Candidate responds to letter
To the editor:
A retort to Mr. Riggs regarding his letter (published Sept. 19). Mr. Riggs stated “The mayoral candidate, while a consistent UEP activist, has demonstrated he has too little true practical knowledge of the multitude of issues and opportunities with which this city will deal over the next few years outside of the UEP.” It is quite obvious that letter was pointed directly at me since Mr. Burch has never been a UEP activist and there are only two candidates.
Let’s take a look at how much I do know about “a multitude of issues.” Unlike him I will be very specific. I was involved in defeating the $110 million Public Safety Project (Taj) while all sitting council members and the mayor at the time solicited the votes of the residents to pass a referendum to fund that White Elephant. I wrote letters to the editor and put out hundreds of emails and spoke before city council attempting to educate the public. After The Taj was defeated we were able to build a beautiful building at a much lesser cost. We paid less taxes because of that effort due to the common sense used by the residents when they voted it down.
His letter stresses that I have been involved in the UEP which is correct. I concentrated a great deal of time and effort on the utilities projects because I knew it was the most damaging and expensive project in Cape Coral history. The utilities projects caused people to lose their homes. The administration and our sitting politicians with the exception of Mr. Brandt, Mr Deile and Mr. Grill denied that people lose their homes because of these over priced projects. Also think about the horrendous debt incurred because we paid too much. It doesn’t get more serious (short of murder) than losing your home or being buried in debt because of fiscally reckless spending. Bear in mind that I was never against the project but I was against the cost.
I fought against the out-of-control spending. Some examples are the $6 million fire stations (other communities were paying around $2 million for a fire station). We can’t forget all the goodies contained within the fire stations. Examples of excessive spending are the $31,000 brass polls, $900 hinges to mount a standard door and a $50,000 stove in one of those Mini Taj’s. Remember, I readily pointed out that these stations could be built for a lot less money. I am not against our firefighters and find it hard to believe that they would demand these things. They are residents of Cape Coral too and I’m sure they know these things were extravagant wants and not needs.
I truly understand the plight of the residents and sympathize with the residents who have been chased out of their homes or are on the brink of being chased out of their homes on a daily basis. This is caused because of the indiscriminate decisions that are made every week by our public officials. I have been through many contracts and letters of authorization and found a great deal of fat and waste that should have been cut but I was ignored. I remember a particular construction contract that listed a pre construction engineer, we were paying $238 an hour for his services. I wrote about this and called the over blown salary to the attention to the council. They did nothing. They spend the money and we pay the bills.
I fought against the public service tax and all the other fees and assessments that the council and administration called “revenue diversification.” What a misrepresentation that was. I was against the huge increase in mileage rates. For Mr. Riggs to slam someone who agrees with the Financial Advisory Committee is ludicrous. He chairs that committee which is comprised of a group of very intelligent residents who worked very hard to show the council ways to cut spending and the committee and its recommendations then are ignored. Also I recall Mr. Foye who chaired that committee for many years saying that he is resigning the chair because he felt that the city staff was fiscally reckless and that council was fiscally irresponsible or something to that effect.
I fought tooth and nail for the residents of this city long before I considered running for office. Keep in mind that fighting for less spending, smaller government and lower taxes is in the best interest of the residents. If you want to see some of the issues that I had with the administration and our elected officials there are over 100 letters to the editor that were published. These letters address a wide spectrum of issues that are related to our city government. Each and every one of them was fighting for the residents. Please see for yourself and go to my Web site. Click on issues and look at Regarding Council, Editorials, Latest News & Things to Watch. These are my letters and the issues I have with the city.
Mr. Riggs while well intentioned has not done his homework but is fast to accuse me of not doing mine. I have made almost every council meeting for the last 3/1-2 years. I studied contracts, agendas, ordinances and resolutions among other things. I believe I can say without reservation that I do understand the issues and proof of the pudding is in those letters.
John Sullivan
Candidate for Cape Coral Mayor
Cape Coral