You win some, you lose some
To the editor:
The residents in Cape Coral cannot stand any more financial damage caused by the utilities projects and I believe that was reflected in the recent council vote.
SW-5 is at or near completion and we have not seen the financial fallout from that project as of the moment. The residents now are facing impact fees ($6,750) and the charge to hook up to the system (approximately $1,500). The residents in SW-5 are saddled with a charge of around $8,000. I have to wonder how many will not be able to pay this and how many will be pushed out of their homes as a result of this.
I was very pleased that the other utilities projects proposed have been temporarily halted. I was delighted that the city council decided to proceed with caution rather the usual “Damned The Torpedoes Full Speed Ahead” attitude we have seen in the past. This is the end to which I have been working for some time and am happy that the council has finally seen the light.
There was talk of creating 500 jobs with the N1 through N8 project. What wasn’t mentioned is that the projects would cost our residents $342 million. This a big chunk of disposable income that would have been extracted from our economy. One has to wonder how many companies would have fallen by the wayside without this revenue. This is money that would not have been spent in Cape Coral. Also one has to ask how many employees would have been put out of work when those business failed because of the lack of this revenue.
The assessment/impact fee was $6,000 on 57,000 properties. Five hundred temporary jobs would have been created for a period of approximately three years. Grammar school arithmetic tells us that each job created would cost $684,000, on average. I doubt that each of those jobs, on average, would add $150,000 to our economy. That would equate to a net loss of $534,000 for each job created. Projects like these were never meant to be an efficient way to put our residents to work and get the biggest bang for the buck.
The council voted down the forensic audit last night that 2,000 residents “voted” for by signing The Kessler Petition. The request for proposal should have been scrutinized by the audit committee and the committee should have made recommendations before for the council decided to scuttle it. Some of our council members and the mayor decided to shoot the audit down.
Oh well, the way things have been running in the Cape there is always another day.
John Sullivan
Cape Coral Minutemen