To the editor:

As a homeowner in Cape Coral, in Southeast 1 Wastewater, I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning of July 21, watching the City Council vote on expanding the utilities into Southwest 6/7 and North 1-8. Before the midnight vote on North 1-8, I heard Council Member Bertolini’s statement that she favored the expansion as a step towards fulfilling her vision for our city.

Before I sat down to watch the meeting, I visited the LCEC Web site. From its sketchy financial summary for 2008, I noted that the number of households served by the Co-op declined from 2007 to 2008. I also know that the Co-op serves more than one city; unfortunately a breakdown by community is not immediately available. It is clear to me, though, from boarded and otherwise abandoned homes that Cape Coral is losing residents.

Almost two years ago, candidates for Council seats supported a vision of Cape Coral at a population of 400,000 or 450,000. We are now at 170,000, and declining. Speaking for myself, I don’t mind that our population may be stabilizing at somewhere between 165,000 and 175,000. I frankly oppose a population of more than 200,000. My wife and I moved her niece from our home to a Fort Lauderdale apartment where she resided for some time while she worked for an internet company. My impression of the east coast megalopolis is “people crammed on top of each other.” For the same reason, I have no desire to live in either Miami or West Palm Beach. At less than 200,000, Cape Coral, just like Kalamazoo or Grand Rapids, is just the right size for us. We found Detroit and Chicago too much like Fort Lauderdale and Miami.

WGCU had a half-hour show in its “Untold Stories” series on July 24, “Sanctuary Islands: the Sanibel Legacy”, where the history of that community’s unique relationship with its environment was presented. My wife said, “I wish we could afford to live on Sanibel.” I asked, “Why not apply some ideas from Sanibel to Cape Coral?” In perhaps a thousand and one different little ways, including our eagles and burrowing owls, we are pointed in that direction anyway. I note here that the Rosen brothers seemed not to have envisioned a city larger than 150,000.

The city council holds that utility service must be expanded; we don’t argue with that. Where we part from the council is that it seems members of the council, especially Mrs. Bertolini, have signed in blood onto the unsustainable projection of 450,000 residents. Given that the actual number of residents currently served by the city’s utilities has come up far short of projected, life teaches us that it’s wiser to change your vision in light of foreseeable reality. In other words, it’s wise to plot the needed capacity according to more realistic odds of different population levels.

I left the local Chamber of Commerce some time ago. Here’s what I noticed while I was there the Chamber’s leadership likes to trumpet its cozy relationship with members of the city council and administration. This relationship worries me because the chamber also has a vested interest in “making it happen,” that is, forcing its view of economic growth at the expense of other quality-of-life considerations. In short, the chamber would like to make 450,000 happen, yesterday if possible.

Did I mention Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids? Yes, I did. The truth is, it took me some time to temper my Michigan pace of “gettin’ it done”, something I learned 25 years ago when I found myself in Charleston, South Carolina, having smacked my whole being into 98 degree temperature and 99.9 percent humidity at supper-time on the longest day of the year. Right away, I learned why folks moseyed along there, but the passage of many years clouded over that lesson. So now, I really don’t mind Cape Coral as it is. And having visited a few factories, namely Ford, Kellogg’s, Post, and Eaton, in the dead of hot and humid Michigan summers, I’ll be terribly frank with you, you don’t want them down here in the Cape. Since the workers may wisely let up on the pace, sometimes to a slow crawl, any kind of industry will miss production targets by miles and be quickly shuttered, blighting a beautiful city just the same way as wide swaths of Detroit, Grand Rapids, and Kalamazoo. Please take a few pages from North Carolina’s book of wisdom about textile mills, moved there from Massachusetts and other New England states before the mills went overseas.

At some 1430 square feet of living area, my wife and I have a nicely-sized modest house. We both read that larger homes and commercial buildings will need much more electricity. So, how do I envision Cape Coral? Are you surprised that I would say “as green and sustainable as possible”? Do the water and sewer projects fit in my vision? Yes, to the extent that they expand to serve a population of no more than 200,000 But that’s a lot of land still open, especially north of Pine Island Road and west of Chiquita Boulevard. Guess what, we’re going to fill in those areas with wind and solar energy farms, operated by Lee County Electric Co-op, of which we are all members. It does mean the Co-op needs to change its business model, but just buying electricity from God knows where and at higher and higher rates does not at all work in our favor. Where do large production facilities of large corporations fit in this picture? They don’t, since they are also large energy hogs, and will be even bigger watt-porkers if they have to use large air conditioning systems to make them bearable enough to keep up some profitable level of production. Cape Coral has always been a city of families, small businesses, professional artisans in different media, and a few non-government organizations. We, as well as our children and grandchildren, would have to go through some real wrenches to change the basic nature and design of our lovely city.

Just so you know, I confess to using the new Lowe’s and Home Depot on Santa Barbara as I find them so handy to the bus route. Still, I wish they would revamp their business model to allow for much smaller boxes which will use considerably less electricity to keep them this side of bearable. For allowing those two companies, as well as Target, Publix, and Walmart among others, to build such huge kilowatt burners, you will need to blame the Cape Coral city council, and ultimately the local Chamber of Commerce. Is everyone beginning to see why I left the chamber? They don’t need my money to promote programs and values I’m dead set against.

As for those who want to keep their well water and septic tanks, give that a second thought. Septic tanks have to be pumped out every once so often. Since they are below ground level and we have a water table that borders on soaking wet half the year, septic tanks don’t really work as designed. In Michigan, my Mom and Dad emptied their septic tank about once every five or six years. Down here, my wife and I found ourselves calling the honey wagon to bail us out every three years. Fortunately, when we built our home back in 2000, we were already on city water, such as it is. If you have well water, which runs dry in March, April, and May, followed by rainfall by the deluge for the following four months, you should ask if you’re drinking, washing your clothes, and bathing in what you hope it is. It would be only too cruel to suggest that you might be drinking and bathing in “recycled water” fit only for your lawn and plants, but there you have it. What price do you put on your health and well-being?

Someday soon, we might also buy organic fertilizer from the city, something similar to Milorganite which comes from the city of Milwaukee. Because we don’t have a brewery down here, the nitrogen content will be less than Brew City’s stuff. But we may get the Coral-organite for a lower price because we get to truck it to our humble homes with our own vehicles. One thing you need to be aware of, though, is that Coral-organite, like Milorganite, will not have any potassium, and it may still have more phosphorus than you really need in your garden, way more. Five will get you 10 that your soil, like mine, has way too much phosphorus, brought in when your friendly contractor had ocean floor trucked in and pounded down to build up your lot so that your house sits high and dry when Mother Nature floods our streets. Unfortunately, according to the University of Florida soil analysis, we seem to have too little potassium to help our grass and plants send down stronger roots and make more flowers and fruits. (By the way, the soil test costs only $7 and is well worth it.)

Cape Coral was a boom town in real estate, now it is busted. As long as there is some kind of unholy alliance among brokers, bankers, Chamber leaders, and key city officials, we will always have booms and busts. While most of us are on the outside looking in as our leaders and lenders play with our lives, we will ride the business roller-coaster. Those who haven’t yet received water and sewer service say “Now is not the time.” But we should be questioning the relationship between the city council, the city manager, the local chamber, and MWH, the contractor in charge. Because now is the time to push for better terms on our behalf. Now is the time to push for a greener, more sustainable, more prosperous future for all of us, not just fatter bank accounts for some and foreclosures and short sales for the rest of us. I can’t help but to think, that is what Mr. Brandt and Mr. Deile are holding out for as they cast votes against the utility expansion projects time and again. The city council and the city manager need to live up to their obligation to all of us and push for better terms, a more realistic financial picture based on today’s population, lower water, sewer, and energy costs for all of us, and a greener, more pleasant environment. Folks are all done with big, bigger, and humongous stuff and are moving to “take your time, get it right, help everyone prosper and stay healthy” for the long run.

May we suggest that the council meet with not only the Realtors, the contractors, the Chamber of Commerce, but also with folks who live more normal lives of work and retirement?

Bruce Jackson

Cape Coral