Dina Azzaro has launched a statewide petition seeking an end to overdevelopment.
By Noah Bookstein
Original Air Date: June 19, 2026
Host: An intense wave of development is sweeping the state. Bulldozers are clearing forests and wetlands, but a retired businesswoman from Punta Gorda says she cannot stand by. Noah Bookstein reports.
Noah Bookstein: In February, Punta Gorda resident Dina Azzaro started a petition on Change.org calling on city and county commissions to enact an immediate moratorium on all rezoning. Her petition is also asking the state to fundamentally reform its land-use policies. Almost two thousand people have signed it.
Photo by Brice Claypoole
According to the petition, Florida’s wildlife, farmland and quality of life are under threat not due to popular demand but from special interests chasing short-term profits. She says the consequences are apparent everywhere you look.
Dina Azzaro: I don’t think anybody can drive around and not see the amount of developments that are going up.
NB: Azzaro says wealthy developers are getting preferential treatment from local and state governments—including zoning changes on protected wetlands.
DA: Billionaires get their way—get to do whatever they want. We’re the taxpayers. We’re supposed to have a say in things that happen in our state. I feel like a lot of our voices are being squashed out.
NB: And when residents try to fight back at the local level, Azzaro recounts a discouraging response.
DA: A lot of us, we go to the commissioner meetings, we speak, we get three minutes—and some of them yawn, they look at their phones. We don’t get a lot of feedback. I feel like our voices are not being heard.
Dina Azzaro
NB: Local elections help determine the balance between the natural landscape and the built environment. Residents who are concerned about overdevelopment can look to land use and zoning policies, which are primarily the purview of city and county commissions. The state government wades into zoning issues with laws such as the Live Local Act, which lets developers override local zoning entirely if a portion of their units are labeled “affordable.”
DA: I think that just adds another layer to out-of-control development.
NB: The gopher tortoise is chief among Azzaro’s concerns. A keystone species whose burrows shelter more than 350 other animals, gopher tortoises are protected under Florida law, and developers are required to relocate them before construction begins.
DA: It’s very hard to relocate a gopher tortoise, especially an older one. They get upset. They try to find their home even if they move them 30 miles away—they have to move them 30-plus miles away.
Photo by Brice Claypoole
NB: Azzaro’s concern started with wildlife, but expanded after she realized the scale and speed of construction is straining roads, water supplies and the electrical grid, and that nobody in government seems to be asking the hard questions about long-term sustainability.
DA: It sparked from the wildlife aspect, but then it expanded into “What about the natural resources?” and “How are we gonna have sustainability with our aquifers, with our electrical grid? What about the trash? What about the refuse?”
A lot of it’s being done recklessly. It’s contributing to traffic jams that we didn’t used to have. You used to be able to get to Sarasota in a reasonable amount of time, and now 75 is a parking lot every day. There’s a lot of things that are happening that really affect you on a daily basis. You sit back and wonder, “What’s going on? Why are we in such a rush to rip out all of the trees and destroy all the habitat for the wildlife?”
NB: Azzaro also points to something she says gets almost no public attention: the link between deforestation and Florida’s worsening droughts.
Photo by Brice Claypoole
DA: We have droughts that are the worst drought that we’ve ever had in the history of the state. I feel like there’s not enough discussion about deforestation and how that affects our weather and our climate. There’s a link. You take trees down, you don’t get rain. How many trees can they keep removing to destroy our ecosystem? And what’s going to happen to our weather? What’s going to happen to CO2? That’s where we get our oxygen.
NB: The changes to the environment are so urgent, that Azzaro is not just asking for smarter growth or better regulations.
DA: My personal opinion is we need a moratorium. We need to sit back. We need to take a look at what we’ve done so far, what are the effects of that, how do we move forward, how do we make this smarter—more sustainable, how do we look out better for the wildlife. I think that, right now, it’s reckless—seems haphazard.
Hard to relocate: Gopher tortoise. | Photo by Brice Claypoole
NB: A petition is one way for people to collectively make their voice heard by elected officials—but for Azzaro, it’s just one piece of a larger effort. She’s not willing to accept the alternative of doing nothing.
DA: We do a lot of protests. We do attend commission meetings. We do speak up. We have regular meetings on that. There’s a couple things that are occurring locally that we’re very involved with right now. We try to be involved as much as we can. What other choice do we have? What else is there? You can vote, but when that doesn’t go the way that you would like it to go, then what do you have left to do?
NB: Azzaro believes little-known language buried in Florida’s constitution—Article 2, Section Seven—guarantees residents the right to a clean and healthy environment. It reads: “It shall be the policy of the state to conserve and protect its natural resources and scenic beauty. Adequate provision shall be made by law for the abatement of air and water pollution and of excessive and unnecessary noise and for the conservation and protection of natural resources.”
The petition is currently live on Change.org. Azzaro also started a petition with over 2500 signatures demanding that Charlotte County officials deny a rezone for a potential beach resort on Manasota Key.
Reporting for WSLR News, Noah Bookstein.
WSLR News aims to keep the local community informed with our 1/2 hour local news show, quarterly newspaper and social media feeds. The local news broadcast airs on Wednesdays and Fridays at 6pm.