Cape Coral leaders hosting forum to hear suggestions for city spending

Cape Coral leaders want to hear from you Thursday about how they should spend the city’s money. Mayor John Gunter says they don’t want to create a vision of Cape Coral’s future without hearing from the very people it would benefit. Once they get some ideas for what people want to see their money spent on, the council will prioritize the projects accordingly before proceeding.

A couple of months ago, Cape Coral put out a survey for people living there, asking them what they want to improve. The survey said the top weaknesses of the city are water quality, local infrastructure (like traffic) and aboveground electricity, which the city is already working on.

“I saw a lot of building, and the city is growing really fast, and I love that… you know, it’s really good for our city,” said Cristina Aguero, a 12-year resident of Cape Coral. “We need to improve the streets.”

“So many times in the past, we’ve had developers walk through the door and want to do a $30, $40, $50 million project, and the infrastructure is not in place, so when we tell them it’s three to five years, they leave and go somewhere else,” Gunter said. “One of my priorities is definitely infrastructure. I think we are lagging behind in that area. Along with enhanced infrastructure comes economic development, and if we want to attract these commercial businesses to our city, we have to make sure that when they walk through the door that we are ready for them.”

Gunter says the council needs to agree on a strategic plan for which projects they want to move forward with, whether it be road expansion or utilities, and they need to do that in the next four months before they have budget meetings.

Thursday’s forum starts at 5 p.m. at the Yacht Club, located at 5819 Driftwood Parkway in Cape Coral.