Residential property owners requesting site “vacations” from the city of Cape Coral will no longer be required to make a mandatory contribution to the city’s tree fund.

Cape Coral City Council on Wednesday directed staff to bring Ordinance 79-24 back to the board on Jan. 22, so its commercial aspects can be further considered, while eliminating all provisions pertaining to residential sites.

At the direction of Council, a city staff policy pertaining to the mandatory contributions as they apply to residential properties has been suspended.

This ordinance as presented addressed vacations of plats, easements, and rights-of-way under the land development code.

Planning Team Coordinator Mike Struve shared three key points at Wednesday’s meeting.

“The first one is technical in nature and there is language in the ordinance that is intended to clarify technical requirements for surveys, legal descriptions and sketches. It provides guidance with private surveyors that would meet the expectations of the city surveyor with the idea that those documents will be of higher quality when submitted to the city,” Struve said.

The second was a requirement for a pre-application meeting. He said staff would work with owners, so they are very clear as to all the costs associated with the filing of a vacation application from the fee, recording of the documents if approved, to the various site improvements.

The third was codification of a new staff initiative that involved a mandatory requirement for the City Tree Fund. According to the presentation, the tree fund payment the city has imposed since January is based on 50% of the assessed value of the owner’s land on a square foot basis applied to the area for which the applicant was requesting a city release of use, or vacation.

Struve said as a condition of approval, the city was imposing a one-time payment to the city Tree Fund. He said city right of way, although not owned by the city, could certainly be thought of as a city asset.

Struve said with turning over a public asset for a private development, there should be some tangible public benefit that is provided by the developer or homeowner.

“It can be quantified and calculated and based on assessed value of a homeowner property,” he said. “It is based solely on the land. It is independent of any improvements of the land.”

Struve said if the developer, or property owner did not want to contribute money to the tree fund, but wanted to make improvements on their site, or city right of way like a median equal or exceeding the contribution, that can be used as a basis of approval as well.

City Council expressed numerous concerns.

Councilmember Bill Steinke said the initial discussion for the ordinance centered around developers.

“We slid in the resident. The example given here, in my opinion, is inappropriate and very decisive example,” he said as the affected residential properties were more likely to be an $800,000 lot, not the $40,000 lot, with a $2,000 fee, presented as an example.

He also rejected the staff argument that the payment of the fee would compensate the public for its public benefit loss.

“That land is never going to be used by the public in the first place,” he said bluntly.

Properties requesting vacations tend to be “hammerhead lots” and the whole idea of the vacation is to establish a better setback, he added.

“Based on the setback requirements, without that vacation that land on hammerhead lot is not useable for the property owner,” Steinke said.

Steinke said he understands the addition to the tree fund for a commercial developer, but not for a residential property where the public is not going to have access anyway.

City Manager Mike Ilczyszyn said the tree fund was an initiative of the last council, as they wanted to find ways to start funding median beautification. He said the idea was to set a fee that brings in revenue that meets another public purpose.

Steinke said discussions defined the target and it was not residential lots

“As a part of the former council, I was under the impression we were talking about commercial developed land, and not residences,” Steinke said. “It makes more sense in a commercial green area where you are taking green space and putting it somewhere else. I never realized it was going to affect a property owner trying to build a home.”

Mayor John Gunter agreed that he has no problem with the commercial approach for the tree program, but he was not for a residential component.

“We made a policy change on how we approach vacation with no basis because there wasn’t an ordinance that we passed,” he said.

After lengthy discussion among Council, City Attorney Aleksandr Boksner made a recommendation that the motion be amended to continue the matter until the Jan. 22 regular meeting, so the ordinance could be altered to be consistent with Council discussion.