PORT CHARLOTTE — A cross-county meeting on Burnt Store Road’s development is in the works for early next year — if the costs for the meeting can be ironed out.
Charlotte County staff planned to contract a neural third-party firm to conduct community outreach and hold the meeting, allowing resident questions to be fielded to both Charlotte and Lee county officials.
However, how to fund that meeting — with either local taxes or a contribution from Burnt Store area HOAs — sparked comments from members of the Burnt Store Corridor Coalition.
“Every time we get closer, the county pushes it back again,” Coalition Chair John Fleming said Tuesday.
Fleming and other Burnt Store residents spoke at a Charlotte County Board of County Commissioners meeting in June to ask the commissioners to commit to a stakeholder meeting about development in the area.
Concerns raised by the Coalition and other residents included a lack of community services for the population, a perceived imbalance between residential and commercial development, and traffic safety.