To the editor:

When we voted for the $60 million Parks GO Bond in November 2018, the city sold the referendum to the voters as having $11 million allocated to Yacht Club Enhancements. The City Council removed the Yacht Club Enhancements from the Parks GO Bond in March 2022 by a Consent Agenda Resolution.

After five years, the city is now ready to share with the public that it believes the Parks GO Bond will end up costing $88.5 million (without the Yacht Club). The city should not be allowed to offset the overrun of the bond issue by using the $11 million that was advertised to the public for improvements to the Yacht Club Park.

The city also promised that the 10 new parks would be completed by the end of 2021. Only four parks are completed as of today.

The property owners in the city will be paying off this debt for the next 15 years and we are paying for something we were promised that we did not get. This is simply another example of city leadership, the mayor, and the city council doing the wrong thing for the citizens of Cape Coral. We are all sickened by the yearly stipend to our mayor and city council of $340,000. We should be more upset for paying $11 million for Yacht Club Enhancements that we did not receive.

Reduce the bond Issue repayment to $49 million. Maybe someday they will finish the parks, but who knows how much they will really cost or when they will be done.

Thomas Shadrach

Past Budget Review Committee Chair

Cape Coral