Samuel Brucker

While the Cape Coral Animal Shelter serves pet owners with veterinary and boarding services, it also gives pets without homes a place to stay.In recent years, however, the shelter’s executive director Liz McCauley said this has been difficult to maintain as constraints on facility space inhibit efficiency of provided services as well as kennel vacancies for pets with no home.

No Kings rally brought out thousands all over Southwest Florida on Oct. 18.

After nine years and three developers failed to draw up plans for the site, the Fort Myers Community Redevelopment Agency decided to take the lead on the McCollum Hall historic preservation and redevelopment project in early August. Since then, the agency has worked to engage the community, aiming to hear what people want for the building’s future and to deliver on those desires once and for all, precisely what the Sept. 30 community engagement session tried to accomplish.

According to a study from the University of Florida, the COVID-19 pandemic initiated an influx of pet adoptions all throughout the country. However, data compiled from over 200 clinics between 2019 and 2021 showed that nearly 3 million of those adoptees were not spayed or neutered. To address this, the Cape Coral Animal Shelter collected about $25,000 through a state grant program called the Florida Animal Friend Grant. This funded their initiative, “Operation: Fix It Florida,” which provided over 400 sterilization procedures for pet owners who previously couldn’t afford the service.

Many Cape Coral business owners and employees are worried about how new Ordinance 44-25 will impact each business that depends on a commercial vehicle, claiming it would harm the business’s profitability and productivity. They say this will add an unnecessary hurdle increasing the difficulty behind already hefty tasks associated with the job while also placing the increased financial burden onto the customers.

About one month after Richard Ruel died in a fatal e-scooter accident, his family is still mourning as the City of Fort Myers and Spin, a micromobility company headquartered in San Francisco, Calif., began rolling out the first phase of an agreement to bring a new form of transportation to the streets of downtown Fort Myers. While some support the initiative, others are concerned about what the program lacks and what it could bring to the already bustling streets and sidewalks of the downtown area.