News-Press from Fort Myers, Florida • Page 19

Reports From Staff Writers, Bureaus And Wire Services News-Press 9 Local SECTION WEDNESDAY, MAY 7, 1975 5 i Rebellion Over 1-75 Quelled Hospital, County Work Toward Unity ii iwm i wiiuiir, iii am 'After years of quibbling, we're finally, moving toward a solution' Commissioner Dick Sayers 1 News-Press Photo By DAVID BEATTY Qlg mm St 31 fg "1 I Suicide Pact i- mjrr vir.i Sin By CAROL COMER News-Press Staff Writer The Lee County Commission today is expected to move closer toward making peace with the Lee Memorial Hospital Board, Commissioner Dick Sayers said Tuesday. Sayers said the commission would discuss setting up a meeting with Hospital Board Chairman Joe Burgess and State Rep. Paul Nuckolls to draw up an agreement based on a commission resolution presented to the Lee County legislative delegation Saturday. The resolution, passed by the commission last Wednesday, calls for the legislative delegation to seek an amendment requiring that the hospital board hold annual public hearings to review its fee and rate structure and to also hold public hearings to review any hospital fee and rate structure prior to the hospital board adopting any changes. It also requests that the county commission have the discretion and authority to select the hospital's auditors and to conduct a financial audit of the public hospital.

Sayers said he hopes to see such amendments written into the law next year. The form any final agreement will take is vague at this point, but both sides say they are willing to "Mr. Burgess has agreed in principal with the resolution we presented, and after years of quibbling, we're finally moving toward a solution," Sayers said. "This is essentially Mr. Sayers' ball game," Burgess said.

"We'are willing to meet with the board and work this thing through." In another move toward ironing out wrinkles between the two bodies, the board accepted the recommen: dation of the Lee County Citizens Participation Advisory Commission that a review board be set up td, air problems between the two boards. The commission last week appointed to the review board the chairmen of the Lee County Medical Society, the Board of County Commissioners, the Lee Memorial Hospital Board, the Lee Courjty Chamber of Commerce, and the citizens advisory board and the director of nurses at Lee Memorial Hospital. I Duties of this review board haVe not yet been clarified, Sayers said-. By BILL PURVIS Tallahassee Bureau TALLAHASSEE Southwest Florida legislators led an appropriations rebellion Tuesday which they said was designed to send a message to Gov. Reubin Askew and his road builders: quit trifling with 1-75.

They surrendered to the leadership and quelled the rebellion because as one, Rep. Ralph Haben, D-Palmetto, said, "I do not want to win the battle and lose the war." But wait until next year, added Rep. Paul Nuckolls, R-Fort Myers, when it was over. He said they have a promise of help from the leadership. Before they raised the flag, the amendment sponsored by Haben, Nuckolls and Mary Ellen Hawkins, R-Naples had passed and withstood reconsideration by one vote in a clash with the Dade delegation and the House leadership, including majority leader Dick Clark, D-Miami.

The amendment took, $330,000 in planning money out of a favored Dade rapid transit program and put it into 1-75. Haben complained that $15 million of $30 million set aside for 1-75 in the past had been spent on a rapid bus lane down an interstate in Miami. And the department of transportation told them Monday the whole $30 million had been spent for other things, Haben said. 1-75 is at the end of the priority list despite commitments by recent legislatures to have it built, they grumbled. Haben said no one pressured him into asking unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment after it was firmly in the bill on a 57-56 vote.

However, transportation Chairman Fred Jones, D-Auburndale, had warned "Dade is twitching at the navel." "We were just trying to get everybody's attention, including the DOT," Nuckolls said. "It was a test of sentiment to show we are aggrieved and why we feel aggrieved." These love bugs met their deaths while mating along Lee County's highways, to the chagrin of a truck driver, who must quickly wash his truck to save his paint job and vision. The pesky bugs are filtering further down into Southwest Florida this year, although in less numbers than last year, a spokesman at the University of Florida said Tuesday. Fort Pierce is the lucky city this year to have the heaviest concentration of the loving insects. WEVU Ex-Manager Faces $250,000 Suit equipment, of hiring relatives, his authority as general manager, and former employes of Channel 26 Tuesday they could give no details on the movie.

Several said they had heard such a was made. Another employe said the was false. By BILL SLOAT News-Press Staff Writer Citing a long list of alleged improper acts, including a sex movie involving a WEVU female employe, the owners of Gulfshore Television Inc. filed a $250,000 lawsuit Tuesday against former Channel 26 general manager Vernon Lundquist. Gulfshore stockholders claimed in the Lee County Circuit Court suit that Lundquist been assigned to Judge Wallace Pack.

The suit contends the sex film damaged WEVU's reputation in the community. "He solicited a female employe of the station to appear in a movie depicting nudity and immoral acts, including simulated intercourse, to the detriment of the business," the suit said. Lundquist was also accused in the suit of not paying the $18,000 monthly lease on the station's mishandled their interests and jeopardized the success of Southwest Florida's newest television station, an ABC affiliate. The suit said Lundquist "solicited" the unnamed woman to appear in the sex movie. It did not specify any other details about the film.

Lundquist, 48, of Fort Myers, was ousted as general manager of WEVU last December. He could not be reached for comment about allegations contained in the suit, which has of the employes requested that names Je because of their job situations. Turn To WEVU, Page 2B "We don't feel that the commissioners should meddle in hospital affairs," Burgess said "But I think both sides are willing to sit down and discuss these resolutions and work out our problems, in light of he fact that the county might help us secure about $1 million for indigent care." The current efforts to bury the hatchet stem from a long-running disagreement between the two boards which peaked in March when hospital board member Robert Cody Brown asked the county commission to seek fiscal control of the hospital. The commissioners voted to do so, requesting a bill to amend Section 9 of the state act creating the hospital. But at last week's meeting, the commission rescinded its action seeking control of all hospital finances and came up with the resolution presented to the legislative delegation.

The bill requesting the law change died for lack of proper procedures, including required public hearings, a spokesman for Nuckolls said in Tallahassee. Members of the businessmen's group said the proposed sign control moratorium would go into effect while a committee of architects, businessmen and sign company representatives study the type of sign control law needed for downtown. First Street is undergoing a $200,000 renovation, including beautification, with the addition of planters and benches and a serpentine. Merchants are expected to follow up on the beautification project by restoring storefronts, adding a 1890 to 1930 motif to the downtown area. The First Street serpentine is scheduled for dedication on May 31.

Scaffe told the merchants their request for the sign moratorium would be on the agenda of Thursday night's council rnjjag. broadcast abusing Current said sex film charge All withheld Riff Moratorium Sought On Sign Installation A delegation of downtown businessmen will ask Fort Myers councilmen to declare a 45-day moratorium on the installation of new signs along First Street. City officials said the action by the businessmen represents the first step in turning the downtown shopping district into a tightly-controlled historic zone. "We might even want to set up some kind of preservation commission like they have in the French Quarter in New Orleans," said Lee County Bank President Mai Schroeder, a member of the delegation. The businessmen met with Wade Scaffe, assistant to Mayor Oscar Corbin, and Building Director Don Leathers Tuesday at City Hall to discuss a sign control ordinance for the downtown area.

News-Press Photo By NEIL GRAHAME FIRST STREET BEAUTIFICATION PROJECT IS SHAPING UP trees and plants find homes in planters i Mobile Home Owners Learn Promises Can Be Broken Today' B-Section Worried about the rising divorce rate, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orlando adopts a policy which would set a three-month cooling off period before anyone under the age of 19 could marry in the church 5B Reader's Line A READER needs to have the paint job on his roof checked 4B Legislative News 7B Aim Nit.Pr( Phofo Bv AL SPICER Spring Festival SOf Features i f-i I'll 4.. h- rr sold their carpet installation business and began packing. "We made several phone calls down here and asked how everything was coming along," Mrs. Nurge said. "The manager would say fine, just On a lovely June day, the Nurges and their twin sons drove up to their new home.

What they saw was shocking, they said. "I just sat in the car and cried," Mrs. Nurge said. "They had done nothing." There was no golf course, no swimming pools, no bike paths, no shuffleboard courts, no recreation center, she said. The road that was supposed to run in front of the Nurges' mobile home was nothing more than a stretch of rocks and weeds.

Now, two years later, the Nurges still don't have a road. All they have is a gravel driveway Nurge built himself. A month before the Nurges moved to Indian Pines, Al Ernst said he was beginning to think he, too, should have checked his contract a little more carefully. A retired deputy from Dade County, Ernst was one of the first people to buy in the subdivision which Ernest said he was told would be finished by May. "I should have known better," he To MOBILE, Page 2B By SUSAN TAYLOR News-Press Staff Writer On U.S.

41, about five miles north of Fort Myers lies Indian Pines, once described as the "biggest and most beautiful" mobile home subdivision in Southwest Florida. But to the residents of Indian Pines, there's little connection between-the superlatives and the reality. For the past two years they've been battling an out-of-state management that they claim has backed down on the promises that lured them to Indian Pines in the first place. And they bitterly claim that they fell for those promises and were victims of a good sales pitch which was never translated into written contracts. In March 1973, the Richard Nurges of Newton, N.J.

decided to spend their vacation in sunny Lee County. At that time Indian Pines was being heavily advertised on television and in the newspapers. An ad in the phone book described Indian Pines as a "country club condominium," under construction to include paved streets, central water and sewer, a recreation center, golf course, bike paths, swimming pools, i and shuffeboard and tennis courts. The Nurges decided that was the The Boom: Mobile Homes place for them. And if they needed an extra push, they got it from the manager-vice president.

"He was a fantastic salesman," -Mrs. Nurge recalls. "He could sell you your own car." Although the development included only a few paved roads and some furnished models, the Nurges said they were impressed by the brightly colored maps and architect's drawings in the sales office. Everything that had been promised was there if not on the ground, at least on paper. Assured the park would be completed by June, the couple said, they made a down payment on a lot.

Then they went back to New Jersey, LACK OF ROADS BOTHERS INDIAN PINES RESIDENTS many claim management hasn't fulfilled promises.