Jaycee Park Renovations — There’s no going back now

Writer: Carolina Guzman
Published: Updated:

Where there’s talk of Jaycee Park in Cape Coral City Council meetings, there is turmoil.

On Wednesday, the council was supposed to discuss forming a stakeholder group for enhancements to the park.

Enhancements would improve the agreed-upon design. They could include better lighting, a pathway or other small improvements.

Before discussing any items, passionate words were exchanged between old council members and new council members. That’s what neighbors call them, and that’s even how they refer to themselves.

Accusations were made. The park’s changes was brought up, and Cape Coral Mayor John Gunter essentially said — enough!

“I’ve talked about this park every week for two years. Today is the day we settle it,” said Gunter. “We keep talking about this big elephant in the room; let’s just talk about it. Let’s decide what we’re going to do. We have 220,000 people in this city, and we’ve got a handful coming every week. We’ve got a contract in place. Are we going to abide by the contract and move forward or are we not?”

Gunter proposed a consensus; this isn’t a vote, and those don’t happen in Committee of the Whole meetings.

Gunter asked each member to state where they stand: proceed with the contract they signed or change it.

That’s when the city attorney stepped in and dropped a bomb.

“There is no legal basis at this point in time for us to terminate the contract. We have a public-private proposal that was authorized and approved by the mayor and city council. It went through multiple public hearings,” said Aleksandr Boksner. “There’s been a fully executed contract. We had an election, and since that election, there’s been a level of uncertainty, and they have put the city on notice.”

The bottom line is that the city attorney said this contract is signed, sealed and delivered.

Boksner said any further discussion like this creates a separate legal cause of action. He said the company could sue the city right now.

The result of Gunter’s consensus was to proceed with the contract. It was unanimous.

At the end of this one-hour and 45-minute discussion, the council made a decision on the initial purpose of the discussion: the majority chose to create a stakeholder group to discuss enhancements.

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