The weather is getting hot in Florida. It is not even June yet and every day is in the high 80s to low 90s. The water temperatures are already in the 80s and it isn’t even summer yet. They are saying that it is going to be a below average hurricane season and for us that went through Ian we are hoping that it is a quiet Hurricane season. We haven’t recovered from Ian yet. In fact, we are still years away from recovery.

The Weather Channel, this weekend, was doing reports from Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel and showing the progress that has occurred over the last almost 8 months since Ian made landfall. If I heard them right I think that they reported that only 17 percent of the businesses on Sanibel were up and running. Less than 10 percent of the vacation rentals are open. At least once a week I take a drive out to Sanibel just to see if the Lighthouse Beach is open, it isn’t yet. I drive through Ding Darling Nature Preserve which has reopened but everything is still very brown instead of that lush green and I am not seeing many birds yet but I am sure they will return. One good sign is that the little souvenir shop across from Jerry’s, the Mango Bay Surf Style Shop, looks like it is ready to reopen. When I would vacation down here, I would always buy a new Tee Shirt and Hat there so when I was back in Wisconsin everyone would know that I visited Sanibel. Of course now that I live in Florida I wear stuff that has Wisconsin on it so people know where I am from. Funny how that works. Places like the Blue Giraffe and Grandma Dots are working out of food trucks just trying to keep their businesses open and are actually providing a service to the people that live and visit there.

The Weather Channel stated that people coming to Fort Myers Beach and to Sanibel needed to maybe lower their expectations when visiting. Yes, the beach is still there, and the scenic beauty of the water never goes away. What isn’t there is the many of the amenities that make Sanibel the adult vacation area that it is known for. Why do people go to Sanibel? I have always thought it was a place to step back and get away from the real world and just escape. When I lived in Wisconsin, I would always go up to an area called Door County. Door County is a peninsula north of the city of Green Bay that has the waters of Green Bay on one side and waters of Lake Michigan on the other. You get north of Sturgeon Bay and you no longer find the fast food restaurants. What you have is a place that provides some of the best dinning that Wisconsin has to offer. I have always summed up the reason you go to Door County is not only the sheer beauty of the area but the great food and the great shopping. No water parks, no McDonalds. Those are replaced like with places like Al Johnsons with their goats on the roof or the White Gull Inn and their Stuffed French Toast. To me Sanibel was always the Door County of Florida. A place that adults like to vacation, where generations from the same family can vacation together and create memories that will last a lifetime.

Sanibel will come back and in 5 years it will look pretty much as it did before the hurricane. They work hard to preserve the look and feel that is Sanibel and Captiva. New businesses will replace the old ones that decided to move one. In a year all the brown vegetation will be green again that that green canopy that you always saw from the mainland will return, but it does take time. Is Sanibel ready for another Hurricane? If one would hit again this year it would just devastate the Island. I know you can say what are the odds and you are probably right but this area has been hit with 3 major hurricanes in 17 years, Charlie, Irma, and Ian. All 3 were a category 4 or 5. What preparations are being done so this doesn’t happen again because history tells us it will happen again.

Fort Myers Beach is what I feel is a completely different situation. Where Sanibel will look like Sanibel should in 5 years I believe that Fort Myers Beach will have a whole new look. Gone will be the Mom and Pop businesses and they will be replaced by money. I have heard stories about how developers are buying up property so they can build new multimillion dollar condo units. Big money I fear will replace the Mom and Pop atmosphere that was Fort Myers Beach. Many will call that progress. I won’t be one of them. Yes, I know that change has got to happen. We need to build structures that will survive the things that Mother Nature will throw at us and that costs money and lots of it. Ian proved that the State of Florida was not prepared for our changing weather. Yes, the disaster response from the State and Federal Government was good as I knew it would be. Most of those plans were developed years ago because of mistakes made during other disasters. Planning for the rebuild not so much. Many people will be left behind for no fault of their own except they survived a natural disaster.

Before Ian I was seeing help wanted signs all over the area. There appeared to already be a labor shortage here. Now we are trying to recover from one of the worst natural disasters this country has ever seen. To recover from any disaster you need workers and lots of them. Where are these workers going to come from? Where are these workers going to live? There was a low-income housing crisis before the hurricane so bringing in additional workers is a real problem because they will have no place to live.  You throw in our governor’s attitude toward immigration and the problem get worse.  I hear that the migrant workers that we need are afraid to work here. It has been 8 months since the Ian and the roofs at our 100-unit condo association are not even ¾ complete. Roofers have been working on it since January and I don’t think it will be completed until late June which is into our rainy season and also Hurricane Season. Even when the recovery is complete there will be a worker shortage that will plague the area for years to come.

I haven’t even got into the insurance problems that most of the people of Florida are experiencing because I know that it will not be addressed with the current political atmosphere in our state. In Florida money talks and it is the Insurance companies with all the money. Our dividends have more than doubled and the funny thing here, we didn’t even have enough damage to cover the deductible. That is how high our deductible is.

Are there people looking for solutions here? Not that I can see. Our Governor was busy first on his book tour and then on his undeclared Presidential Campaign. He has been around the world. He has been busy fighting a mouse. He has been busy ruining our education system and doing his damndest to make our teacher shortage worse. He is making sure that our children are not prepared for the diverse world that is waiting for them when they enter the workforce. He is making sure that more guns hit our streets increasing the violence in an already violent state. Actually, helping the working people of Southwest Florida? Not so much. I don’t think that he even knows where Southwest Florida even is anymore.