Big spenders don’t get it
To the editor:
We hire many out-of-town and out-of-state companies to do our work. We don’t even have our monthly utility bills printed in Cape Coral. We have an unemployment rate of at least 10 percent and the true number is probably closer to 15 percent. We should be taking care of our own and not contracting the work out to firms that are based out of town. Even if the companies hire Cape Coral residents the profits march right out of town. We hear about these projects putting our residents to work. These are more statements are woven with fiction and fantasy that we hear from our public officials.
People living on small pensions can’t pay $6,000 today and will not be able to pay $12,000 10 years from now. When SW-6 & SW-7 come up again the price of poker will go up to $18,000 and $36,000. We are paying the highest for utilities installation in SW Florida with the exception of Marco Island. And we are still spending money like drunken sailors in these hard economic times. Everyone else is pulling in their horns and going to great lengths to reduce spending except for Cape Coral. It is great to be unique but not in this way. The two projects North water first and SW-6 & SW-7 will cost our residents $467 million without considering interest payments which will double that amount. What ever happened to fiscal responsibility? I believe our big spenders don’t understand those words.
Do you remember the talk you heard about the safety net, for our residents? It sounded good but it was announced by Mr. Mason the pool is only $400,000. and it’s on a first-come first-serve basis. In SW-6 SW-7 that would support only 22 homes out of around 6,700 and in the North it would support only 66 homes out of 18,142 homes. It seems to me that is a safety net with a very large hole in it. In fact more hole than net.
One other interesting observation about the meeting is that all of a sudden KBR is out of the picture, what a coincidence. That company has been getting a lot of bad publicity and now all of a sudden they mysteriously are not longer involved in our utilities projects. It seems there have been charges and admissions of bribes, kickbacks and high-level corruption in foreign countries. This is going to cost Halliburton, the former parent firm of KBR, hundreds of millions of dollars.
KBR was initially hired by the city of Cape Coral to manage building our utilities infrastructure. One of our council members attempts to create the illusion that MWH was initially hired. It is common knowledge that KBR was hired but was not capable of making the bond so MWH and a number of KBR employees came on board to run our utilities projects, in Cape Coral including the project manager. This needs to be explained, the public needs to know.
John Sullivan
Cape Coral Minutemen