County OKs iguana ‘assessment’

On Tuesday, Feb. 26, Lee County commissioners unanimously approved the collection of a special assessment fee from residents of the Lee County portion of Gasparilla Island that will keep the iguana trapping program going until November.
Island property owners have received letters from the county notifying them of the amount they owe for the assessment, which will provide $120,000 for the iguana trapping program to continue.

Refusal to pay the amount requested will result in a lien being placed on the property said Libby Walker, Lee County director of Public Resource.

“The assessments are based on current 2006-07 taxable value of island homes,” Walker said. “Those same values will be used for next year’s budget as well.”

The panel agreed to ask for the additional money at their January meeting, after last year’s state rollbacks did not allow them to collect the funds needed for the program, especially after repayment of a loan for the previous year.

Next year, on the normal tax bill, the tax will appear on the bottom of property owner’s bills and not on their TRIM notices. It will be listed under the “solid waste” tax.

Any additional money left over from the special assessment will be carried over into the next year, and the panel hopes that is the case, in order to reduce the amount of tax money needed for the next time.

In other iguana business, the Lee County iguana tax panel is currently seeking applications for two panel member positions. Anyone who is interested in a seat on the iguana panel must be a Boca Grande property owner, and application forms are available online at www.leegov.com.

According to George Cera, the trapper for Lee County, there is still a lot of work to do.

“We still have a lot of work to do,” he said. “I was down on the island recently and we saw quite a few animals moving. While there’s not as many as we have seen in the past, I think we should still be able to pull 3,000 this season. A lot of the areas we see large breeding animals at is at the county line.”

Cera said that while visible numbers appear to be down, most of the remaining iguanas are living on private property, well out of sight to passers-by. Cera has requested again that homeowners who regularly spot iguanas on their property to drop a note with the location off at the Boca Grande Community Center office.

“We’ve had a lot of great support, and a lot of homeowners said they were glad to see us back,” Cera said.

The iguana-trapping program on the north end of the island is progressing very well, said the program’s chairman, Lyman Randall. The Charlotte County board of commissioners  signed a one-year contract with United States Department of Agriculture Wild Life Services Division at the end of last year. The cost to Charlotte County taxpayers, Randall said, is just more than $50,000.

“We spent most of January securing signatures on USDA property owner consent forms to trap iguanas throughout the north end,” Randall said. “As far as I know, only one property owner declined to sign the consent form, due to concerns about their pets.”

The USDA employee working the island’s north end, who goes by the name “Trapper Mike,” began working on February 5, and has already captured more than 200 iguanas.

“He’s averaging 17 per day,” Randall said. “His highest trapping day has been 39 and his lowest, 7. I personally believe this is an excellent start and look forward to seeing fewer and fewer of these uninvited invasive critters in the future.”