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 Press release: Town of Fort Myers Beach
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The Town of Fort Myers Beach wants its residents and businesses to know that an error has occurred with the most recent water utility billings. There is a mistake on the water utility bills mailed on Tuesday of this week. While the charged dollar amount for the new block rate groupings was included, a written description of what the charges were for was not. Corrected replacement bills were mailed out this Friday morning, 02/05/2010.
The Town contracts with Beach Water to operate and maintain our potable water system and this includes the responsibility to read meters and generate billing data. Another company receives the billing data then prints and mails monthly bills. An error occurred in the printing. Read more... | |
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 FMB Fire District to Have Same
Fee Schedule as County
(Mouse over image for caption, Click to enlarge) In an effort to make services more streamlined with Lee County's, the Fort Myers Beach Fire District will now charge for any calls resulting in medication being dispensed. "We are going to start billing for Treat, No Transport calls,” said Chief Mike Becker. "For instance, if someone is a diabetic, and the paramedics give them dextrose and get their levels back to normal so they sign off on going to the hospital, we will bill them for the supplies and medication.” Read more... | |
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Council Holds Two Day Session on
Modified Beach Renourishment,
Stewart Takes Over as Interim Town Manager
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The Town council met for two days this week with the monumental task of hammering out a response to the modified beach renourishment plan that the Board of County Commissioners recently approved and submitted to the Town. During Monday's portion, council-members recognized Terry Stewart as our new Interim Town Manager, thanked retiring manager Jack Green for 5 years of service and, after listening to a lengthy public comment, began the renourishment debate. Read more... | |
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Monday, February 08, 2010
Autism risks detailed in children of older mothers
A woman's chance of having a child with autism increase substantially as she ages, but the risk may be less for older dads than previously suggested, a new study analyzing more than 5 million births found. "Although fathers' age can contribute risk, the risk is overwhelmed by maternal age," said University of California at Davis researcher Janie Shelton, the study's lead author. Mothers older than 40 were about 50 percent more likely to have a child with autism than those in their 20s; the risk for fathers older than 40 was 36 percent higher than for men in their 20s. The new research suggests the father's age appears to make the most difference with young mothers. Among children whose mothers were younger than 25, autism was twice as common when fathers were older than 40 than when dads were in their 20s.
Friday, February 05, 2010
Snow bears down on DC as Mid-Atlantic region preps
A powerful winter storm bore down on the Mid-Atlantic on Friday with as much as 2 feet of snow in store for the nation's capital, where the federal government prepared to shut early. Airlines canceled flights across the region and school districts closed for the day ahead of heavy, wet snow forecast from Virginia and West Virginia across Maryland into southern New Jersey and Pennsylvania. A mid-December storm brought about 20 inches of snow to many areas in the region. Between that and several smaller snowfalls, the region's road crews have had plenty of practice in the past two months.
Thursday, February 04, 2010
T.O., Ochocinco start Super parties on South Beach
Anytime Chad Ochocinco and Terrell Owens are in the same town, there's bound to be a party. Put them poolside in South Beach, surround them with bikini-clad women, blaring music and cocktails, and you've got a wild afternoon. There will be more celebrity-studded fun as Rihanna, Timbaland, Jennifer Lopez, Usher and Kim Kardashian perform in concerts or host parties over the next days.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Friend charged with hiding Fla. lotto winner death
Just over a week ago, a friend of a missing Florida lottery winner approached an acquaintance with a chilling request, according to detectives: Dig up the body of the dead man in her backyard. That woman, Dorice "DeeDee" Moore, was charged Tuesday with trying to conceal the slaying of the man who disappeared after winning millions. The dead man, Abraham Shakespeare, was last seen in April — more than two years after he took a lump-sum payment of $17 million on a $30 million jackpot. Detectives said Shakespeare was killed on April 6 or 7, 2009, at a home in a rural town east of Tampa. He was buried, officials said, at the home next door, which according to property records, was purchased by Moore and listed in the name of her boyfriend.
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Use of Twitter, Facebook rising among gang members
When a gang member was released from jail soon after his arrest for selling methamphetamine, friends and associates assumed he had cut a deal with authorities and become a police informant. They sent a warning on Twitter that went like this: We have a snitch in our midst. Unbeknownst to them, that tweet and the traffic it generated were being closely followed by investigators, who had been tracking the San Francisco Bay Area gang for months. Officials sat back and watched as others joined the conversation and left behind incriminating information. In the case involving the suspected informant, tweets alerted investigators to three other gang members who were ultimately arrested on drug charges.Tech-savvy gangsters have long been at home in chatrooms and on Web sites like MySpace, but they appear to be gravitating toward Twitter and Facebook, where they can make threats, boast about crimes, share intelligence on rivals and network with people across the country.
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 2010 Grammy Winner to appear at Purple Heart
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David "Honeyboy" Edwards is a living legend of the Delta blues, and the Purple Heart Theater on Fort Myers Beach is honored to be among the first performance venues to welcome this ageless acoustic guitarist and singer since he received a Grammy for Lifetime Achievement on January 30, 2010 (announced during the live Grammy show on January 31). Mr. Edwards will perform at the Purple Heart on Sunday, February 21 from 5:00 – 8:00 p.m. Honeyboy Edwards, at age 94, and his close friend, bluesman and pianist Pinetop Perkins (age 96), are the last of the original Delta blues players still touring the United States. Honeyboy, as he is known, continues to perform up to 100 concerts a year, and undertook a tour of Europe in September and October 2009. His most recent album, released in 2008 by Earwig Records, is Roamin' and Ramblin'. Read more... | |
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| Preparation for the Shrimp Festival | |
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 Preparation for the Shrimp Festival
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This year is the 52nd anniversary of the celebration of shrimping on Fort Myers Beach. In 1950, the first shrimp boat turned into the Back Bay and tied up at the Dixie Fish House. By that time the Kleen Fish Company on Fort Myers Beach had burned down and there was no place available for the shrimper to tie up on Estero Island. We talked to Jo Hughes and she told us that she had just graduated from high school and gone to work for her Dad at the Dixie Fish House when the first shrimp boat showed up. She said they had to share a phone with the shrimpers and whenever a call came in for someone on the boats, she went out and yelled the name until the right person appeared. "We made it work,” she said. (For more on this story read The Island Sand Paper) | |
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| Colder, but still warmer? | |
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 Colder, but still warmer?
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Record-breaking cold and frost in Miami, sinkholes caused by farmers watering crops to protect them from freezing in Central Florida, and extensive flooding near Tallahassee. It's not a Florida winter wonderland, and a new report says it may be nature's wake-up call about the impacts of global warming.Report author Dr. Amanda Staudt, climate scientist with theNational Wildlife Federation, says oddball weather patterns are becoming the norm. "Even though parts of the southern United States have had pretty cold weather this winter, global warming is still happening. Sometimes it is hard to get beyond your immediate location and see the bigger picture, but in fact NASA just announced that 2009 ties for the hottest winter on record. "Staudt calls the uncontrolled carbon pollution that causes global warming an "unchecked experiment on people and wildlife.""This more variable winter weather will have all sorts of impacts on our communities, on wildlife and nature, and on various outdoor recreation activities that we enjoy. "Staudt says parts of the Snow Belt will see heavier snowstorms, although Floridians planning ski vacations later this winter may be disappointed. Unseasonably mild conditions could force ski resorts to close sooner, putting a dent in the $66 billion winter sports industry. She says global warming will also cause flooding in many parts of the nation, and she cautions everyone to "expect the unexpected" in weather patterns. (For more on this story subscribe to the Island Sand Paper) | |
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