Cape Coral City Council allocated $1.2 million from reserve funds to help offset mounting cleanup costs associated with Saturday's destructive EF-2 tornado.
The city's finance director pegged the cost of debris removal along at $580,000. The process of collecting the waste could take a month.
"We would also have to have city staff assigned to each area to monitor the tonnage that is being collected," said Finance Director Victoria Bateman.
Other costs include $50,000 for overtime, $25,000 for the Pelican Baseball Complex and $25,000 for Lift Station 507.
"From a financial standpoint we need to monitor this very, very closely. Scrutinize all the costs and make sure we look at this as an audit situation," said Councilman James Burch.
But other members are afraid these estimates are on the low end.
"If we get to that 1.2 and we're not done, are we just going to walk away and leave all the stuff in the streets, we can't do that. This is a disaster, it's a clean up it's mandatory," said Councilman Richard Williams.
Mayor Marni Zawicki says the city's rainy day fund pays for disasters such as this.
"We had just replaced that this year, so we had just used that up without ever replacing the 4 million from 7 years ago."
Storm damage did not reach the threshold necessary to make the city eligible for federal funds. Mayor Zawicki says she'll ask Governor Rick Scott for state funds to help homeowners who suffered storm damage.
