Changes needed if we want to attract business
To the editor:
With a background in advertising, I have been a booster of Cape Coral and, tangentially, Lee County. I am the founder and first president of the present Cape Chamber of Commerce. I have been on so many “sell the area” PR committees, etc. I claim combat credentials in our battle to attract clean, light industry.
A recent editorial mourned the loss of Innova Robitics and other such firms. It is strange, as we have almost everything here to attract and retain such industries; ideal climate, abundant land, available cheap labor, transportation, recreation, housing, etc. And every election the politicians bring out the same boiler plate about enticing industry and diversifying our tax base, but it is all meaningless rhetoric.
The biggest reasons that business avoids us are those necessary amenities, the largest of which is our second- rate school system. Frankly, if you are a successful business executive, do you want to move your children into our school system? Remember, we rank in the 40s out of 67 counties in a state that ranks in the 40s out of 50 states.
Another factor is the quality of government. Over my 30 years, it must be ranked as “unstable” and anti-business, which scares off business with questionable and unpredictable policies and taxation. I can remember a number of firms that did not relocate here due to small town bureaucracy, red tape and the schools. As proof, look around you. Where are the IBMs, the Hewlitt Packards, the Microsofts, etc.?
We need a committee of genuine experts uniting with FGCU and big-city professional help to analyze the problem and tell us, without fear or favor, what we must do if we want a real solution instead of that boiler-plate. Heck, we couldn’t even attract Enron!
Peter Stewart Hare
Cape Coral