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To the editor:
My recent Letter to the Editor regarded questions I had posed at the April 2 Council meeting and said I would report any answers I received.
There are some questions that were not answered and there are questions that weren’t answered completely. These were also emailed to council members so they can get these answers for us all.
Question 1 (It is #1 for a reason and should have been the easiest to answer) What individual(s) in the City of Cape Coral are responsible to assure Developer’s compliance with all requirements set forth in Resolution 209-24 “Comprehensive Development Agreement for the Delivery of Jaycee Park Improvements” Still want a response.
Question #2. Were there any undocumented meeting by City Employees with either Fortress Secured, LLC and The Reef (more specifically involving The Reef) and WHO indicated that it was OK that they were having difficulty procuring a loan but the agreement would stay in place? They were approximately 4 months delinquent and the City Attorney did nothing until last week WHY? The citizens deserve an HONEST answer.
Question #4 was not even addressed as to where the “RV Docking Stations” were on the approved plans for a $100,000.00 allowance in Exhibit C, line item 7.
Question #7 is regarding any Change Orders submitted to the city by Fortress. Change Event #001 – Early Work Authorization. Change request was issued to the City by Florida Premier Contractors (why wasn’t this generated by Fortress Secured as specified in the Agreement?) on 10/24/2024, The letter from Cape Coral to FPC was generated on 10/02/2024. How can you approve a change if there was no meeting/conversations about the proposed change? The mere fact that the approval letter went out before the change was requested indicates to me, SOMEONE in the city made a decision that violated the agreement. I realize the change might have seemed insignificant, but nonetheless violated the agreement. The city’s approach to enforcing requirements defined in the agreement are, IMHO, inadequate at best.
Question #6 Despite the requirement in the Agreement, Fortress Secured was supposed to keep all logs of daily activities. What I was sent, was a monthly log provided by Florida Premier Construction. Nowhere in the agreement does it call out FLP to submit these logs or give Fortress Secured the right to substitute another entity for items that, per agreement, belong to Fortress Secured. Yet another violation of the agreement.
Question #8 is regarding funds already distributed to Fortress Secured. However invoice #1 in the amount of $585,276.09 for work done 11/01/24 thru 11/31/24 was submitted and paid by the city, not to Fortress Secured, but Florida Premier Construction. WHY was this invoice accepted and paid?
A day after the last Council meeting, I received information from my councilmember (THANK YOU Laurie) on what funding was used to pay the developer of Jaycee Park, Fortress Secured, LLC. I was informed that invoices for Fortress were being paid with "Commercial Paper" draws approved by the old council via Ordinance 71-24 approved 10/16/2024.
In this ordinance, the City took on $25 million more in debt to pay for what I consider vanity projects (parks etc.) NOT, as their rational in the ordinance reads in SECTION 2 (A) "The issuer (the city) has various capital needs and requirements in the form of the Project which must be acquired in order to maintain and protect the health, safety and welfare of the citizens of the issuer."
In what universe does putting the city in additional significant debt to continue park improvement(s) to the tune of $25 million remotely make sense?
And nowhere in Ordinance 71-24 does it indicate who can and cannot access these funds or approve payments from this account or for what. It should also be noted that the Commercial Paper Instruments can be modified at any time. As it sits now, the city's Commercial Paper account is now maxed out at $150 million.
And the then council approved it without discussion. They took less than 4 minutes to spend $25 million we do not have.
So, in light of passage Ordinance 71-24, I went to the April 16 council meeting because City Management was AGAIN asking Council to amend the budget by adding another $24,029,526 and the list of increases and/or decreases (very few of them) are, IMHO, predominantly for non-critical or vanity projects. To put it into perspective, if you take the number of people living in Cape Coral, and divide it into $24 million, it equates to approx. $110 for every man, woman and child in the city.
Since the 2025 budget was passed, City Management has come to the council three times to demand an increase in the budget to the tune of $121 MILLION. $72+ million via Ordinance 1-25; $25 million via Ordinance 71-24 (borrowed through Commercial Paper account) and $24-plus million via Ordinance 13-25. We have no idea where the money for Ordinances 1-25 & 13-25 is coming from, probably more debt.
Now the budget has gone from $1.058 BILLION to $1.155 BILLION. Note to citizens, the city has almost $1 BILLION in debt and the last budget allowed $25 MILLION for interest payments alone. Their solution? Apparently it is to just borrow more money at taxpayer expense and at the elevated rates we are currently seeing. IMHO it is time for new city management. This level of spending is unacceptable.
I requested that Council reject Ordinance 13-25 brought forth by our City management and send it back for revisions to eliminate and/or put on hold, any and all expenditures which do not directly protect the health, safety and welfare of the citizens of the issuer as they typically use that phrase to rationalize the why of expenditures. Parks do not fall into that category.
Time to rein in the rampant spending. Lest you forget, property values in the Cape are crashing, especially in condos and those around Jaycee Park are now one-third lower in value and virtually impossible to sell thanks to the destruction of the park. That means significantly lower property values. But not to worry, they'll probably hike the mil rates to unacceptable levels to make up the difference rather than shelve projects or reduce costs.
Time to call, write or email every council member, the mayor and the City Manager and tell them to STOP SPENDING.
Marie Kavanaugh
Cape Coral