To the editor:

For those of you who doubt the support of the residents for bringing Mr. Kessler back to Cape Coral, I brought forward an additional 521 signatures on the petition to Bring Mr. Kessler Back. We turned in 1,504 signatures at an earlier date. So the total is now 2,025. Ten of those signatures may be in question so let’s call it an appeal from 2,015 residents. To the best of my knowledge, this is by far the largest number of signatures collected on any petition in the history of Cape Coral. You can attempt to minimize it but it is what it is.

Our residents are asking our mayor and council to bring Mr. Kessler back. The residents don’t get to vote very often and our elected representatives do vote more often than we do. But the voters do determine who our elected officials are. That, I assure you, is the most important vote of all.

I heard some very disturbing comments at the Aug. 4 council meeting. I heard one council member say, “I don’t want to be in the same boat getting 100 emails a week telling me to hire someone that I am not comfortable with.”

Those emails are not electronic garbage to be pitched into a virtual trash can. They are communications from the council’s constituents telling them how they want you to vote on a specific issue. I went to the council meeting to remind the mayor and council that it doesn’t matter what they are comfortable with, what matters is what their constituents are comfortable with.

Another disturbing comment was made at that same meeting, “If we don’t select Kessler then we will be getting hundreds of emails but we can deal with that.” Again should that come to fruition, those are communications between council’s constituents and their elected representatives and not just some unsolicited spam. Let me assure you that the people in Cape Coral will remember this vote just as they remembered other decisions that were made by the prior council which led to their election.

I will be sure to remind the voters when the time comes as to who voted to bring Kessler back and who voted against bringing Kessler back, especially since I reminded the council that they represent us, the taxpayers and voters, and should be voting as our representatives and not casting votes for their own agenda.

John Sullivan

Cape Coral Minutemen