News-Press from Fort Myers, Florida • Page 9

News- Press TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1985 litem pSiomis giramited (for church omi SR 80 Average number of tropical storms and hurri 5 canes during the official hurricane season By TOM BUTLER News-Press Staff Writer June 1 November 30. (Reflects 80 years of record keeping) Source: National Hurricane Center -I. JL a 1 14. Bj W4 Fall's arrival cools threat of hurricane By ROSLYN AVERILL News-Press Environmental Writer The danger isn't over yet, but the lion's share of the six-month hurricane season historically ends in mid-October when the Atlantic Ocean and surrounding waters begin to cool down. Meteorologist Bob Case at the National Hurricane Center in Miami said Southwest Florida residents should continue to keep a close watch on the Gulf of Mexico, where the waters remain warmest.

"Even though the peak of the hurricane season has passed, the probabilities for a storm along the western peninsula of Florida remain high," Case said Monday. "It's still not the time to wipe your brow and say that we've made it through anotheryear." The 1985 hurricane season has been active, with five hurricanes and four tropical storms forming so far in the Atlantic Ocean and eastern Caribbean Sea since the season began June 1. Tropical Storm Bob and Hurricane Elena have been the only storms to affect Southwest Florida this year, causing no major damage, but bringing high winds and tides, coastal erosion and widespread flooding. Hurricane Gloria In late September was one of the strongest Atlantic storms on record with 150-mph winds as it neared the East Coast, but it weakened to 100 mph when it slammed into New York's Long Island. A typical hurricane season, running through Nov.

30, spawns an average of eight to 10 tropical storms and hurricanes, with about six storms forming between June and September and two in October and November. "It would not be unusual, at all to have another -tropical storm or hurricane in the month of October," Case said Monday. Tropical Storm Isabel threatened the East Coast last week, but had weakened offshore by Friday. Case said tropical storms that form late in the season traditionally are weaker than storms that brew in the summer, when waters are warmer. However, he said, ai feet between entrance roads on U.S.

41 in North Fort Myers, but Commissioners Roland Eastwood and Bill Fussell said that was a case of entrance roads on the same side of U.S. 41. The entrance roads near the proposed Calvary Temple Assembly of God church are across SR 80 from the church site, they said. That church traffic enter and leave only through an access street rather than the main road. Fussell said it is unfair to require the church to build an access street to SR 80 if not everyone else is required to do so.

That the church dedicate right of way to the county, and instead, just require a 40-foot setback with no dedication of land to the county. "I am amazed," Little said afterward. "Roland Eastwood has fought us tooth and nail on this and he voted with us." Eastwood said the Florida Department of Transportation, not the county, should take care of expanding SR 80. State plans call for a drainage ditch where county planners said one of four lanes of SR 80 would be. "I find it difficult to believe that we enter into an agreement with the owners for the land without finding what's going to be done with the land," Eastwood said.

If the building was set back far enough for state highway plans, there was no longer any need to require access roads, like those along U.S. 41 in Port Charlotte, Eastwood said. "To me it's almost foolhardy to attempt to preserve a frontage (access) road agreement," Eastwood said. "The setback that the applicant has provided is sufficient if the roadisbuiltto lOlanes." The prayers of the Rev. Mark Little were suddenly answered Monday when Lee County commissioners granted five exemptions to county building codes to let him build a new church on State Road 80.

Commissioners, sitting as the zoning appeals board, voted to grant each of five exemptions to the county Development Standards Ordinance. Commissioner Mary Ann Wallace was outvoted 3-1 on several of the exemptions sought by the Calvary Temple Assembly of God Church. Commissioner PorterGoss was absent, "Are we going to change our policy, then?" Wallace asked after the vote. "Is anybody going to be allowed to develop on a state road?" Backers of the new church have been struggling for months with county regulations in their hopes to build alongside SR 80, near the intersection of State Road 31 in Fort Myers Shores. County regulations require developers to contribute road construction and property to handle traffic from developments.

The planned location for the new church meant that the congregation would have to widen a 2-mile stretch of SR 80 from two to four lanes and donate 40 feet of land for right of way. As a result, the $220,000 church would have required as much as $5 million in improvements to the roads and sidewalks in east Fort Myers. Among requirements waived Monday: That intersections with SR 80 be 660 feet apart. Wallace said the county stuck to its guns on keeping 660 hurricanes have been recorded in every month but April. Neil Frank, director of the National Hurricane Center, has said weather experts cannot say for certain when the ocean will brew a killer coil of wind because the creation of a hurricane still isn't fully understood.

Radar, satellites and reconnaissance planes fall short of enabling meteorologists to predict exactly when and where a hurricane will strike land, according to Frank. He said a hurricane can dramatically change its wind speed and direction without warning. Hurricane Donna in 1960 was the last major storm to strike Florida, claiming at least five lives in the Fort Myers area when its 120-mph wind gusts slammed into the coast between Naples and Fort Myers. Jury selection starts in manslaughter trial of Fort Myers doctor i 1 II. MiI II i I jm 7 TV station finally gets signal across By FRANK RINELLA Cape Coral Bureau Chief CAPE CORAL After weeks of trying, WFTX-TV, Channel 36, finally went on the air Monday morning.

"It makes us feel like we just had a baby," said Ed Dyer, general manager. The fledgling television station has been trying to get its signal on the air since mid-September. It managed Wednesday to broadcast a test pattern, but was unable to transmit programming. Delays in getting parts and bad weather prevented the station from completing work on its tower and from conducting tests needed to allow the station to go on the air. After crews resolved those problems, they faced problems with the equipment that plays programming tapes.

WFTX is the first independent network television station to broadcast from Southwest Florida. Temporary studios are at the station's 1 5-million watt transmitting tower, which is situated in an antenna park near the Lee-Charlotte county line. The station has temporary offices off Pine Island Road in Cape Coral. Station spokeswoman Deborah Abbott said the broadcast signal should be similar in strength to WINK-TV. She said people reported By DENES HUSTY News-Press Staff Writer Jury selection began Monday in the manslaughter case against Dr.

Arthur Fleming after the presiding judge refused a defense request to move the trial from Fort Myers because of massive pretrial publicity. Prosecuting and defense attorneys have the task of finding six impartial jurors to decide if Fleming, 61, beat his estranged wife, Audra Fleming, 36, to death with a frying pan inside his Landings condominium the night of July 3, 1982. Fleming, a Fort Myers psychiatrist and gynecologist, has declined comment. At the start of proceedings, defense attorney Richard Pippinger of Tampa said he felt a fair and impartial jury could not be picked because of publicity about the case, mostly by the News-Press, which on Monday reported the trial in a front-page story. Reese denied Pippinger's request, but added that Pippinger could renew the motion if it became apparent that a jury could not be selected.

Potential jurors then were questioned one by one to determine if they had read or heard news accounts of the case. Thirteen of 47 potential jurors were excused be cause they knew something of the case either through the news media or other sources. The jury selection process is scheduled to resume at 9 a.m. today before Lee Circuit Judge Thomas S. Reese.

Of the 13 people dismissed after questioning, 1 1 said they read news accounts of the case, either Monday or sometime during the past three years. Two people said they work at local hospitals and heard about the case through the gossip of fellow employees. After all potential jurors were questioned, Pippinger renewed his request for a new trial location because it would be "asking more than is humanly possible" to put aside what they know about the case and decide Fleming's fate based on testimony and evidence presented in court. Vernon Fairchild, assistant state attorney, said the trial should not be moved. "A number of jurors had no recollection" of the details of the case and "many have said they will base their decision on the evidence and nothing else." Reese again denied Pippinger's motion because it hadn't been sufficiently shown that it would be impos-See TRIAL, page 2B News-PressDan Fitzpatrick J.

MITCHELL HALEY, STATION OPERATIONS MANAGER, MONITORS EQUIPMENT TV-36 is first independent station to broadcast from Southwest Florida Officials OK draft of plan for Gateway surface water By TOM BUTLER News-Press Staff Writer Beach, Bonita Springs, Naples Park, Vanderbilt Beach, Palm River Estates, Estero and San Carlos Park, will add the station when equipment is received. A Channel number hasn't been determined. Century Cable in Immokalee and LaBelle will carry the signal on Channel 4. Abbott said she doesn't know when the signal will be added. Palmer Cablevision will carry the signal on Channel 4 on Sanibel, Channel 9 on Pine Island and Channel 2 1 in Naples.

The signal should be available today. Citrus Cablevision in North Fort Myers will carry the signal on Channel 4, but it wasn't clear Monday when the signal would be added, Abbott said. Community Can Corp. will car ry the signal for the Clewiston area, but it isn't clear when or on what channel the signal would be available, Abbott said. Storer Cable, serving Port Charlotte, Punta Gorda, Charlotte Harbor, Punta Gorda Isles, Venice, Boca Grande, Englewood and Nokomis will add the signal Nov.

1, but a channel hasn't been set. WFTX will offer a variety of rerun sitcoms, movies and former prime-time programs. Weekday programming begins at 6:30 a.m. with cartoons. There will be movies at 1 p.m., 8 p.m.

and midnight, sitcoms such as "Gilligan's Island" and "Benson" competing with local and national news on network stations, and series such as "Mannix" and "Twilight Zone" at 1 0 and 1 1 p.m. Shores, Fort Myers Villas and the Iona area is the only system that has no plan to add WFTX. Dyer said he was told that WFTX would not be added by that cable company because it would force the cable company to drop another station, probably WTOG-TV in Tampa. Those that have agreed to carry WFTX are: Cablevision of Cape Coral and Golden Gate, on Channel 4. The Cape Coral area should be able to get the signal after Oct.

28 and Golden Gate customers after Nov. 28. The cable companies are waiting for the necessary equipment to add the channel, Abbott said. South Florida Cablevision, serving North Fort Myers, Fort Myers receiving the WFTX signal from Tampa, Naples and the Lake Okeechobee area. Residents in Lee, Collier, Charlotte, Hendry, Glades, Sarasota, Highlands and DeSoto counties should be able to pick up the UHF television signal, she said.

Abbott said 12 cable companies have agreed to carry the station, but some have not installed the equipment to enable them to add WFTX. Of the major cable companies serving Southwest Florida, Jones In-tercable Inc. which serves Fort Myers, east Fort Myers, Fort Myers Airwaves channel taken off air after charges of signal pirating Inside Gagsters make Graham famous By WILLIAM SABO News-Press Staff Writer water quality impacts, flood protection, relief from rainstorm inconvenience and overall land use. The only other rating was for environmental impacts, rated "not significant." The plans for Gateway will minimize the effect on the 708 acres of wetlands on the 5,3 1 9-acre project by using many of those wetlands for ponds in the community. Additional wetlands will be built to replace those destroyed by construction.

The conceptual surface-water plan, designed by Johnson Engineering of Fort Myers, was filed with the water district July 1 2. "It's for protection of the neighbors as well as for the residents who will buy into the project," Karen Clifford, a staff member at the district headquarters in West Palm Beach, said of the surface-water plans. "This does not authorize any construction, this is only a conceptual approval," Clifford said. Westinghouse still has to submit a final surface-water plan to the district and get approval for construction before work can begin on the first section of Gateway. District engineer Jenni Mang said submitting a conceptual surface-water plan is a way for the builder to flush out problems that may interfere with a proposed development.

"Lots of people like to have an initial plan, so to speak, to see if there are any problems with lakes or with wetlands," Mangsaid. 6 Five of Gov. Bob Graham's top aides work hard behind the scenes to make sure he is perceived as just a humorous kind of guy. The South Florida Water Management District has approved the first draft of a plan to manage surface water in the Westinghouse Gateway community. The conceptual surface-water management plan is a first draft of how the planned community southeast of Fort Myers will manage rainfall, lakes, wetlands and water flowing into the Six Mile Cypress Basin.

"It conceptually describes how all those things will be handled, how the water will flow and how it will empty into the Six Mile Cypress Basin," explained Byron Koste, Westinghouse executive vice president. "It was the only condition precedent to going back to the (Lee County) commission for the area master-plan approval, which we will do in the next 30 to 40 days." Koste said the area master plan will explain the Westinghouse plan for construction in the first sector of the project, near the Southwest Florida Regional Airport. The area master plan will be reviewed by the county development staff and Local Planning Agency before it is reviewed by commissioners sometime next spring, Koste said. According to water district officials, the Gateway surface-water plan has few problems with lakes or wetlands. The project design was rated "good" in categories such as i Cape Coral broadcasts SELEC-TV, a first-run movie and sports channel.

Airwaves officials have said they broadcast SPN programming, which is similar to SELEC-TV. But Bob Gordon, president of MDS, said Airwaves was intercepting the SELEC-TV signal from the company's satellite in space and broadcasting it. The signal is picked up by a special antenna at subscribers' homes. SELEC-TV officials ordered Airwaves and the tower to stop broadcasting SELEC-TV. Michael Viebrock, attorney for SELEC-TV, said in a letter to Neumeier that neither Airwaves nor the Bonita Springs tower has the right to broadcast his company's signal.

Airwaves president Peter Salvagio could not be reached for comment concerning whether the company will begin broadcasting again. Neumeier said he was not told by anyone at Airwaves whether the channel would start backup. Defense rests in Home trial 7 Attorneys for Mallory Home rest their case after calling in quick succession defense witnesses who corroborated portions of the former Senate president's testimony. Canker confirmed at nursery CAPE CORAL Airwaves Satellite Television, a premium television channel, was taken off the air Sunday night because it was pirating another company's signal, a local cable company official said Monday. Vincent Neumeier, general manager of South Florida Cablevision, said he took Airwaves off the air after giving the company a 10-day notice to stop sending the signal.

He said Airwaves broadcast the pirated signal until he shut down thechannel. Cablevision owns the Bonita Springs-based tower from which Airwaves broadcast. Neumeier said he has received estimates that from 25 to 500 people have a subscription with Airwaves and would be affected by the shutdown. About two weeks ago, a competing premium channel company discovered that Airwaves was using the signal. MDS Services of 8 Agriculture inspectors confirm a citrus-canker find at a 46-acre Orange County nursery, the first find in that central Florida county, officials say..