To the editor:<\/p>\n
I sent the following to Cape Coral City Council in advance of Wednesday\u2019s meeting:<\/p>\n
First of all, spending $500,000 on a vanity project our \u201cillustrious\u201d city manager thinks will attract visitors to the city is misplaced. No one is going to drive 45 minutes to an hour off the interstate to look at a tall flagpole. He anticipates the cost to be $500,000 but I doubt one can be installed for that.<\/p>\n
In this Resolution, the City Manager is asking to move the historical monument at the base of the Cape Coral Bridge.\u00a0 Yet another example of the city administration methodically exterminating our history.\u00a0 And what happens if the monument is destroyed while trying to move it?\u00a0 He is essentially asking our rubber-stamp council to give him the go ahead to move the monument with absolutely no dollar amount attached.\u00a0 My guess is he will move the monument Immediately if not sooner, especially if citizens start pushing back on his agenda.\u00a0 He did it with Jaycee Park, sending in demolition crews to destroy what was there and with the Yacht Club by tearing down the community center while people were trying to save it and have it rebuilt.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
I researched tall flagpoles and there is a 10% rule for all flagpoles.\u00a0 That means for a 250 foot flagpole, it would have to be installed with 25 feet underground, EMBEDDED IN CONCRETE.\u00a0 Now how will this be accomplished when the water table at Bernice Braden Park is maybe 6-8 feet?\u00a0 Then consider the shipping of this waste of money.\u00a0 What would the cost be to ship a 250-plus flag pole and it would have to be a single piece \u2014\u00a0not segmented as segmented poles would not survive the high winds we experience here during storms.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The tallest flagpole in the country is in Wisconsin at 400 feet tall.\u00a0 It is embedded in 685 cubic yards of concrete 40 feet underground.\u00a0 Ours would be a project that would inevitably involve the EPA and Florida DEP based on the immediate proximity to the river where HE wants to put it. Apparently, like Jaycee Park and the Yacht Club, the people who pay for everything have no say \u2014\u00a0they simply ignore us and do whatever the city manager wants.<\/p>\n
Then there is the matter of the impact on traffic on Cape Coral Parkway during an installation and it will negatively impact the SlipAway. And did he ever consider the noise an approximately 60\u2032 x 80\u2032 flag would make?\u00a0 What provisions is he planning to take the flag down during high winds? Does he ever think that far ahead?<\/p>\n
Then there is the matter of the \u201cfundraising.\u201d How is the city manager going to account for and document the donations?\u00a0 Jars in retail establishments would be a recipe for fraud and embezzlement IMHO. Will donations be tax deductible, how will receipts be monitored and recorded? And if funds raised are in excess of the target amount will go where? I know I don\u2019t want the city manger to decide how they would be used. And if the fundraising falls short \u2014 then what? We have to pay for it?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Instead of using money for this unnecessary expenditure, why not raise the money and use it for after school activities -like a Boys and Girls Club or a centrally located YMCA? Give the kids somewhere to go after school, especially for families with two working parents. But no. Never do anything for the people \u2014 just the developers. The city owns over 1800 properties in the city. PROPERTIES THAT ARE NOT BEING TAXED so I\u2019m sure there are properties that can be used so tax dollars can be collected. But no. That would make sense\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m probably wasting my time writing this, you never do anything we want and NEVER negotiate with us. COMPROMISE is not in your vocabulary unless, of course, you are a developer. But be advised, blind copies are going to the news outlets so you can\u2019t deny ever receiving this. During the COW when the City Manager brought this idea up, it was rightfully met with ridicule.\u00a0 Yet I have little to no faith you will scrap this ludicrous waste of money at a time you are crying about significant future funding shortages for important things, like infrastructure.\u00a0 You keep approving median beautification projects to the tune of millions, when what we need are not medians but more lanes to handle the intense traffic here in the city. The priorities are messed up.<\/p>\n
I doubt many, if any will read this before this afternoon\u2019s meeting. The whole spiel the mayor gives every meeting that if we want answers, just email them. Yeah. No. That doesn\u2019t work. The last three meetings I attended, I emailed all council members, City Manager and City Attorney and in the subject line I put \u201cplease acknowledge receipt\u201d. It would take seconds to open the email and hit \u2018Reply\u2019, and only ONE council member did that.\u00a0 Whether he read the email or not is unknown, but he took the three second to open the email and hit \u201cReply.\u201d\u00a0 Guess we aren\u2019t worth a few seconds of their time.\u00a0 That Council member was Keith Long.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t expect a response from our City Manager as he clearly stated in a recent meeting that he does not have to respond to emails.\u00a0 That attitude, however, is in direct violation of the city organizational chart that puts the PEOPLE at the top of the chart.\u00a0I strongly suggest Cape Coral revise their organizational chart and put DEVELOPERS at the top.\u00a0 Maybe they\u2019ll have room to put citizens at the bottom if at all.<\/p>\n
Marie Kavanaugh<\/p>\n
Cape Coral<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To the editor: I sent the following to Cape Coral City Council in advance of Wednesday\u2019s meeting: First…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-3250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3250","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=3250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}