To the editor:

I am writing in opposition to $10 million to private enterprise for “downtown parking.” That is 100,000 per parking spot? Why not build a low-income house for 100 residents and ask them to let somebody park in their driveway?

And at the risk of pointing out the obvious, you will lose those spots as soon as the 400 apartments fill up. The apartment dwellers will just ignore any set aside parking, or take up the street parking you have now. Unless you are also getting senior housing units with no parking places allocated with this giveaway?

As soon as the apartment dwellers have moved into the redevelopment boondoggle, they will be voters in the city of Cape Coral. How long before they will tire of drunks and robbers having access to their garage at 2 a.m.? I envision they will mobilize 400 votes to take out of office anybody that doesn’t renege on this “deal.”

This is a bad plan.

I do not mind you LOANING your real estate buddies money to build housing that would include 50% low-income senior housing units with no parking privileges, and commercial discounted space for locally owned businesses. The deal should structure a clawback; and a clause obligating the deal to any future buyer. The repayment provision should have some teeth; like they do not get a pass until loan is repaid to city. But there must be very tight controls that this money can’t just walk out the door and then nothing comes back to the city. Funneling the deal through the redevelopment agency isn’t enough.

The council members are already kind of a laughing stock for giving tax breaks to empty commercial sites who rent to companies already in Cape Coral that close and move out of another half-empty mall just across the street, and also in our city. Heck, so far you can’t or won’t even hold the Tennessee- based garbage collection people accountable with fines while they refuse to pay a living wage.

Act like this is your money, and then think on what your claw back mechanism will be when none of the targets are met. This looks like you are tasking some future elected official with cleaning up the embarrassment that will result. I see no public upside to what frankly looks like letting your buddies feed at the public trough.

Why not buy the Veterans building for couple of million and use that parking lot to subsidize commercial parking “need?”

Frankly this $10 million give away seems like a waste of tax money with no upside to the city. Am I missing something?

Ellen Starbird

Cape Coral