City of Cape Coral elections
To the editor:
The king is dead, long live the king! I’m not talking about the silly no-kings protests, I’m talking about the current mayor of Cape Carol, who lost his bid for re-election in the recent August primary. He received only 15% of the vote, which means he was doing a terrible job as mayor. Some of his low-lights were doubling his salary (and the salaries of the city council) and calling it a stipend, increasing the budget by 48% over the last three years, and supporting all these costly “destination” projects, such as the latest Yacht Club project, the Bimini East Redevelopment project, and the recently completed Jaycee Park.
The Yacht Club project at the very south end of Cape Coral, went from about $15 million in the GO Fund to a currently estimated $225 million. This project includes a community center, a resort-style swimming pool, and a four-story parking garage in an area of homes that are only two stories high. None of these facilities are needed here. The parking garage and pool will also charge admittance. What we do need is to get the marina back up and running which is a source of income, get the Boathouse restaurant re-built, rebuild the pier which was destroyed by Hurricane Ian four years ago, add another restaurant, and expand ground level parking. The city should stop looking for private partners to add to this current mess.
The Bimini East Redevelopment project is a fiasco in the making for the citizens of Cape Coral because the city is basically giving away the 22 acres of land that was bought and razed by the city for $45 million. In addition, the city is giving the developer Cape Coral’s first park, Four Freedoms Park, as an incentive to develop the area. This park is right on Bimini Basin and has direct sail-boat access to the Caloosahatchee River. The developer is probably drooling over getting this piece of land. Under the developer’s proposal, they will only pay about $26 million for the now 33 acres of land. Only one developer bid on the request for proposal so the city seems to be caving in to its demands. The city should not give away the park. They should wait for a better deal or learn how to negotiate better.
Jaycee Park was a beautiful 12-acre park right along the Caloosahatchee River with about 100 fully grown trees providing shade for its visitors. The city chopped down all these trees and raised the elevation of the park by about 3 feet in order to protect the new facilities in the park from hurricane surges on the river. That water which would have temporarily been stored on the old park will now flow around the new park and adversely impact local homes and businesses. That is not being a good neighbor and it was built under the mayor’s watch.
Finally, the mayor and the city council eliminated the citizen watchdog committee on the city’s budget about three years ago. Since then, the budget has increased by 48%. With the current mayor not advancing to the November elections and the city councilman from District 1 not running for re-election, most of the elected officials of Cape Coral from three years ago will be gone after the November election. The current District 1 councilman probably saw the writing on the wall because he also was for the stipend that doubled his salary and he went against the protests of the citizens of District 1 when he pushed for redeveloping Jaycee Park. He also voted to dissolve the budget committee. The chairman of that defunct budget committee, Tom Shadrach, just ran for District 1 councilman and successfully advanced to the general election in November.
They say that the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t, but in this case, I prefer the devil we don’t know. Since Cape Coral will have a lot of new blood soon, the city should put a hold on decisions on the above costly projects until the new board is seated.
Ken Kendrick
Cape Coral