Immokalee's planners and visionaries hope to set the wheels in motion May 22 toward a final up-or-down vote on the Immokalee Master Plan - and hope the vote will take place in June in Immokalee. 

Collier County commissioners will be formally asked next week - invited - to hold the June 26th county commission meeting in Immokalee and during that meeting formally and finally vote on the community's future as expressed in the Master Plan. 

A formal and regularly-scheduled county commission meeting in Immokalee would be historic. It has been decades - the late 1980s - since the Collier lawmakers held a formal commission meeting in Immokalee, although the Collier Metropolitan Planning Organization, a joint body of the Collier commission and Naples City Council, held a meeting here in April. The Collier County School Board holds an Immokalee meetings at least once each year. 

The Immokalee Community Redevelopment Agency's I(CRA) citizen advisory committee will formally ask, invite, the Collier lawmakers on Tuesday to make that trek on June 26 and at the meeting vote on the Master Plan. 

Nearly a decade in development, the Master Plan was voted down in December, 20ll when it failed to garner the four out of five votes needed to adopt it. Because the plan is a major alteration of the county's formal growth management plan its adoption requires the "super majority" of four votes to win approval. While three lawmakers supported the plan in December - Commissioners Jim Coletta, Fred Coyle and Donna Fiala - one commissioner - Georgia Hiller - voted against it and Commissioner Tom Henning abstained, saying he had a conflict of interest because he owned a piece of property in Immokalee. 

While the December vote might have killed the plan, the State of Florid agreed in January to grant an extension of the deadline for its adoption unti late September.

The Immokalee CRA is in the midst of holding a series of three public meetings about the plan for anyone who might still have questions or who may want to learn more. Click here to learn about those meetings. The remaining public meetings are set for: May 23 at the Immokalee Community Park, 321 North First Street, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. May 30 at Southwest Florida Works (also known as the One-Stop Shop), 750 South Fifth Street, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. 

The plan and much more information about it is available in English, Spanish and Creole at the special Master Plan page on this website. 

 Think of it as a master plan refresher.

That's how the Naples Daily News described Wednesday's first-of-three public meetings about the Immokalee Master Plan, quoting Penny Phillippi, executive director of the Immokalee Community Redevelopment Agency.  

"What we're trying to do is put forward a master plan that's been worked on for a period of time," Phillippi told the newspaper. "It is a blueprint for the future. Whatever is going to happen is not going to happen tomorrow, next week or next year but down the road this is what we want to see happen. It is not set in stone ... it is a living breathing document that can be changed as (Immokalee residents) see fit."

• May 23 at the Immokalee Community Park, 321 North First Street, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. 
• May 30 at Southwest Florida Works (also known as the One-Stop Shop), 750 South Fifth Street, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. 

 You may have noticed the video now gracing the top of our ImmokaleeToday page.

We hope you clicked on the video, watched its brief summation of the news and, maybe, shared it with friends via Facebook, Twitter or GooglePlus. 

It's a new feature, prepared by our friends, Relevanza, working in conjunction with the Wibbitz video design team. 

The amazing new Wibbitz technology draws posted pieces from our news sections and transforms them into a quick video recap. It's great for a hurried review of the news or you can click on each piece featured in the short video. 

Read more about the new feature and the new techonology on the Relevanza blog and on Relevanza's Tumblr blog. Reach out to Relevanza to find out more. 

 Marie Capita, manager of the Immokalee Business Development Center, of IMMBIZ, is headed for an international conference on business incubation in Atlanta, Georgia.