To the editor:

I will call this the tale of two cities. Port St. Lucie (PSL) and Cape Coral (CC). Each of these two cities is in the State of Florida. Up until 1970, Port St. Lucie had only 300 inhabitants. That is close to what Cape Coral had when our city first started. At the end of 2007, each city had a population of about 160,000 residents. Similar to Cape Coral, Port St. Lucie is one of the top 10 fastest growing cities in the USA. That is where the similarity ends.

Cape Coral has canals, Port St. Lucie has miles and miles of sandy beaches. The Cape has a low crime rate….PSL’s crime rate is lower. In 2005, we collected $54 million in real estate taxes while they collected only $27 million. In 2006, we collected $76 million and they collected $38 million. And in 2007 we collected $107 million and they collected only $51 million. In other words, PSL is collecting about half of what we collect.

If you look at how much they spend in the General Fund which is the fund that pays for all basic city services, in 2007 we spent $149 million while they were spending only $62 million. They spent less than half of what we spent.

In 2007 they employed 1,216 Full Time Equivalent government employees. Cape Coral had 1,918. In other words, Cape Coral had 58 percent more people on the payroll. Remember we both have the same population.

I looked at pension payments and found that in 2005, the Cape contributed $6.1 million, but Port St. Lucie paid only $1.5 million. In 2006 we spent $7.3 million while they were spending $2 million and in 2007 we spent $9.5 million for pensions while they spent only $2.6 million.

As a citizen who has been living in Cape Coral since 1984, I ask a very simple question. Why can Port St. Lucie run their government for so much less than we do? Do we spend more money because our quality of life is better?

Before you answer, remember, their crime rate is lower than ours and they have miles of pristine beaches which we do not have. They have a university, we do not. The N.Y. Mets baseball team trains there, but we have to go to Fort Myers to see the Red Sox. They host a PGA golf tournament, while we do not.

I got all of this information by researching the Internet. Some information came from the State of Florida and some from each city’s web site. I would like to see The Breeze write an investigative report which compares the two cities and explains why they do a better job than we do.

In the mean time, the city council should start seeking some answers from the city manager and then do something which moves us in the right direction. With the highest foreclosure rate in the country, the council has to know people who live here are hurting financially. What we do not need is more of the same that got us to where we are. I think they call that “Change.”

Sal Grosso

Cape Coral