To the editor:

I wish to congratulate the council members and mayor for deciding to create a Utilities Committee whose elected members are homeowners and residents of the city. The elected members seem to be a mix of minds that will hopefully bring back to the mayor and council ways to complete the UEP but with a cost and plan that both lot and homeowners can afford.

Many of us are concerned about neighbors and friends who are losing their homes due to foreclosures. We watch with concern, the hundreds of for-sale signs lining the city, being well aware that neighbors and friends will leave as soon as they can sell homes they can no longer afford. We see homes all around us left abandoned in all manner of incompleteness. This cannot continue to go on unabated in our city. If not stopped our city will, in time, resemble a ghost town. The wealthy will leave too because service personnel will no longer live here to accommodate their needs.

The high costing UEP is not the only basis of foreclosures, nor the only reason for the for-sale signs, nor the cause for so many abandoned homes, or by itself the reason for the drop in new home building permits, yet the high costs of the UEP plays more than a small part as to why so many are either exiting this city, or just not building here.

This exodus of the Cape must be stopped. Too many families, especially those raising children, as well as those on fixed incomes, can no longer afford to live in the Cape. The high cost of the UEP has become more than many families can financially bear.

Average wage earning homeowners are expected to pay $22,000 for the UEP and this is unconscionable. Homeowners with homes on “oversized lots” are expected to pay close to $40,000 or more for the UEP. How did this city get to this point of charging its residents so high a cost for the UEP that some homeowners will lose their homes because of this cost? (Note: approx. $22,000 cost is for assessments, impact fees, tank abandonment, and permits, with hookup and plumber costs.)

I applaud the council members and the mayor for recognizing that the UEP cannot go on as it has with costs constantly increasing to the point that many homeowners wait and fear the dreaded knock on their door advising the UEP is to be started in their neighborhood.

Hopefully the Utilities Committee will find ways to cut costs so that people will not dread the knock on their door. This committee will need all the help and support it can get from the residents of this city. Thank you for volunteering, committee members; your task will not be an easy one.

Joan Sadlowski

Cape Coral