Cape Coral city leaders are grappling with a significant infrastructure challenge.<\/p>\n
They are holding a special meeting Thursday afternoon to discuss mobility fees in an effort to close a $1.7 billion infrastructure gap.<\/p>\n
Council members have acknowledged that Cape Coral’s growth has not been self-sustaining.<\/p>\n
The mobility fee proposal on the table is a long-term plan extending over the next 20 to 25 years.<\/p>\n
Without the $1.7 billion, some projects may not be completed.<\/p>\n
The mobility fee would be a one-time fee for new developments and major redevelopments.<\/p>\n
This fee would depend on the type of project and its location within the city.<\/p>\n
The primary objective of these fees is to enhance city roads, sidewalks and bike paths, recover money lost over the years, and ensure developers contribute to community infrastructure and safety.<\/p>\n
WINK News spoke with local residents who emphasized the need for more infrastructure in the growing city.<\/p>\n
“Sidewalks is another issue for the kids,” said Tim Dean of Cape Coral. “They had a problem over there with no sidewalks, and they’re walking in the street.”<\/p>\n
Deb Hykes, also from Cape Coral, shared her perspective.<\/p>\n
“I have to walk my dogs on the street, but we’re on a canal down off of Pelican behind the firehouse, so there’s no cars, hardly at all back there. I’m OK with it, but there are a lot of streets that do not have sidewalks,” she said.<\/p>\n
James Reynolds expressed concern about the infrastructure keeping pace with population growth.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think the infrastructure is keeping up with the population. It doesn’t appear to be,” he said.<\/p>\n
A new state law, effective Oct. 1, will limit the city’s ability to raise fees, adding urgency to the council’s decision-making process.<\/p>\n
The special meeting is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. Thursday in the council chambers.<\/p>\n
WINK News will provide updates on the outcomes of the meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cape Coral city leaders are grappling with a significant infrastructure challenge. They are holding a special meeting Thursday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-7519","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\/7519","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=7519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}