Elect leaders to lead
To the editor:
The personality of the new Cape Coral City Council seems to be inclined toward “listening to the public.” This is the message they pushed during the campaign. The question now is “who constitutes the public they are listening to?”
One could argue that we elect people to lead. Good leaders make decisions hard decisions often not popular.
The election reflected the opinions of a very small select percentage of the citizens. One should hope that the citizens being listened to are not the loudest, not the most activist, or people with personal agendas.
It is strange to this writer that there seems to be a message from this new council not for the public to communicate with the city administrators that are educated in their field, until they (the new council) have the opportunity to present it to the public. This often leads to inaccurate and misleading information and, in time, this misleading information becomes fact.
We have a regular group of people who for the past several years weekly go to the podium, weekly write letters to the editor expressing their views and opinions and in the process create havoc, confuse the issues and present themselves with a minority opinion that after time becomes misrepresented to the public as twisted facts.
Does anyone, including the media, question the qualifications of the people given the opportunity to make these presentations?
Are these folks equipped with limited knowledge disagreeing with administration with a personal agenda and anyone who disagrees with them?
Does the media verify what they say and write?
Have they served the community as members of City Council Advisory Boards to learn the issues correctly? Have they become a special interest group influencing our leaders?
While I agree some balance is good, do not accept these citizens’ views as expert; they are only opinions often misleading with an on-going destructive message of misdeeds.
As a citizen of Cape Coral I certainly wish this council success. Making decisions is difficult and how they arrive at the decision affects many lives.
Let’s all wish them good luck and in time we shall see the effect of the many decisions needed to be made.
Tom McNulty
Cape Coral