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Open letter to the Cape Coral City Council

2 min read

To the Editor:

On 9 March, the Cape Coral City Council voted 8-0 to begin discussions with Lee County to annex parts of Greater Pine Island, to particularly include at least Matlacha. As Councilman Tim Day said, we “could build some impressive developments out there.” (They also voted to pursue annexation north to Charlotte County, minus state-owned land which does not pay taxes, and east to Route 41.)

The reason why Cape Coral would like to annex surrounding areas requires some background information. The founders (less than 50 years ago) took a largely pristine, mostly wetland Florida habitat and created almost overnight the third largest city in Florida. The city they created by dredge and fill was composed almost entirely of hundreds of thousands of very small residential lots which they aggressively sold to people from all over the world. They made a lot of money, but they did not plan for industrial or generally even commercial areas – nothing that supplies jobs. Therefore, the city they created depended solely on even more residential growth as the basis for its economy, since it was only new growth that paid to support city services to the previously built homes. When the growth died, the pyramid scheme collapsed, and Cape Coral is now having problems raising enough money to provide even the most basic of government services.

So now the Cape Coral government finally discovers that they have dug themselves into a hole, and their solution appears to be to dig even faster. They think by annexing areas around the city and promoting even more massive development, they can keep the pyramid scheme going.

What the Cape Council does not realize is that the people of Greater Pine Island do not subscribe to their culture of massive unending development. We value our coastal rural environmentally-rich quality of life, and under no circumstances will we consent to become a part of Cape Coral.

So my message to the Cape Coral government is as follows: Forget any fanciful notions of annexing any part of Greater Pine Island. In other words, keep your greedy fingers off Pine Island.

Phil Buchanan

Pine Island