Cape Informer

As promised, I am providing the Mayor’s take on the now infamous “Attorney General Flip Flop”. The mayor emailed Sunday evening to give me his recollection on the recent Attorney General vote.

Mayor F. says that Mr. Rosado, on returning from his month of leave, requested a status report on the AG letter. He then made a new motion that would examine all points of the Attorney General’s letter. The Mayor stated that Rosado’s motion was “either vague, broad or showed an incredible lack of understanding of the issues before us. Therefore, I and a majority of council voted no.”

He was concerned, however, that finding number 20 would not have been investigated, after this new vote that they took. That being the case, they took another vote to resume the original stated request, as a precaution. The ever challenging dance of bureaucracy, do watch your step!

The Mayor also assured me that the delay was “simply through workload.” He did not believe that the delay was at the direction of staff, or of any council member. He also said that if someone had directed a delay, he would seek serious punishment.

I’m afraid that my opinion on the delay hasn’t changed much. It’s an inflammatory issue, one which our political leaders should make a higher priority. They did at least, direct the City Attorney to respond by a deadline. This was missing from the original request, and as such, it’s at least a small improvement on the situation. Thanks, Mr. Mayor for the follow up. I’ll follow up again, after the letter is actually brought to council.

Thankful for everyone who has stopped by to read, or say hello, during the last few months.

Thankful for a wonderful family, great friends, and a growing city to call home.

I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Today’s Breeze had another article which caught my eye. I have heard that the Council was planning to vote to repeal the ordinance which puts term limits up for vote in April. Here’s the article, at the Daily Breeze.

If our city’s Charter Review Committee is of the opinion that we should allow residents to vote on term limits, we certainly should be doing so. If there were some sort of problem with the ordinance itself, I could see the necessity to repeal it, and have it rewritten. That does not appear to be the case.

Instead, our City Council is attempting to remove a potential “hot button issue” from the ballot, in order to have fewer voters at the polls in April. This is not an acceptable way to run elections, in my opinion. You do not remove ordinances that are ready to go before the voters, because you are afraid they will affect other ordinances. You should, as guardians of our freedoms and liberties, be appalled by anything that would seek to reduce the voice of the people you are charged to serve.

I’ve often said to our City Council, and staff members, that communication is key. Respect is also key. It is disrespectful to the Citizens of Cape Coral to try and control the voter turn out by limiting which ordinances would appear on the ballot.

The politicians did play?

A few stories piqued my interest during my work induced marathon flights and meetings that occurred over the last few weeks. This one was an interesting flip-flop:

I’ve emailed the mayor to ask for his view on the story of the sudden mind changing that went on over the Attorney General opinion. I was at the original meeting that they decided to seek the opinion. The lack of action on that seemingly simple request is mind boggling, to say the least. I also felt that the December time frame which they provided to the City Attorney’s office was excessive.

I felt that maybe I could help out a bit. This is my rough draft letter, written in less than 10 minutes, “pro bono” for the city:

Dear Attorney General:

Our City has received an audit from the State Auditor General’s office. In the audit they claim violations of Florida Statutes. Our City Staff is of the opinion that the Auditor General may be mistaken. Please review the Auditor General’s Report, related to Cape Coral’s business practices, and the City Manager’s answers to the Auditor General’s report, and provide an opinion based upon these published documents as to whether or not Cape Coral is in violation of State Statutes.

For your convenience, a copy of the report is available from the Cape Coral Website, with all comments attached. You may find that copy here: http://www.capecoral.net/PDF/2006-182.pdf

Thank you for your time,

The People of Cape Coral.

—

That was easy, no? Let’s hope it was of some help, I agreed with the original vote that we should seek out the Attorney General’s opinion. Cape Coral needs to know when we’re screwing up, and fix it promptly. I will share the Mayor’s responses to my email enquiry with you as soon as I receive them.