To the editor:

Your story about the upcoming “moratorium” on new car washes and new self-storage facilities here in Cape Coral is very disturbing (Breeze, top of front page, March 20. The proposed ordinance, now pending before the City Council, would flash-freeze any proposed challenges to existing facilities.

In other words, unless the challengers have some real staying power (i.e., lots of money they don’t mind burning while waiting), these challengers are gonna wither and die on the vine. That cost is really a preemptive punitive sanction on legitimate new businesses. Only the owners of the existing businesses would benefit from this naked political interference in the Free Market. In other words, turf protection. Don Corleone himself couldn’t do it any better.

The city has no legitimate interest in interfering with attempts to provide commercial services like this to prospective customers. These new businesses are to be built in commercial zones and will prosper or die there, depending entirely on whether they serve the needs of the public. It is not the Council’s call, but the public’s.

I suppose that buildings for storage facilities and car washes will never be confused with architectural masterpieces, like Gothic cathedrals or the Eiffel Tower. They never could be. If that is what the Council is concerned about here, they are in the wrong business.

This is a classic example of governmental overreach at the local level. It must be stopped. The underlying attitude by the members of the Council is, ummm, “problematic.” We can do better.

Larry Gillis

Cape Coral