Priced out of paradise
To the editor:
Ladies and gentlemen of the Cape Coral City Council,
Are you really reliable members of this community? Are you not aware of how much you are hurting the majority of homeowners in “your” city? Don’t you realize that the citizens are forced into a lower personal budget too?
Are you really so ignorant to increase our burden, the “property tax rate” by 78 percent? Don’t you feel guilty or like a thief if you do this increase to “your” community?
City of Cape Coral CC- is no place to live anymore!
1st Problem: Planning errors by city manager during the last four years have been agreed upon by the city council
– Building a safety building for $50 million that citizens voted no, we don’t want
– Building a water plant for $160 (City water use = $90 mill) We obviously don’t need
– Building new Police & Fire-station for $6 million. Neighbor cities do it for the half the cost
– Having 41+17 new police officers for an expected population increase, we didn’t get.
– Ridiculous & costly code enforcement. (No boat parking in driveway etc.) We don’t like
– UEP North Water /sewer connection planning & budget errors We don’t understand
Here we are now in 2009 with our budget deficit, but still with the same “professional” city manager in charge.
2nd Problem: Unfortunately not one member of the four newly elected city council members seem to have the backbone or the solutions to correct the mismanagement of the last four years.
What we hear is instead:
– Excuses for the safety building because it was already in construction and financed with bonds even by totally ignoring our citizen’s vote? But now it cost us interest and $3 million running budget per year?
– No practical ideas of what to do with or how to sell the over capacity of the new water plant?
– We have to keep all 58 new officers hired since 2007 for future proposed population growth. Even if this was a planning mistake and Cape Coral has now in 2009 less population than in 2007 and there is still no change in crime rate but now we have 58 more police officers on the payroll to generate more traffic tickets or for what? Thank you, Mr. Feichthaler.
What about you, the four new city councils? What about your promises and intentions in the beginning? Did you lose your backbone so fast to say no to this mismanagement? Now you bow your back and say yes to this 78 percent millage increase? We didn’t expect anything positive about the millage rate from the old three council members (they are responsible for this misery we are in now) but what a huge disappointment are our new council members now.
According to the News-Press and Cape Coral Breeze, this will torture us with the highest millage rate in Florida 2010? (Example millage rates: Tampa 5.73/ Miami 5.7 / Ft Lauderdale 4.11 / Orlando 5.65 / Tallahassee 3.3 and Lee County no increase since 2000, Fort Myers Beach only 0.87 but Cape Coral wants 916% more than Ft. Myers Beach = 7.97?!
The 2010 CC City budget is still based on 48 percent just for fire and police? You have no other solution?
This is not acceptable for us! Don’t you understand that? Don’t you listen to normal average people anymore?
It seems like you all are only interested and occupied to keep the luxury benefits, buybacks, buyouts of the overstaffed police and firefighter force and the unreasonable spending habits alive that city council and city manager built up in the boom years?
I think it is time that people in Cape Coral wake up and stop paying the property tax until we see some real budget cuts. Stop your practice to inform people only on emotional levels like: There will be no Veterans Day Parade or bad response time of police and fire fighters if the council makes the necessary budget cuts. Give facts and real data to our citizens and they will understand. Because the city population went down from 164,500 in ’07 to 162,850 in 2009! Start to save and cut this budget now. Here are the Fort Myers cuts as an example for you: Fort Myers City Council is looking at cutting jobs to balance the 2009-2010 budgets. City finance officials proposed cutting 21 firefighter positions and eight police positions. A 10 percent pay cut may also be applied to all city workers.
What about Cape Coral? The union will not accept the 10 percent income cut during our economy crisis?
I ask you do you know how many citizens have far more than this 10 percent income cut?
– Why do we not change at least to 50 percent voluntary Fire Force? (For our one or two big fire events/year)
– Do we need to have the ladder fire truck driving out for every minor accident?
– Do we have to provide our police officers with a very expensive car for their private use (special in this bad economy time) and do we have to increase their income by almost 100 percent by hidden overtime spending, according to media accounts. Sorry even if these are all nice people but we all have to tighten our belts and see that we work together in this crisis. What about solidarity?
Or does our City Council not have the power anymore to stop this mismanagement in City Hall? Is Police Chief Petrovich the new czar now in this city? Residing in his new (not voter approved) $50 million palace around the corner and should we best write and send complaints to him? He seems to be the only one that tells us we lose safety with necessary cuts. Wonder why?
We learned that having built our home here in 2004 was a big mistake and that we are forced to pay $26,053 property tax in 5 years for a $178,000 home. (This is 14.6 percent of the value in only five years) Now in 2010 we will get the proposed $4,400 tax for an assessed $190,000 value instead of getting the expected relief (after losing our jobs and our home values)?
I guess we don’t live in the Bronx. We don’t have any comparable crime or fire. We had the second lowest crime rate before the police/fire budget skyrocketed and we have the second lowest crime rate now with our decreasing population. But we can easily get more financial trouble if our City Council keeps this overspending and wasting of our money and pushing people to lose their homes. Now there is no money left in people’s pockets to spend for restaurants and local businesses. Wake up! We are in an economic crisis. Cape Coral Council don’t you get it? Please don’t make it worse for the local businesses.
Thank you ladies and gentlemen of the city council for your unbeatable service for us. You really showed great strength and made strong decisions (again against your voters) and you don’t stop charging us for your (out of control) services.
And we can also not, to give for example Mr. Wilkinson and others special pension pay offs of about $590,000 for an early pension take off and re-employment. (Double Dips, see Mr. Wilkinson’s case)
Result
The political power in this city has obviously no power to stop this spending and seems to act unprofessional. It keeps the mismanagement going. Now in a time where more than 20,000 families are losing their homes in our Lee County this year and 13.2 percent are jobless, the city “gang” wants to increase the property tax rate by 79 percent even when the home values decrease by 30 percent. Who cares, they just do it. (Even if Lee County and the school board are able to decrease the property tax by up to 30 percent)?
That is not responsible politics. This is insane and ignoring facts.
With best regards your shocked citizen
Horst Frontzek
Cape Coral