Editorial | It’s how you listen
While Wednesday’s Cape Coral City Council agenda was diverse, the primary issue, at least from the residents, was singular: Does Council listen to the public it is elected to represent?
The consensus shared at the meeting was a resounding no.
The answer, for us, though is an easy yes.
This council, and the previous one, and the one before that, we can comfortably say listens or listened to comments made at meetings.
We say with ease that the individual members who make up the current elected board take their responsibilities seriously and do weigh information received.
The issue, though, is not do they listen, but how they listen — who they listen to, how they evaluate the input received and how they weigh it in light of what they believe is right for the city.
Here, as always, from the lowest level of local government to the highest at the federal level, the process varies.
We have members who hold town hall meetings, members who have open office hours, members who return calls and emails, who attend functions, dedicate hours to boards and committees.
These are all listening sessions and it is fair for those who take part in any, some combination, or all of the above to affirm that they do listen.
But again, that is not the point, not from the perspective of residents and taxpayers who feel that the input they provide falls on deaf ears.
Not from our perspective, either, for that matter.
The issue is that Council — this council and the one before that and the one before that — is and has been so focused on the “I represent the city as a whole” big picture and the facts as presented by its most listened-to source, city staff, that the comments of individuals often get lost in the noise.
Cases in point:
• The redevelopment of the Yacht Club Park where the upgrade showcased in the funding allocation in the voter-approved Parks Master Plan burgeoned from a $10 million upgrade to a now-estimated $180 million or more raze-and-rebuild.
• The redevelopment of Jaycee Park, which included a “cone of silence” while an unsolicited public-private partnership agreement was negotiated for a commercial component.
• The taking of 14 acres in a designated preserve for utility infrastructure that was not disclosed at public input sessions for the Parks Master Plan nor included on the on-site billboard even as plans to construct water tanks in the park’s midst — and viewable from neighboring homes — was ongoing at the staff level with council members looped in. Other city-owned and available site options were discarded because of city fears it would impact private development options.
In each of these cases individual neighborhoods and individual residents, have been impacted hard.
In none of these cases did they buy or build near undeveloped tracts without checking what could be built nearby: They bought near developed parks, or in the latter case, near land the city designated as passive, designated as preserve.
They made their arguments,
When they felt ignored, they protested long and hard.
What they received was little in terms of compromise.
We’ll not debate here whether Council made the proper decisions.
We will, though, agree with those affected that all of their input was a whisper in the wilderness and mattered not one whit when all was said and done.
Breeze editorial