Council appoints nine to Charter Review Committee
The Cape Coral City Council appointed nine people to the Charter Review Committee, which is charged with examining the city’s charter and making recommendations for changes to city council.
The people selected from a list of 17 applicants at Monday’s meeting are Larry Barton, Stephen Crane, Robert Dudley, Lynne Johnson, Arnold Kempe, Russ Moody, William “Scott” Morris, Lynne Rosko and Sergeo “Nick” Tomacelli.
With the exception of Barton, each candidate made an informal introductory presentation to the council, followed by questions from council members.
Barton had an email read to council by the city clerk stating he was on vacation and could not attend the appointment meeting, but Councilmember Chris Chulakes-Leetz called Barton both “honorable and extremely intelligent.”
Crane, while having never read the city charter, said he is a nine-year resident of Cape Coral who wants to push for mayor and council to make more money.
Dudley works as a volunteer for a Cape Coral beautification project, mowing lawns and cleaning vacant properties.
Johnson agreed that being a city council member should be a full-time, paid position.
Kempe is a former Cape Coral mayor and previously sat on a charter review commission.
Russ Moody, a graduate of the citizens academy, said the city charter “is one of the fundamentally important documents for the city” and is “basically the city’s constitution.”
Morris is a local attorney and has previously applied for the District 5 council seat.
Rosko is a citizen activist and previous candidate for City Council.
Tomacelli is a former police officer in Chicago, he said, and feels the current sitting council is the “best” he’s ever seen during his tenure in Cape Coral.
All changes to the city charter suggested by the review commission must be voted on by City Council before ultimately decided upon by voters.
City spokeswoman Connie Barron said that after the commission decides when to meet and name a chairperson, it would then meet regularly to discuss the city charter.
Barron added that the charter commission’s job ends not long after it makes its recommendations.
In addition, council voted to re-advertise for applicants for the Districting Commission, which will be charged with looking at reorganizing the city’s districts.
Because of a lack of applicants, and lack of district diversity among those that did apply, council decided to put the position back out to the public.
“It appears we ought to re-advertise so we get a distribution, and have an applicant from each district,” Deile said. “I would feel more comfortable if every district were represented.”