Cape Coral has given itself the power to fine unlicensed contractors up to 2,500 dollars a violation, and it is paying for the investigator who will find them with a five dollar charge on every building permit

Cape Coral will fine unlicensed contractors through its own code enforcement and has created a city post to pursue them, after the City Council passed an ordinance and a resolution on Wednesday, the Cape Coral Breeze reported.

The ordinance is numbered 49-26. Deputy Development Services Director Matthew Grambow told the council it updates the city's language on unlicensed contracting and speeds enforcement up by running it through the city's civil citation notice, according to that report.

The Breeze quotes the ordinance as recording that local governing bodies are expressly authorised to enforce codes and ordinances against unlicensed contractors, with a schedule of penalties assessed by a code enforcement officer to a maximum civil penalty of 2,000 dollars, and as providing that where the city's special magistrate finds an unlicensed contracting code violation exists, the magistrate may order a civil penalty of 2,500 dollars per violation.

Grambow said the ordinance preserves every criminal route to enforcement that already existed.

The post, and who pays for it

The council separately passed Resolution 216-26, which creates a licensing investigator classification and adds one full-time position to the Development Services Department to work on unlicensed contracting both proactively and in response to complaints.

It is funded by a five dollar fee on permits. That vote was not unanimous.

Councilmember Rachel Kaduk voted against the fee, and the Breeze reports her as saying she does not support a five dollar charge and that if the work matters to the council it should fund the position in the budget rather than attach a fee to every permit and owner going forward. She was told the charge would apply only to permits carrying the BLD prefix.

City Manager Michael Ilczyszyn told the council that members had said they did not like the level of service the state was providing and had directed staff to find a way to strengthen enforcement, funded by a permitting fee so that residents who never need a permit are not taxed for a service used by those who do. He said the city does not have the capacity to do the work today.

What is not in this account

The city publishes ordinances and resolutions through its agenda portal, and the enrolled text of neither 49-26 nor 216-26 was available there as this was written. Every phrase attributed to the ordinance above is therefore the Breeze's account of it and not a reading of the document itself.

No contractor is named in the ordinance or in this item, and none is accused of anything. The characterisation of state enforcement is the City Manager's, reported as his.