To the editor:

For the past five years property tax dollars have continued to rise, with little improvements to the city.

Since 2020 the council has steadily increased revenue under their control, culminating by 2024 as having $58.5 million in additional taxes and assessments. This is a 45% increase. (source 2024 Adopted budget for Ad Valorem, Public Service Tax and Fire Service Assessments).

I have watched my property taxes go up an average of $200 each year; last year I received a 20% reduction in my homeowner’s insurance after having a new roof installed, only the receive a letter from my mortgage company that my payment was going to go up an extra $200. When I called to inquire, I was informed that it was due to property taxes and assessments. This has been an ongoing issue for every homeowner in Cape Coral, yet we’re all asking the same question: where is my money going???

The lucrative spending in Cape Coral at the approval of our current city council has gotten out of hand — once a city everyone wanted to move to has now become a city everyone wants to leave. Currently there are 7,018 properties for sale in Cape Coral (source Cape Coral, FL Real Estate & Homes for Sale Realtor.com).

I have neighbors selling their home due to it becoming too expensive to own a home in Cape Coral.

Between the constant rise in property tax dollars and the corruption in city government Cape Coral is fast tracked to become a city that failed.

There is still time to turn things around and save our once-loved city and that is with a fresh start, this November. Exercise your right to vote to replace the officials that have failed this city and its voters and elect grass- roots candidates to start rebuilding what has been destroyed by cutting lucrative spending, tighten up the city’s budget and give the money saved back to the people by reducing property taxes and assessments.

All this can be done by restructuring the city’s budget with the help of reinstating the Budget Committee of volunteers that will challenge city spending.

However, it all starts with you, the voters. Vote the people that have failed out of office. Our Constitution states “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.”

Craig Unroe

Cape Coral