Cape Coral City Manager Michael Ilczyszyn is speaking for the first time after the Joint Legislative Auditing Committee unanimously voted to approve a .
This comes after state lawmakers presented findings to the committee on Monday, they say, proves the city is misusing funds and violating state law.
“I welcome this audit,” Ilczyszyn said.
On Tuesday, Cape Coral Construction Industry Association President Keith Quackenbush said he he says shows the city’s building department is using permit money in unauthorized ways.
“Money that’s collected for building permits and fees and things like that needs to be used for the purposes of the building funding, the building department inspections, and the staff that manages permits and such,” Quackenbush said.
mandates that building department funds be used solely for building code enforcement.
On Monday, Giallombardo told the committee he believes the documents show the city has been using building department funds to cover expenditures on hurricane overtime, fire department expenses, payroll for scanning clerks, a $10 million issue related to a failed building purchase, and nearly $3 million in unexplained fund transfers.
“We’re seeing a pattern of discriminatory enforcement, inconsistent valuations, operational dysfunction, and financial practices that undermine the intent of Florida law,” Giallombardo said before the committee.
Four days later, Ilczyszyn told WINK Investigates, in an exclusive interview, he believes this is all a big misunderstanding.
“I think, really, it was a little bit disappointing that I wasn’t given a heads up, because I could have easily clarified a lot of the misunderstandings that are out there,” Ilczyszyn said.
Ilczyszyn said the expenses in question are not being used to support general government, and insisted they are related to the building fund.
“We do have clerks that do scan documents that are related to the building fund,” he said. “So, when anybody brings in any type of document, and it could be from years, even from the hurricane when we were doing paper permits, just to get through the amount of permits we have, at some point, we are the record keeper for all properties in the Cape.”
He also said allegations related to the misuse of $10 million following a failed building purchase aren’t true.
“The $10 million that was moved into a capital project fund was for to, actually, build a building,” he said. “When I became city manager, I changed direction. I was able to find a commercial building that was for sale that actually saved the building fund money.”
Cape Coral homeowner Stuart Owen said he still supports the audit.
He said he hopes concerns in Cape Coral’s building department will prompt statewide changes to enhance consumer protection.
“I don’t think there’s ever an issue with going in and seeing how the government is functioning,” Owen said. “It’s very difficult to get anything done in the City of Cape Coral. I’ve actually talked to a couple of electrical contractors recently, and as soon as they found out it [the audit] was in Cape Coral, they said, ‘I don’t do business with Cape Coral because getting permits is just too difficult.'”
Ilczyszyn confirmed Cape Coral received a letter from the Joint Legislative Auditing Committee informing them of the upcoming audit.
On Tuesday, a spokesperson said in an email the city is complying with the audit, but did not comment on any of the allegations.
WINK Investigates submitted a records request to assess current permit wait times.
We have not received those records back as of yet.
We will update you on-air and online as we learn more.