On Monday the Fort Myers Beach Town Council will consider dishing out $7,500 per month to a lobbying company to help overcome the issues the town is having with FEMA. The contract would be for a minimum of 6 months for a total of $45,000 taxpayer dollars.
Town Manager Andy Hyatt will make the official request Monday. The name of the firm he wants to hire is Gray Robinson which would represent the town before “Congress, the Executive Brand, and Administrative Agencies.”
The Town of Fort Myers Beach was the only local municipality that lost its National Flood Insurance Program discount with FEMA.
Gray Robinson is a Lobbying firm with offices in 14 Florida cities, including Fort Myers, and Washington, DC. The company website states that GrayRobinson is a multidimensional team of professionals providing integrated legal, lobbying, and regulatory services to leading and emerging businesses, state and local governments, industry stakeholders, and entrepreneurs nationwide
And here go my taxes again…Already raised over 100% and now this dumb decision….where is your common sense…we the people have spoken…we dont want to waste $7500 on anything!!! we can barely make it here now…trying to rebuild…trying to clean up with very few businesses on the island…and you just keep spending spending spending….get a clue
FMB didn’t increase the millage rate, so don’t blame the town for your taxes going up “over 100%.”
I’ll do it for 6500
What is the goal of the lobbyist? What does the town expect from the lobbyist for $7500 a month that the taxpayers have to pay for. Why doesn’t the town just follow our own codes and we wouldn’t have this issue. Talk about a shit show!
Are you serious: The city has nothing to stand on. Besides throwing away more money. FEMA has the same rules for every community on the water not just FMB. You don’t hear of any other communities joining in on these because they follow the rules. FMB really knows how to spend/waste the taxpayers hard earned money. When will this nonsense stop.
If we had competent leaders that followed the rules, we wouldn’t need a lobbyist. This council keeps digging a hole deeper and deeper, rather than trying to climb out! So not only do we have to pay for our lost discount, we now have to pay for a lobbyist?? Zero common sense! Isn’t that the platform John King ran on??!!
Town council has Zero integrity –
Can’t be trusted , they won’t follow Comp plan, have completely screwed up this FEMA fiasco and the list goes on – time to shut this boondoggle down – an extra layer (of expensive and ever expanding ) Government is the last thing anyone needs .
All bureaucratic organizations can only grow and become more inefficient and expensive by nature .
What is the benefit of having a local Government if they don’t respond to or have the people’s best interest ?
All the town needs to do is start fining the non permitted structures $250 a day, as is mandated . That is $7,500 a month for only one! We have hundreds we aren’t pursuing permits. My neighbor needs two new permits. He has applied for two permits on other items but doesn’t follow through with town requests.
JK
Would someone from our town staff or town council please research and be up front to inform the FMB residents what the 25% fema insurance discount amounts to on an annual premium of $3,600.
Sometimes the hard decisions are best made not amongst friends. An outsider could do this easily.
Who came up with this? $7,500 per month? We deserve to know!!!!! This is such a bunch of BS. Most people on FMB don’t even make $7,500 per month. Dissolve the town and make the town council and mayor find jobs on their own. If they came up with this crap, they deserve to be fired.
To clairify…I am talking about who besides Andy. I do not believe Hyatt came up with this on his own. There has to be more clowns behind this idea.
Lobbyists exist for everything, and many municipalities have a FEMA lobbyist.
OpenSecrets dot org lists by year the number of lobbyists (always hundreds) and who has hired those lobbyists.
If my memory is accurate, I seem to recall the mayor talking about FMB’s state lobbyist in Tallahassee after Ian successfully obtaining several million for FMB.
(But wow, $7,500/mo?! I should have chosen that career! lol)
We are a 7 mile island do we really need a FEMA lobbyist AFTER the town dropped the ball and lost us our discount and got us on probation. Perhaps that would have been a good ideal PRIOR to losing the discount and being placed on probation instead of relying on the 3 stooges
Andy, Frankie and Joe. If these 3 focused on not allowing their friends to get away with code violations, and removing the commercials, we wouldn’t be in this shit show. ALL 3 of these guys need to be fired and if they are not, the town will be held accountable! BTW, do you live here? Do you even live in FL?
No Holly O does not live here. She never lived here. She does not even live in the state. She is just the FMB “Karen” that stalks the message board to be the annoying “know it all” that no one can stand. Just ignore her. That is what we all try to do.
LOL
You’re clearly clueless about my time as a resident of FL, stretching back to the 1960s for various periods in various cities, and our family condo in FM from ~1981 until our parents died in 2018.
BTR has over 100k followers; surely you realize the vast majority of those followers — members of the Yellow Army — and supporters of FMB, who donate to causes benefitting FMB and sustain Ed with “cups of coffee,” are not all residents or property owners in FMB?
Sounds like you’d be better suited to an elite non-public group where a tax bill is the only route to membership.
When did you live on FMB? Sounds like no one lived in FMB. Your parents had a condo in FM that they probably rented out. You do not live in the state and you never lived on FMB? I think that is what I said. Don’t bother replying. I won’t waste my time reading your nonsense.
LOL
Pretty funny you think you know so much about my life.
BTR has over 100k followers and this website is public:; why do you think they all should live on FMB? Welcome to the internet.
Dissolve FMB government and go back to Lee County control.. The Town isn’t doing anything that we created the town for anyway..
When Ed was talking to Allers about losing the discount on the mayor’s show, Allers kept saying he needed clarification because he didn’t know what FEMA wanted. All the other mayors understood what they wanted but Allers didn’t get it. That was when Allers disclosed that the discount is not lost for one year but for two years. Allers blew it off like it was not a big deal and we would just have to work to get it taken care of in the future. He tried to come off as some hero and said ” go ahead and blame me”. We lost all this money because they failed to do their job and now they want us to foot the bill for a lobbyist? Total disgrace.
The Mayor is part of the problem. He’s as incompetent as Andy and Frankie
Agreed. He is totally unqualified for this job. Not a homeowner. Not a college graduate. Home Depot depart manager is his claim to fame.
“Not a college graduate”?? WTF has that to do with holding public office?
Henry Ford, Walt Disney, and Ray Kroc didn’t even graduate high school.
Sounds like a money grab. You need to pay someone to help you work with FEMA when FEMA is suppose to be helping you through these conditions. Where is your governor? Why isn’t he helping the beach get back?
There are cities/towns all over Florida that the mayors are rebuilding after storms/hurricanes. They are all handling it without the help of DeSantis. We are the only town that has lost our discount. All the other mayors were able to understand the requirements from FEMA. DeSantis doesn’t micro-manage. He will refer it back to the Mayor. Maybe we should ask Allers what DeSantis says about this when he speaks with him about us losing the discount. I would bet that Allers did not ask DeSantis to help because Allers knows it is his fault that the requirements were ignored. Maybe we all need to write to DeSantis or call his office and let him know what is going on. The incompetence is mind -boggling.
He will only continue to make excuses and play dumb. 2 things he is good at.