Cape Council goes into budget workshops facing drop in city’s overall property valuation
Cape Council hears departmental budget requests
The city of Cape Coral is looking at a $1.5 billion dollar budget next year and potentially less money from property taxes next year.
Cape Coral City Council was told Thursday the estimated tax roll released by the Lee County Property Appraisers Office on June 1 projects a total taxable valuation drop of $5.7 million.
Assistant City Manager Mark Mason advised council at its summer budget workshop Thursday to hold a second session in July to look at funding sources including the city’s millage rate, its public service tax, and potential use of reserves and how they would like to discuss potential changes to funding or expenditures.
The second workshop will be held at 1 p.m. on July 15.
The budget workshop, which began at 9 a.m., went over a slew of information for the proposed 2027 budget, which included the city’s debt.
Financial Services Director Crystal Feast said existing projects to which the city has committed debt include Jaycee Park at $18.7 million, Yacht Club seawall rebuild at $23 million and fire station 10 – 19% general fund at $17 million.
The second half of the table, she said, are future potential projects that are included in the current Average Monthly Payment plan. Those include the Cape Coral Sports Complex expansion, Festival Park amphitheater phase three design and construction, Youth Center expansion design and construction and Coral Oaks renovation design and construction, all with fiscal years ranging from 2028 to 2031.
“Given the future climate the progress on these may change and may be removed from any future AMP. They are included in our existing AMP program,” Feast said. “We have estimated debt service in future fiscal years.”
Another project for the debt service are three fire stations, which have a design and apparatus in the first year, and construction and personnel in the second-year timeline between fiscal year 2027 and fiscal year 2032.
The funding options presented included debt service – payback over 20 years, cash fund – pay as you go, and combination of commercial paper to construct and setting aside $7 million per year for cash for each station.
Feast said if debt funded, they will consider different funding options. She said if two are done very close, they can package them together for funding.
Council said they liked the third option – take out commercial paper with cash for each station – setting aside $7 million per year.
Councilmember Bill Steinke said the third option gives the city flexibility.
Councilmember Keith Long had an issue of how the funding options were given to council for the fire stations.
“It is packaged before having discussion in context in needs. We haven’t approved moving forward with three stations,” he said. “It is presented how do you want to fund these. We didn’t approve these, why are we talking about funding, how to debt service them? I’m not comfortable even voting on that.”
City Manager Michael Ilczyszyn said that in building the proposed 2027 budget, council has not made a decision on designing, but they have to identify the intended source of revenue for the budget.
“It’s not an appropriation expense to request to spend the money. We are not at that phase. We are only identifying sources of revenue for potential future expenditures,” he said.
Councilmember Rachel Kaduk said they will bankrupt the city in the name of public safety.
“I don’t want to pick any of these funding options because I didn’t agree to pay for these fire stations at this time,” she said.
Mason said it’s methodology practice.
“At some point we need to design it, need a certain amount of money to design it and finance the fire station in the future,” he said. “This was the financing source. We are trying to build the budget.”
Mason said they developed the plan on building three fire stations based on a plan from Metro Forecasting presented to city council twice because of population growth. From those presentations, he said there was a council consensus to move forward with the plan of three fire stations, which is why it was a topic of discussion Thursday.
“There is a need to build these fire stations and serve the community,” Mason said.
Kaduk said they know that public safety will be protected with the tax reform charter amendment to come before the voters in November. She said in her opinion Public Works should be at the forefront, as the city needs to get back to infrastructure for that city department,
Steinke said council is tasked with forecasting ahead, especially in a city that is not fully built out.
“These stations are in the growth area of our city. That requires a crystal ball,” he said. “No one had the guts to increase the amount of assessments to meet current expenses. (We are) 20 years behind in the impact fees and having the dollars we need today. We tied our hands behind our back the way it was passed with this council with the future. We can’t change anything for four years.”
Steinke said they have to talk about whether they want to be prepared for people’s needs and make sure their houses are put out in time, or not.
Another project was the charter school athletic facility funding options, which included pay with cash, or debt service for the $15.7 million project, which has 100% designed from Avalon Engineering.
Council were unanimous in directing staff to use cash for the athletic facility.
The all-day workshop also included presentations from every department to go over the department goals and priorities and programming modifications.
Cape Coral Fire Department
The program modifications requests were 14 positions at $2,937,130 and capital outlay at $7,092,478. Among those positions are four firefighters for a rescue unit and an additional four firefighters.
Fire Deputy Chief Mark Solich said the capital outlay includes the design and apparatus for fire station 14 in the north. He said the response times average about 10 minutes, which is outside of the threshold.
The fire department is also asking for a highwater rescue boat and trailer – jon boats with kicker engines.
“We can trailer them there. Three or four firefighters can pick up the boat and put it down the bank,” Solich said, adding that it can be an area of refuge.
Ilczyszyn said he does not have identified funding for the requests.
“I can’t do it without increased revenue,” he said. “If you identify you want to fund these, we will show you what millage is required, what FSA increases are required. If you want me to look at vacant positions to swap any of those into fire, we can do that too.”
Parks and Recreation
Part of Parks and Recreation Director Joe Petrella’s request was for two additional park rangers, as he only has three full-time park rangers, and 13 part-time rangers, that are rotating through 42 parks. He said he only has three vehicles that can go out.
“We are not getting the rotation we want to see throughout the park system,” he said, adding that the additional park rangers will cut back on the heavy vandalism they are seeing at the parks.
Gunter said for him personally, until they have more specificity with the referendum to come before the voters in November, it was prudent to him to hold off on those items.
“We are aware of legislation,” Petrella said. “The department is keeping positive as much as we can. We fully comprehend what is going on.”
Cape Coral Police Department
Chief Anthony Sizemore explained Project 35, a forward look into fiscal 2035, that is reversed engineered every year. He said it’s an overall request of a 10-year plan that is broke up into nine-year, one-year cycles to keep the department on track.
The challenge is that Project 35 has a the goal line keeps moving as the population and workload increases.
“Every time we get caught up, more people move in and workload goes up,” Sizemore said.
He shared statistics regarding the top three calls – one being the most important, life and death, two very serious, and three a quick response is required.
From 2023 until now the serious calls increased by 24%, with 2026 being on the same trend.
The first two priorities include such matters as armed robberies, home invasion, accident with injuries where seconds count. Since 2023, these are greater than a 32% increase.
“Those are the numbers and conditions that inform the request we have with 2027,” Sizemore said.
The police department as of Wednesday had 325 positions filled and 13 positions vacant. Twelve people are in background, and testing is coming up in a few weeks.
Sizemore asked council to provide him with a target number, and he will get his requests to that number.
Many council members said they would like to support as much as they can for the police department modifications.
“I would support as much as possible in this new budget – whatever you feel is necessary,” Councilmember Joe Kilraine said, adding he would think police would be the last place for any type of cuts.
Mayor John Gunter said if it was up to him, he would give Sizemore everything he is asking for.
“Unfortunately, the times we find ourselves in, that is not a reality,” he said. “For me, my focus would be sworn officers out on the street and making sure we are getting response times down. As much as I would like to give you 24 officers, I don’t think that is going to be possible, unless we are going to raise the millage rate, or FSA, or combination of both.”
Gunter said he would like to start with 12 officers and see if the city manager was able to make that happen.
“That’s $2.5 million right there. We have this big black cloud hanging over us right now and we don’t know how bad it is going to rain,” he said. “We still have to maintain some type of level of service and that is public safety.”
Kaduk said she felt as if they wasted a lot of time Thursday if they were not increasing any fees.
“He needs to figure out what we need to cut away from the budget. He needs to start working on the budget with the cuts,” she said of Ilczyczyn. Long said the program modifications for police are the only one he is interested in pursuing and is comfortable with defending raising the millage rate to give the chief exactly what he is asking for.
He said rising tide lifts all ships.
“When you have a city running on a lighter budget and fine-tuned police department, that brings in desirability to come in and rise that tide. People want to come here,” Long said, which brings it full circle. “Higher evaluations in the property generate more taxes to service the fund.”
Public Works
Among the asks from Public Works Director Matt Williams were 36 positions from the general fund, one position from the stormwater fund, two positions from the capital improvements project fund, and five positions in fleet maintenance fund.
“Public Works, in my opinion, is the most important to fund with a lien budget at this time,” Kaduk said. “It’s time to move the pieces around, Public Works is where we need to focus in a lean budget year.”
She said there was a reason why Public Works has 17 positions in the budget and the police and fire have zero.
“They are asking for roadway capacity and infrastructure. This is the most important department we should be looking at right now,” Kaduk said. “He has been delayed, we know that. We keep putting Public Works on the backburner. They are keeping our city running. I am not saying we don’t need public safety, we absolutely do. At some point in time public safety will bankrupt this city, and the roads will be gone.”