I have always supported a new link to the Florida Turnpike system, a toll road that runs from Wildwood, south of Ocala, to just south of Homestead. I would like to see a new turnpike link leave the current turnpike at Orlando and head southwest to Naples.

Access to the Southwest Florida Turnpike extension could be easily made from Charlotte County via State Road 31, or perhaps even U.S. 17. There are other alternatives to the heavily traveled 1-75, but so far there has been no planning other than multilaning the already busy highway.

One thing is certain: U.S. 41 does not adequately provide an alternative to traffic rerouted off the interstate, other than as an emergency bypass. Your kids will always remember if the opportunity to build new highways was ignored by their parents. They will live here 40 years from now-and so will their kids. The days of blasting next to a school are gone, and if we aren't smart, so will the opportunity to build needed highways while the property is still affordable.

George Mindling © 2004

George Mindling Column 3-19-2004 - Wal-Mart invests in growth

Wal-Mart invests in growth

Wernher von Braun once said, "One test result is worth a thousand expert opinions." Not that we don't have a thousand expert opinions here in Charlotte County.

On the other hand, the Wal-Mart Corporation, planning to expand its stores here. has its test results. The area from the existing Supercenter in Venice to the Punta Gorda store has already been targeted for growth. The Punta Gorda store has been planned for a Mediterranean-style rebuild, taking the store from just under 100,000 square feet to just over 192,000 square feel, with parking for 693 cars. The new Wal-Mart stores planned for Kings Highway and 1- 7S and the new store at Sumter and U.S. 41 in North Port will both be Supercenters.

The Supercenter planned for Kings Highway will be even bigger than the Punta Gorda store. At well over 220,000 square feet, the store will be on a 50-acre site just inside the Charlotte County line, adjacent to Lake Suzy. Ground-breaking should take place early next year. The store is planned for opening in about two years.

While the new North Port store will only occupy 26.3 acres, it is also planned 8S a Supercenter, Rumors of a "Food Only" Wal-Mart grocery store coming to North Port have been around for a while, but this new store, adjacent to a planned new Home Depot, is planned as a full scale Supercenter.

The Wal-Mart store in Englewood will soon face the boom in home sales and building in West County and will eventually be considered for growth, if it hasn't already. In fact, if you go to the

Wal-Mart Web Site, www.wal-mart.com, and search around a little bit, you'll find a page to suggest where to build the next one in case you don't have one in your neighborhood.

Punta Gorda, though, may face the remote possibility of forcing the new store out of the city limits into Charlotte County. The new store will certainly be close to the 'old store, so complaints against Wal-Mart may leave local residents with an empty building while a new Supercenter opens not far away in Charlotte County. The corporate planners at Wal-Mart know where the potential growth areas are and most certainly plan on maximizing their current assets. Abandoning the old store is not the preferred course of action.

Both the Punta Gorda and North Port stores will be built to comply, and probably exceed, the local beautification standards and guidelines. The end of the "ugly gray box" has been dictated by local design standards. The design standards local communities impose are a sign of growth . management, helping shape the environment in which we will live.

The care with which Wal-Mart approaches the zoning and beautification mandates are an indication of the willingness of Wal-Mart to invest in the growth of our community. The potential revenues the stores are planned to generate are not just numbers based on expert opinion. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out Wal-Mart isn't planning on wasting its money.

 George Mindling © 2004

George Mindling Column 2-20-2004 - Year of The Big Storm?

Could This Be the Year of The Big Storm?

Planning on more visitors from out of town this year? I don't mean the college visitors coming to town who will get this town rocking for a month at the Charlotte Sports Park on State Road 776, starting Feb. 28. No, I'm talking about ones who may not come at all: Alex, Bonnie and the rest of the 2004 Atlantic hurricanes. Alex and his friends could start their visits in just a little over three months. The 2004 hurricane season gets under way officially June 1, and runs through Nov. 30.

According to Professor William Gray at Colorado State University, 2004 will be an active Atlantic hurricane season with more activity than usual. In his December 2003 extended forecast, Dr. Gray predicts seven Atlantic hurricanes and 13 named storms. He forecasts the Net Tropical Cyclone activity in 2004 to be about 125 percent of the long-term average. The next update from the CSU Department of Atmospheric Sciences will be in April. For information, check the web page at http://hurricane.atmos.colostate.edu/forecasts/

If you are new to the area, you will hear a new term called the Saffir-Simpson scale. This is a rating system to indicate the severity of a hurricane, from category 1 being the first level of hurricane force winds of at least 74 mph, to category 5, the strongest storm, with winds over 156 mph. According to the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, a category 4 storm averages 250 times more devastating than a category 1 storm.

Newcomers need to understand the difference between a hurricane watch and a hurricane warning as well. A hurricane watch means to hours or less. Go about whatever preparation you need to insure your safety in case the watch gets upgraded to a warning. A hurricane warning is issued when the threat is 24 hours or less away. A warning means take urgent action to protect yourself and your family.

With area hotels reaping the benefits of the upcoming College Baseball Invitational series and guests are waiting an hour to get seated at restaurants, it is difficult to envision anything but beautiful weather and great baseball. Balmy skies now are a great time to order those storm shutters and update insurance policies. Generators and chain saws are plentiful now, but they won't be if we go under a hurricane watch. Now is the time to plan for what you need to do.

Alex and his friends will have to wait just a little while longer, though. I'll see you at the Sports Park for the Port Charlotte College Invitational Baseball series starting Feb. 28, when Urbana plays Grace at noon in the main stadium. Talk about visitors! The Sports Park will be rocking until March 27 with colleges from all over the country playing great baseball on all four fields plus the main stadium!

Tickets are adult daily at $3, $2 for a child's ticket. Weekly passes go for $10, and the whole month can be had for $25! Tickets went on sale Feb. 18 at Charlotte County Recreation Centers and Papa Johns pizza stores.

George Mindling © 2004

George Mindling Column 1-16-2004 - Look to the Future

Port Charlotte Must Look to the Future

A recent newspaper ad for a sign installer in Port Charlotte drew few responses in 10 days. This was for a full-time installer, with benefits at a good salary. The same company also placed an ad at the same time for part-time clerical work, only a 30-hour a week, with no benefits, at $6.50 an hour. That ad drew 52 responses.

Port Charlotte has the highest per capita number of single female parents in the state. Will there ever be enough employment to satisfy the number of often well-trained office and clerical people who must work one or two jobs just to make their rent or car payments? Not if the current attitude of standing with our backs to the future continues in Charlotte County. It is also difficult to compete with Lee, Collier or Sarasota counties for craftsmen labor as long as those areas pay a higher scale than Port Charlotte.

While the social and economic factors that cause Charlotte County to have a disproportionate number of single parents is an ongoing discussion, the inability of the local economy to employ these people is an indication of our limited economic diversity. For many of the unemployed, their parents - and now their grandparents - are becoming beacons of hope. People on retirement incomes, well beyond their peak earning periods in their lives, now find their offspring can't support their own families on wages paid here. They become not only the new home, but often the prime financial support as well.

Grandparents raising grandkids has become commonplace in Charlotte County. Grandparents have become more than daytime babysitters while their children are at work; they have now taken a mainstream role of guardianship as well.

The opponents to economic growth in Charlotte County would prefer to go back 10 or 15 years in time. "Let everything take care of itself" was a common attitude then, and it has resulted in the inability of Charlotte County to maintain economic parity with the rest of Southwest Florida.

The Charlotte County Commission's duty is to all residents, including the future ones. They are our children and our grandchildren. They will live here long after we are gone. Courage often means doing what is right for the future while the opportunity exists. We do have courageous commissioners, now bombarded by vocal and often overbearing opposition who want to return to the past - the past of only basic retirement homes and no infrastructure to support them! Commissioners are trying to do the right thing for Charlotte County by ensuring that our children and our families have a chance for employment and education today and tomorrow alike. Our future cannot be shackled to our past.

Those who want a better place to live in the future Charlotte County should not stand silent while a vocal opposition minority tries to drive the political bus. The road in Charlotte County can go backward as well as forward.  It depends on who is in the driver's seat.

George Mindling © 2004

George Mindling Column 12-19-2003 - Old Scam

An Old Scam Pops Up

While looking at my telephone bill, trying to figure out why the taxes are as much as the telephone charges themselves, I noticed Sprint had included a warning about the return of an old scam: redirecting your PC modem to dial an international access number. The problem, called "hijacking," occurs if you click on certain Internet pop-up ads on your PC screen. You won't know you've been disconnected from your Internet service, or that the modem has called a new number, with charges, according to the Sprint flyer, of up to $9.00 a minute. They don't mention what happens if you are on a broadband service such as cable or DSL, but the scam probably tries to dial your PC's built-in modem anyway.

If you click on the ad, your PC is disconnected from the Internet dial-up connection you made when you logged on and a new, international number is quietly dialed without you realizing the new call has been made. The modem sounds are suppressed by the commands from the pop-up ad. Sprint states the action results "in you being billed for costly international long-distance calls you didn't realize you made."

I wrote back in February about the "809" area code being notorious for generating large, unwanted long-distance telephone bills. The problem isn't just dialing the 809 area code, which is the Dominican Republic. Any legitimate call to the Dominican Republic uses that area code. There are charge telephone numbers that happen to reside in that country, and in others that do not require the international access number of 011, and can bill according to those country's laws that are the problem.

Once you make the call, you are legitimately required to pay the bill. Remember, the bill is not from your long-distance 'provider, but from the number you dialed. The foreign telephone service forwards the bill to your long-distance provider. Your long-distance provider then submits the bill from the foreign number on your monthly bill. They are obligated to collect it by international telephone and commerce agreements. Disputing the bill can .be a challenge, as the disagreement will be with a foreign telephone company, not a U.S. long-distance provider. The long-distance carrier may help, but don't bank on it.

The 809 area code was splintered in 1997 into several different codes, with the Dominican Republic maintaining the original 809 area code. The 473 area code is now Grenada, while 284 is the British Virgin Islands, and 868 is Trinidad and Tobago. All can be dialed without the international "011" code.

Go to http://www.thedirectory.org/pref/ for a complete list of area codes. The Sprint flyer advises you to be cautious about any Internet pop-up screens you click on, and to read all messages carefully. While there should be consumer warnings, the flyer does not say those warnings will always be there. For more information' call Sprint Fraud Management a 1-866-255-5278.

Now all we need is a toll-free telephone number to prevent pop-up telephone taxes.

George Mindling © 2003

George Mindling Column 10-17-2003 - Murdock Village

Murdock Village

The Murdock Village project is an issue polarizing our community unlike any since last year's courthouse restoration budget.

While many voters are opposed to the ambitious, forward looking mixture of residential, civic and commercial development, it appears a majority of business owners and many of the civic leaders are solidly behind the project. The issue of economic impact on Charlotte County's future is the major component of the discussion.

There is opposition to economic growth in Charlotte County and the Murdock Village project looms as the ideological battleground With the initial groundbreaking at least three years away, the possibility of the project being corrupted by an incoming majority of new county commissioners certainly exists as three commission seats will be up for election. The project has already progressed well beyond the point of no return financially, and most certainly will be contracted and well into the initial design phase before the next county election.

The project could possibly be prevented from successful completion, or at least significantly altered. The opponents of the project must show the voters that terminating or canceling multimillion dollar contracts and facing the lawsuits that will follow, is in the best interests of Charlotte County. Everyone sympathizes with the property owners who will have to forfeit homes and businesses they have already established. It is unfortunate for the commissioners to not have won general approval of the property owners beforehand by not involving them in the success of the project. A method of making current residents and owners some type of "shareholders" in the village, through some form of credit could possibly have garnered the enthusiasm and support it needed for the overall general acceptance of the project.

Fear of a tax increase to fund the project is one tactic the project opponents are already using to attack the project. Ironically, if the project is halted now, after the county has already acquired considerable property in the area and before the investors can buy or invest in the project after the completion of the acquisition phase, that possibility certainly exists. The county would then have a large amount of property that no longer generates tax revenue.

If a new County Commission stalls the project, the recently purchased property may not be what it was worth before the project was announced The area in question is not known in real estate circles as prime property. There are many desirable growth areas in the county, but the area currently being acquired is certainly not one of them. If the project is terminated now, property values in the area will fall back drastically, undercutting speculators who have been buying property in anticipation of leveraging the county into paying above assessed prices for property.

What transpires in the next 12 months will determine how the voters see the County Commission candidates and the project itself. The commissioners have work to do, as do the candidates.

Charlotte County voters have the hardest job: They must decide what is right for our future.

George Mindling © 2003

George Mindling Column 9-19-2003 - Isabel's wrath

Homeowners spared from Isabel's wrath

As Isabel pounds north Florida, it appears we have been spared yet again. The storm decreased from peak Category 5 status to Category 2 prior to landfall. Everyone in Florida should know there are five categories, and Isabel has been all five. Category 5 storms are the ones with winds at more than 155 miles an hour. A Category 4 is still enough to scare me into leaving. That is another problem with Isabel. If it were to hit mid-Florida, there isn't anywhere to go.

The eye of Isabel was almost 60 miles wide. Hurricane force winds can extend almost 300 miles across. New Florida homeowners should be thankful the new hurricane codes are in effect for all new home construction. Hopefully, the new homes are built substantially better than the ones that were demolished by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Hurricane Fabian just clobbered Bermuda and although exterior damage was severe and four lives were lost, there were few problems with the homes on the island. Bermuda requires all residential dwellings be built to withstand 130-mph winds.

Many Southwest Florida residents still cling to their lucky rabbit's feet and go about their business as if we live in a protected bubble. How about you?  Did you check your hurricane kit this past weekend when it was the right time to prepare for Isabel? Do you even have a hurricane kit? Fill the car with gasoline and stock up with canned goods and a mechanical can opener? Have you been to one of the many free hurricane seminars?

You will never forget the sound of the tiles being ripped off your roof in the middle of the night after hours of incessant, roaring, almost evil-sounding wind. You will cringe and hold your breath every time something slams into a glass window or door, and you will do it for hours. The walls of our inside hallway, our "safe" walls, bowed back and forth during Andrew, causing me to think for the first time I had made a mistake by not taking my family to a shelter. My garage door, with a 120-mph hurricane kit mounted on it, blew in and wrapped itself around my van. Yet, we were lucky. Many others, including our daughter who lived in Cutler Ridge, lost everything.

We lived 20 miles inland. We did not live near any coast, where unfortunately, the media always seems to focus its coverage. The average Florida homeowner complacently watches sailboats being blown ashore, or breakers smashing over a seawall somewhere and doesn't relate to the intensity that can destroy his or her house as well as business. Too many reporters standing by the water's edge in damp slickers trying to make an impression with viewers simply don't convey the sense of urgency that emergency management people everywhere wish they could turn on with a switch.

Watching Isabel slowly move past us to the north, I think how lucky we are again.

George Mindling © 2003