FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:    Jim Lavender, Lee County Public Works
                (941) 479-8301

FORT MYERS, Fla. (October 26, 2001) – Lee County Government has hired Richard Beck as its new Facilities Management Division Director. Beck will replace 30-year employee Bob Reist, who is retiring as of the first of the year. Reist has been director for 12 years.

Beck comes from New Jersey, where he has worked for 20 years at Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant in Forked River, most recently as training supervisor. Oyster Creek is the oldest operating commercial nuclear reactor in the United States. Beck also served in the U.S. Navy for six years as a nuclear submarine engine room supervisor and worked for the Department of the Navy for two years as a senior radiological controls instructor.

He has a bachelor’s degrees in industrial management from the University of New Hampshire and nuclear technology from the University of New York, and a master’s in education of the University of Sarasota.

Facilities Management’s 77 employees are responsible for the repair, preventative maintenance, monitoring and remodeling of 2.3 million square feet of various county facilities, ranging from office buildings to baseball stadiums, valued at $450 million. The division monitors buildings’ critical systems remotely through the use of Johnson Controls computerized building automation systems (BAS) software.

The division’s fiscal year 2002 operating budget is $7.5 million.

Beck will start Nov. 1 and work with Reist through the two-month transition period.