THE GESTAPO HAS SPOKEN

johnny · New Member Joined: Jun 28, 2009 Posts: 7

Moving foward 9.5 acres = $88,000 Cash or $20,000 a year for 20 years or $325,000 due in ten years Moving foward? Can you help a brother out make a donation for my water bill? Moving foward is moving backwards! Puting my family in the poor house and saying good by to the family farm!

porkerp · Experienced Member Joined: Jun 09, 2005 Posts: 139

It's alot of money but I don't make enough to buy 9.5 acres let alone pay for the water for it. I didnt say I had the answer. The majority of blame is previous City Councils who did nothing and left it for someone else to deal with...alot of it had to do with elected officials not slowly raising water & sewer rates as I said before. This current council is the one left holding the bag. The City is not old enough or does not have enough industry to help offset the cost for infrastructure...because of this it all goes on the backs of the homeowners. Some tourism taxes or some other type tax over the years other than everything relying on property taxes would have helped too. When the market was booming, property taxes were also LOWERED several times which is compounding the money shortage problem. Cape Coral is very expensive for infrastructure too because of it's size. Cape Coral is big enough to put the cities of San Francisco and Boston inside it and still have room to spare.

One more time... 250 million + money spent which started during housing boom to expand two existing wastewater facilities and build a new RO plant... THEY ARE ALREADY BUILT OR ARE NEARLY COMPLETED... from this point forward there will be a cost to repay for these expansions and to maintain the operation of these facilities NO MATTER WHAT.

So, do you not try to utilize the increased capacity of these plants and not hook people into the system? If you don't everyone currently on water & sewer will continue to see there rates skyrocket to pay off the debt. If more people tie in, the overall water & sewer rates will not increase as much and you will start utilizing the additional capacities added into the facilities.

It would be like building a giant shopping mall and using lease money to pay off the the loan cost of building the mall. Would you not allow anyone else to lease mall space for 5 years if you were 50% full? if the answer is yes, then you have to double the lease rate for the remaining tenants for the next 5 years to pay off the loan money you borrowed to build the mall. So you now see the dilemma, if people can't afford to pay upfront money to lease additional space, you are damned if you do and damned if you don't because either way you can end up with everyone leaving or shutting down. So you try to get more tenants and even if you can't get to 100% full, maybe you end up 75% full and still in the long run stay afloat because you didnt have to raise the lease rates as much for your existing tenants.

I know it's a cheesy comparison but I hope it brings the point across to what i'm saying. Some people won't be able to afford it and will say f*ck this and leave, some will bite the bullet, pay and stay. Every person added will help out reducing rate increases for all other existing water & sewer users.

I know for you it looks like moving forward is moving out of town. I ain't happy about it either but there are alot of places in the US besides Cape Coral that are in big trouble too. In this problem there are two wrongs and no rights but what the hell are you gonna do? Make a decision and hope to god the economy improves.

ccstorms · Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2009 5:35 pm Post subject: Re: THE GESTAPO HAS SPOKEN

If the last public meeting was any indication of how those of us in ground zero feel, I don't expect the politburo, oops, I mean I don't expect the city council to give final approval on the project. I believe it may be put back on hold until the economy turns around.
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chris · Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2009 7:53 pm Post subject: Re: THE GESTAPO HAS SPOKEN

http://www.news-press.com/article/20090...4/1003/ACC
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chris · Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2009 7:54 pm Post subject: Re: THE GESTAPO HAS SPOKEN

Photos from the public meeting

http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll...amp;Ref=PH
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porkerp · Experienced Member Joined: Jun 09, 2005 Posts: 139

Well, some will win (temporarily) and some will lose if it doesn't go forward. Chris, you will be paying a whole lot more for water & sewer if the UEP is suspended. The City could get in worse and worse shape to borrow money because their bond rating will start to drop if they don't bring in enough money. Either way it ain't gonna be pretty. Good thing Al Pacino wasn't there he might take a flame thrower to the whole place! Hoooowa.

I'm sure this won't make anybody feel better but the expansions were required by DEP and EPA for the water and wastewater facilities. Trigger points (in 2005) for maximum flows and 3 month average daily flows were hit that according to state statutes requires expansion of the facilities. So people can say piss poor planning but when these expansions started, most projections had the facilities being expanded way behind schedule with pre-expansion design capacity exceeded often causing violations before the expansions were completed in 2009. Hindsight is 20/20. Even though growth slowed, stopped or reversed, those triggers points were still hit last year for wastewater.

LVFC · Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2009 6:31 am Post subject: Re: THE GESTAPO HAS SPOKEN

Porker is right about the DEP EPA permit triggers. . . . Sooner or later the Federal and State mandates and fines will come.

I paid the extra $20K to $40K for utilities in the purchase price when I bought my home. I did the due diligence and decided that I wanted to be on City water and sewer rather than to have to pay for it and deal with the unknowns and hassles later.

A lot of people are in a state of denial. But who out there can honestly say that they didn't know this was coming. This project only been going on in town for what; 15 - 18 years! Does anyone really think the Utility Fairy was going to wave her magic wand and make it all better?

I don't deny that the City (primarily Council's past and present) have made it worse. Between the stops and starts, vacuum and grinder schemes, and the lack of clear direction or creative financing to ease the pain.

I think the city’s success over the last eight years also played a part in the project getting off target. When you set growth projections that double the population in less than 20 years, you set out to build the facilities to accommodate the growth, and then the population decreases. Which assumptions do you throw out and which do you keep? That is where there has been a lack of leadership and vision.

Unfortunately, I hear the same old complaints, from the usual suspects. I don't see anyone out there with the ability or desire to move off of the single issue politics and epethets, that have dominated for the last couple years.

johnny · New Member Joined: Jun 28, 2009 Posts: 7

The North Cape probably has more parcels of larger lots than any other section of the Cape. The land was available and cheap and many people brought additional lots to maintain their privacy. Now we get to pay for each 10,000 square feet another full fee? The benefit is still the same to the property owner regardless of large the lot is. Yes, it's true that the pipes must run pass the larger property and that would result in a higher cost but not simply by doubling the amount. What is wrong with you people? The fee should be pro-rated - since there is still one owner the collection costs, administration costs should only be charged once. The cost to repair the driveway should only be charged once. I am sure if I knew the actual components of the fees, there would be more duplication of fees revealed. Do not make the larger property owners in the North Cape your personal cash cows.

stormlovers · Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2009 9:59 pm Post subject: Re: THE GESTAPO HAS SPOKEN

OK, I'm confused! I really am. I bought a home in the part of Cape Coral that already was sewered and now I should pay 2X to 3X more 'cause you are now feeling the pinch of the economic snake? I do agree that the govt is doing a REALLY CRAPPY job of doing anything but, hanging us with your water bill ain't going to make it better.

johnny · New Member Joined: Jun 28, 2009 Posts: 7

The city bases its assessments on square footage. If you have acreage, you pay more. In expansion areas before 2006, the city recognized that it would not be fair to assess the owners of large acreage for the entire parcel. So the city assessed these larger parcels at 30 percent of the actual square footage.

The change eliminating the "discount" flew beneath the radar because few were affected.

Now, particularly in the north, the impact of the change has become apparent, especially to those who own in the Cape's only rural area. The owners of small parcels of grazing land - as little as nine acres - are looking at a water-only assessment of $88,000-plus. An owner of one home on a similar small parcel is at looking at $98,000 for water only.

Some common sense, please. Water-only is not worth six figures to any property owner, much less one home in the lone low-density area of Cape Coral.