CAPE CORAL, Fla. \u2014 Cape Coral City Council decided Wednesday not to move forward with a proposal that would have fundamentally changed how the city operates, blocking voters from deciding whether they wanted a mayor-led government instead of the current city manager system.<\/p>\n
Fox 4’s Bella Line spoke with the mayor about the decision:<\/p>\n
Cape Coral city council rejects proposal to change government structure<\/p>\n
In December, the council began exploring what’s called a “strong-mayor” form of government, which would shift daily operational control from the city manager to the mayor.<\/p>\n
“There’s a huge difference in responsibility. A strong mayor basically runs a day to day operations like the city manager,” Mayor John Gunter said.<\/p>\n
Some council members expressed concerns that the change could inject too much politics into the city’s day-to-day operations. The council ultimately voted down putting the question on the ballot for voters to decide.<\/p>\n
“I do believe that at some point we may want to entertain a strong-mayor form of government, but I don’t think today is that day,” Gunter said.<\/p>\n
However, some council members, including Keith Long, argued the community should have the opportunity to decide whether now is the right time for such a change. <\/p>\n
He also pointed to other cities in Florida that have been operating under the strong-mayor form of government for decades. Fox 4 asked Long if he would like to comment on the decision, and he declined.<\/p>\n
Even though the new structure wouldn’t have taken effect until 2030, Gunter said it could have influenced people who decide to run for mayor in the future.<\/p>\n
“That could either deter somebody from running or because they’re, they are running the day to day operations they may want to run where they wouldn’t before. So, I think it could go either way,” Gunter said.<\/p>\n
Gunter said if the change were to be put on the ballot in the future, it would take a lot of community education. Gunter also indicated the council will not continue discussing this governmental change for now.<\/p>\n
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAPE CORAL, Fla. \u2014 Cape Coral City Council decided Wednesday not to move forward with a proposal that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[3862,209,5219,263,211,210,4866,3305,264,2161,24128,73632,17627],"class_list":{"0":"post-152580","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cape-coral","8":"tag-bella-line","9":"tag-cape-coral","10":"tag-cape-coral-city-council","11":"tag-cape-coral-florida","12":"tag-cape-coral-headlines","13":"tag-cape-coral-news","14":"tag-changes","15":"tag-city-manager","16":"tag-fox-4","17":"tag-government","18":"tag-john-gunter","19":"tag-keith-long","20":"tag-operations"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}