The Cape Coral City Council will include fines in its plan to crack down on unlicensed contractors.<\/p>\n
Deputy Development Service Director Matthew Grambow said Ordinance 49-26, approved Wednesday by Cape Coral City Council, amends and updates the language and expedites the enforcement process through the city\u2019s civil citation notice.<\/p>\n
The ordinance states that \u201clocal governing bodies are expressly authorized to enforce codes and ordinances against unlicensed contractors, including a schedule of penalties to be assessed by the Code Enforcement Officer with a maximum civil penalty of $2,000.\u201d It further states that if the \u201ccity\u2019s special magistrate finds that an unlicensed contracting code violation exists, the special magistrate is authorized to order the violator to pay a civil penalty of $2,500 per violation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grambow said the ordinance preserves all criminal channels for enforcement and allows the city to work with others to pursue enforcement strategy.<\/p>\n
City Manager Michael Ilczyszyn said council members had expressed they did not like the level of service the state was providing and directed city staff to come up with a way to enhance that level of enforcement to be funded by a fee on permitting so the city was not taxing people who do not need permits to provide the service for contractors.<\/p>\n
Ilczyszyn said the question of the ordinance was did the council want to give staff the ability to go after unlicensed contractors. He said if they did not want the city in that business, then do not pass the ordinance.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have the capacity to do it today,\u201d Ilczyszyn said.<\/p>\n
The council also approved Resolution 216-26, which creates the licensing investigator classification to add one FTE to the Development Services Department to proactively and reactively work to enforce unlicensed contractors.<\/p>\n
The reasonable fee, a $5 fee, did not pass unanimously, as Councilmember Rachel Kaduk voted against the motion. The fee funds the licensing investigator.\u2028\u201dI don\u2019t support a $5 fee. If this is really important to this body \u2013 fund this position in the budget to make that happen,\u201d Kaduk said, adding that she did not agree with having a fee for every permit and owner going forward. \u201cI am having a hard time with the fee.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was told that the $5 fee would only be applied to the BLD prefix for permits.<\/p>\n
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