Auto shop ordered to tear down car ‘lift’
Roger Barger, the owner of Frog’s Auto Repair, scratched his head and asked why the county is trying to put people like him out of business.
“I own an auto repair business, rent the space from my landlord and a few months back, a woman from Lee County Code Enforcement, stopped by my business on South Loop Drive, and told me I couldn’t work outside my four-wall enclosure, my shop,” he said. “There were no exceptions, she said it had to come down.”
Barger faced fines of $280 a day if he didn’t remove an outside “lift” that he and his employees use to work under vehicles to change oil, work on transmissions, exhaust systems, changing tires, and other things. A lift is a hydraulic piece of equipment that raises a vehicle up into the air so mechanics can work on the underside of a vehicle.
He also has a lift inside his small shop which is located next to J&S Towing, who are also his landlords. J&S Towing pays rent to Eugene Borosch of Lehigh, the owner of the Lehigh Towne Center and several other businesses in town.
“They’re (the county) trying to shut me down. How can I make a living if I can’t do my work? When I came here, the outside lift was already here and the people who now run the towing business used it as an auto repair shop,” he said.
By having to remove the lift, Barger said he may have to lay off one or two employees if they can’t be outside working.
“It’s not something I want to have to do,” he said.
Barger didn’t even have a voice in matter to appeal the ruling because he was subleasing the business from the people he pays rent to who rent it from Borosch.
“There was a public hearing and I went to it, but I was not allowed to speak,” Barger said. “I could tell my side of the story.”
He is well-known throughout Lehigh as a fair businessman who will help anyone who has problems with the vehicles. For the past four years, he has won the Best of Lehigh for auto repair, sponsored by The Lehigh Acres Citizen. Before going into business for himself a half dozen years ago, he worked for Carter Auto Repair.
Barger sat in his small office and on the corner of his desk was a thick pile of “work orders” showing where customers were paying small amounts on their auto repair bills.
“I can’t say no to someone who needs help,” he said. Beneath that pile is yet another stack in dark colored folders. Inside these are checks marked insufficient funds.
“These folks have left town when the bubble burst. I’ve tried to locate them and can’t. None of them came to me and said they would try to pay me; they just left town. I don’t expect to get paid for those bills,” he said.
Barger’s wife, Brenda, is the office manager who collects the money for the work orders. Barger says he has so far always been able to meet payroll and has always been on time with his rent.
Barger said he understands that having Code Enforcement officers in Lehigh is important.
“I know they were here to help to get the community to do certain things, like in areas where people had old furniture in their yards and junk around their houses, but I didn’t think they were here to put small business people like me out of business.
“From what I understand, Mr. Borosch tried to get things changed so my business wouldn’t hurt. I think he got an extension. He had a lawyer but in the end the county said no, that I could not conduct business outside of my shop.
Barger said he wondered if residents of a few condos on South Loop Drive were upset. He even approached them and the people told him they had no problem with his employees working outside.
Barger said the law requires him not to even do the slightest thing outside his small shop. There is one lift inside his shop.
Often a motorists will stop by and need a fuse replaced or some other minor thing done, but Barger says as he understands the ordinance, he is not supposed to do any work outside.
“And I am sure they (Code Enforcement) are going to check on us,” he said. “This is my bread and butter.”
Next door is J&S Towing and they have had what they called similar problems with code enforcement. Walt Kitley, owner of the two sites – his and Barger’s – used to allow truckers to park their trucks inside his compound at night.
Then he said Code Enforcement got upset and he put up a fence and even had cloth netting installed in it so motorists couldn’t see through it.
“But they shut us down and it was an important part of our business,” Kitley said.
His wife is the dispatcher for callers who may need assistance 24/7 and their son, Jason, also works for the towing service. Their number is 369-9652.
“I don’t understand what they (the county) are trying to do the small businesses out here.
“As with us, they didn’t want any trucks stored here, but it was okay for big tractor trailers to pull in anytime at Winn-Dixie, which borders their business,” Kitley said. “They can’t park their rigs in their yards or they get fined. That’s why you see them sometimes on the side of a road or in the woods parked at night,” Kitley said. There is no residential around him except for a few condos across the street from the auto body business. The only other close business is the U.S. Post Office.
Yet it is not uncommon to see large $200,000 house trailers parked in yards in Lehigh Acres driveways.
Barger said he even stop working on Saturday so he would not upset people who lived in a few condos across the street. Most auto repair shops try to stay open part of the day on Saturday.
“Business isn’t great for any of us with the bad economy now. We can use all the business we can get,” he said.
“I think it is just being very unfair to us,” Barger said. Nobody has ever told us we were breaking the law or being a nuisance. Our employees worked on cars just outside the shop and as I said before the lift or hoist to raise a vehicle was here before I came.
“I just don’t know why they want to make it so hard on us small business people in Lehigh … and why now? We are in the worst economic times. If what I was doing was wrong, why did they give me a permit to open my business here in the first place? Now doesn’t seem like the right time to do things that are hurting our local businesses,” Barger said.
“I’ve heard of people trying to open small businesses who wait for months to get a permit and they find this and that wrong with the place, but before when someone else was in the same building, all was okay. I just don’t understand it all. It’s like the county is working against us and we can’t do anything about it,” he said.