Collier County sees an exorbitant increase in landscaping costs

Collier County is well known for its beautiful landscaping along its medians on roadways. But, it comes at a steep price that some believe is a waste of taxpayer money.

“They need to put their money where it’s more important,” Leslie Robinson said. “Other issues that are outstanding at this moment.”

Back in 2016, the county budgeted $5 million a year to build these medians and maintain them. Recent figures show maintenance costs with landscaping companies has skyrocketed. The county is responsible for $7 million allocated to work for this year.

The county has said it was hard to predict three years ago how much landscaping costs companies charge would fluctuate annually.

“They need to figure it out now because they’re just going to fall behind and it’s going to be not cost-effective in the long run,” Robinson said.

Others, like Tom Sherman, understand the aesthetics help bring in tourism.

“The medians are beautiful,” Sherman said. “There is no place anywhere else in Florida that is like this I’ve traveled all over the place. Anybody that comes here they say they haven’t seen anything like this.”

As the medians run over budget, county commissioners are considering putting off future median landscape projects to pay off their maintenance costs as well as halting the importing of non-native plants.

“Planting grass is not the best thing that they need to do,” Sherman said.

“They’re taking it out of everybody’s taxes,” Robinson said. “We live here and we have more important things to worry about, like our beaches and our oceans and storm drains and what not, and we get flooded storm surges.”