To the editor:

Congratulations to all of the newly elected members to the Cape Coral Council. Now let’s get to work on issues that have been sidelined or slowed by parks development. Parks are important, but development should not be at the cost of moving our city ahead with more important items. Traffic needs to be better controlled through lowering speed limits and installing roundabouts that keep traffic moving instead of detaining traffic at stop lights that need constant “re-timing.” Roundabouts, while slowing traffic, keep it moving. This actually saves time. So slightly slower is much safer and time is saved not waiting at lights.

All of our major arterials that have residential access need to have speed limits reduced. We need left turn lanes in the boulevards to free up the through lanes and keep traffic moving.

Flooding needs to be controlled. This means the 60-40 code of paved/permeable soil needs to be reviewed on a house-by-house basis and houses that are in violation need to be brought into compliance. With more construction, we have less permeable soil to absorb rainfall. Retention basins near all flooded roadways need to be developed to catch and release rainfall instead of using our roads as a retention basin. Parking by contractors and even police on boulevards damages the landscape, compacts the soil and increases flooding. Get the vehicles off the boulevards! It looks trashy and devalues neighborhoods. Increased maintenance and redesign of storm sewer and canal maintenance needs to be moved to a top priority instead of reduced as in past years. We cannot be hamstrung by the inefficiencies or old habits that appear to bottleneck these projects. The city needs to either get this design and repair work in progress soon or contract it out.

Our police force is compassionate and has a light touch when working with the citizens, but it’s time they realized that the other citizens also need to have protection from noise, disturbances, and speeding. We need more proactive enforcement of issues that are quality of life issues. Full-time residents should not have to put up with speeding, aggressive driving, noise, school bus passing, blocked sidewalks, roads blocked by service companies. Our code enforcement also needs to bring into compliance many violators in a proactive manner. One house with non-compliant storage, trash, or design elements affects the values of all the homes on the same block. It is time to think of the other homeowners, not the single house that wants to make their home a permanent parking lot or rental nightmare. The citizens shouldn’t have to make a complaint. The city should be proactive.

Sewer and water infrastructure in the northwest and northeast need to be completed within the next three years and not at the ridiculous cost that is proposed. The longer a project goes on, the costlier it becomes. Get several contractors on it with a performance bonus for under time and budget incentives.

Development of light industry needs to be aggressively sought and brought to the Cape. If the city wants to play real estate developer, let’s build an industrial park instead of cramming more condos and apartments downtown where the roads and the bridge are already overburdened with traffic. Millions of dollars spent to purchase land in another county to provide irrigation, or for land speculation in the “downtown” area could be used to get these issues on track and completed within a couple of years. We need better paying jobs right here and light industry will provide those jobs locally.

Our city needs to transition from a sloppy retirement community to an actual vibrant city that produces more than a good time. This is a top down management wake up call. To the new council, this is the challenge. Let’s get it done!

Congratulations.

J Caplin

Cape Coral