To the editor:

Our Lee County braintrust is and has been considering changing the name of Lee County to whatever.

This was started by a group of IMHO, malcontents known as Change.org, and they submitted a petition of 4,000 signatures — 4,000 (as of June 19, 2020) out of a population of 740,000 Lee County citizens. For you math- challenged people out there, that is less than 1/2% of our population.

My questions are as follows:

1. What is it going to cost taxpayers to have this change made? Consider EVERY form, letterhead, inventory tag that have Lee County on it will have to be replaced. Every building that has the name Lee County on it will have to make this change, every license plate with Lee County on it will have to be discarded. Every car, truck or other Lee County vehicles will have to be changed. Everything in the Lee County Sheriff’s Office will have to be redone. ANYTHING with Lee County on it will be obsolete. And I don’t think taxpayers should be on the hook for the costs and I seriously doubt anyone in the Lee County bureaucracy has even considered it.

2. Will Change.org be willing to pay for the cost of ALL changes that will have to be made? Or do they expect Lee County taxpayers will be forced to foot the bill? All so THEIR demands can be realized?

3. What about those of us who disagree? Apparently our starbright bureaucrats in Lee County haven’t even considered this.

A change this dramatic should be decided by Lee County voters, not a handful of bureaucrats and use a lackluster petition of less than 1/2% of Lee County residents demand as rationale. And who, if anyone, verified the signatures on that petition? Bet that hasn’t been done.

This current movement in this county to eliminate anyone or anything historically attached to the Civil War is denying who we are and how we got here. These malcontents will not be happy just removing Confederate monuments and names. Give them this and what will they go after next when they realize the efforts to eliminate the Confederacy changes nothing in their lives?

Marie Kavanaugh

Cape Coral