Mayor John Gunter has frequently touted the city’s progress in expanding and improving Cape Coral’s Park system. But when you take a closer look at the numbers — and the broken promises — it paints a very different picture of what’s really going on behind the scenes with our tax dollars.
Let’s begin with the highly anticipated Crystal Lake Park, expected to open this month. Originally pitched to voters in 2018 as part of the $60 million Parks GO Bond referendum, the park was projected to cost $3,185,748 and be completed by October 2021. Instead, it’s arriving three years and eight months late, at a ballooned cost of $10,293,147 — more than triple the original budget.
One of the key attractions used to sell the park to voters — the floating Aqua Park, was scrapped during development. Why? City officials feared it would be vandalized due to the park’s remote location. That feature was never replaced, and yet the cost still skyrocketed…