Cape Informer

Gary Aubuchon and Burt Saunders both attended the council meeting this evening. Mr. Aubuchon spoke before Council first, stating that he is “Working hard for Cape Coral.” He alluded to next week’s property tax special session, stating that it would be responsible, responsive legislation.

Mr. Saunders quipped that he hoped anyone with comments would contact Mr. Aubuchon, which elicited a rueful laugh. He also said that it was “quite fun” to read about Cape Coral. He did express disappointment over the veto on State Road 78. He said he would work to bring that back into the budget in the future.

South West Florida Expressway Authority (http://swfea.net) provided a presentation for a toll based expansion of I-75. They state that we will spend nearly two decades with “F” grade traffic in Lee and Collier Counties, if we rely on the current FDOT expansion plans. They did state that they have a poll on their site and recommend all residents take the poll and review the information available.

The Mayor pulled two items for Discussion from the consent agenda, 3B and 3D, stating that both parcels were higher priced than they should be. He made a motion to deny both. Motion carried 7 to 1, with CM LePera voting against.

The Mayor’s suggested spending limits came up for vote in ordinance 75-07.  The ordinance would limit the general fund budget based on the combined rate of inflation and population growth. The ordinance was denied 5-3, Tom Hair, Chris Berardi and Mayor F voted yes.

The City Council received a feasibility study on the CRA from the City Manager on Thursday with three possible options for Council to consider. The CRA is an ongoing hot topic for Cape Coral. The process has been long, and progress has been slow. Only a few weeks back Council approved the final zoning for the downtown area. Now that this major milestone is met, what does the future hold for our downtown?

I wanted to get a feel for Council’s direction on the CRA. To that end, I sent an email interview to each of the council members. The Mayor and Councilmen Berardi, Hair and Stevens all replied. I would like to thank them for taking the time.

I first asked Do you support removing the CRA volunteer board? To this all respondents answered No. Chris Berardi felt that “will only cause a slower and even less efficient process than what is currently in place.” He also added “Rather than remove the CRA board, we should remove many of the roadblocks to development, specifically excess regulation and excess government (staff level) involvement.”

In response to the question do you feel that council should directly control the spending in the CRA area? The Mayor answered “I am interested in the CRA not just talking improvements, but seeing actual results. I am in favor of whatever path will cause the first major project to rise from the ground.”

Chris Berardi reiterated his desire to remain efficient and stated “Council should remain the final authority, however we should leave the day-to-day details to the business experts of the CRA.”

As previously posted here, Tom Hair said in his letter “I support the CRA as it is currently configured. As this city continues to grow in size and complexity it will become increasingly necessary for Council to delegate some of its authority to remain focused on issues of general concern such as spending, taxes, and overall infrastructure.”

Richard Stevens only offered “My answers to the first two questions are No & No. All other questions may be answered by inference from these two responses.” Certainly right to the point.

The future is far from decided. There will likely be lively discussion on this issue at tonights council meeting. I will provide more updates on this topic throughout the week, including the other questions from the email interview.

Hi Lloyd,

I hope this is not too long, but I would appreciate it if you could run the whole thing.

First, I did not ask for this report to be generated and as there was no motion passed by council asking the city manager to do so, I am somewhat surprised it was generated at all.

Second, I support the CRA as it is currently configured. As this city continues to grow in size and complexity it will become increasingly necessary for Council to delegate some of its authority to remain focused on issues of general concern such as spending, taxes, and overall infrastructure. City staff is already overburdened with the needs of the city as a whole and it would be difficult to focus the attention needed in the redevelopment area without an active daily presence.

Third, if the impetus for this study was a perception that the CRA has become a paper tiger, a view I do not share, then maybe the solution is to increase the authority of the CRA board to give the tiger some teeth. We should all remember what the purpose of a CRA is and why they are formed. When the State Legislature adopted the Florida Statues giving municipalities the ability to establish CRA’s it was the intent to create a somewhat autonomous, non-political entity that could focus its attention and dedicate itself to correcting the ills of a blighted area. If the CRA is to be left to the staff at City Hall, it may not fulfill the intent of the legislation or serve the business and property owners in the affected area. CRA’s were given significant powers and funding alternatives such as tax increment financing that make them more of a public/private partnership than a wholly governmental concern. In the final analysis though, the City Council still reviews and approves the budget for the CRA, so I frankly don’t know why the City Council would want to micromanage the CRA.

Finally, there have been missteps, but an evening of blamestorming only leaves a lot of ruffled feelings and we all wind up in exactly the same place except mad at each other. Each one of us can, in hindsight, see better directions. It should not have taken from 2002 until a few weeks ago to get the codes written and passed into law. Other cities have done it in months. We should have had a storm water plan in place, we still don’t. That discussion was also started in 2002. And we also need a traffic plan that takes into account the 11,000 planned dwellings now in the land use plan.

Thomas W. Hair
Councilmember, District One
City of Cape Coral, Florida