The city of Cape Coral is going to develop a plan to improve how it deals with unlicensed contractors.

Mayor John Gunter received consensus Wednesday afternoon to work on an ordinance and funding mechanism for a better approach.

Gunter said there is nothing in a state bill that he can recall that would hamper the city from doing any type of enforcement for unlicensed contractors.

“Under statute we can enforce it as well. The question is do we want to,” he said.

His suggestion is $5 extra per a permit, which would go into a restrictive fund for enforcement of unlicensed contractors.

“I would do that all day long — pay that $5 extra,” said Gunter, a contractor, if contractors knew where the money was going. “If we pull 40,000 permits a year at $5, that’s $200,000. That would pay for two code enforcement officers.”

He said that is a simple fix — $5 extra to make sure unlicensed contractors are not working in the city.

“I have been doing contracting work for 38 years. This has always existed,” Gunter said.

There was a great deal of conversation around permits as the city is out of the business of issuing occupational licenses, which includes contractor licenses.

The program,, which was essentially a registration fee more than an enforcement tool, sunset in March 2023

Now the city validates required licenses through the permitting process, based on the Florida Department and Professional Regulation license database. 

City Manager Michael Ilczyszyn said the city is verifying the people they are issuing the permit to on behalf of the consumer to make sure the appropriate license is there to do the work. He said there are checks and balance in their system to make sure the appropriate license is had.

He remembered an incident from the business licensing days.

There was a pool “contractor” that did 40 pools in the city without a license, he said.

“We are not doing stings or proactive operations when we used to be licensing provider,” Ilczyszyn said.

Code enforcement is getting involved for unpermitted work.

“When we get the unpermitted work and find out there is an unlicensed contractor, all we do is report it. We are out of the business of unlicensed contractors. What we are in the business for is unpermitted work, which is a code enforcement violation,” he said.

Ilczyszyn said he has been looking at the permitting information for three months. He said he is not seeing the issue that is constantly being pounded out there, unless he is not seeing all the permit reviews.

“To protect my staff and organization, I am pushing back,” Ilczyszyn said. “The letter and all those accusations, I need to fight back with data and responses. We get dinged for the whole process. I am starting to push back with real facts and real cases to show you all with what we are dealing with when these accusations are being made.”

He said most of the complaints are from 2022 and 2023. In 2024, the city spent thousands of hours implementing change.

“The other thing that is an unknown and is unfortunate is we were pushing for a five-day turnaround. If you turned a permit in on Monday, then you would get it on a Friday. When the permitting started to slow down rather than pick up that pressure to get to five days the construction industry said we would be acceptable with a 30-day turnaround to keep the fees the same. Instead of buying up a faster level of service what was communicated to us, was the industry told us 30 days is acceptable as long as we have the fees,” Ilczyszyn said. “To keep the fees low, instead of getting quicker than 12 days, we now went backwards to 30 days.”

He invited council members, one at a time, to sit in on his meetings at 8:30 a.m., so they can have accurate information.

“I look at every single permit that is due today and yesterday every morning to see if anything goes past,” Ilczyszyn said, adding that if the permit is close to being over, he sends out an email stating it has to get done today.

The goal is 30 days to review the permit.

Data continues to be collected, but in new ways to show a bigger picture.

“They are more volume, not qualitative data,” Ilczyszyn said. “The monthly reports says 600 inspections, 200 reviews, 115 new construction. What I need to get to, start to change the narrative and dialogue, is of all of those, how many were reviewed on time,” he said.

Ilczyszyn said the clock does not stop for the city in the contractor’s eyes. He said he wants to hone down on how much time the permit is with the city, and how much time with the contractor.

“I am going to make this publicly available, so the community can see which contractors are getting the most amount of rejections. Put the data in the community’s hands,” Ilczyszyn said.

To reach MEGHAN BRADBURY, please email news@breezenewspapers.com