Cape Coral maintains ‘private provider’ discounts

Nov 13, 2025 By MEGHAN BRADBURY 3 min read

Builders and homeowners opting to use private providers for inspecting will not see their discounts reduced for doing so.

Cape Coral City Council reached a consensus Wednesday to leave the private provider discounts as is for building permit fees, instead of decreasing the discount to 15%.

Assistant City Manager Connie Barron said Florida state statutes provide the opportunity to use private providers for plan reviews and inspections.

“If a developer, or contractor utilizes the services, the state statute requires the agency issuing the permit to provide a reasonable discount to reflect the amount of time and activity is saved by the private provider to do the service,” she said.

Barron said staff worked on a formula to come up with what they believe is a reasonable discount. Council then must codify the discount.  

Currently the discount is 47% and 33% respectively, in comparison to the 15% across-the-board for plan review and inspections.

A very detailed presentation was given to Council from the building department as to why the 15% discount was appropriate.

The private provider discount is based on the adopted fiscal year 2026 building division budget for personnel and operational expenses – a total of $13,693,605. The classifications account for approximately 29.7% of total operations.

The plan review private provider is neutral, while the inspection private provider is 19% with a potential offset reduced by 5% for a 15% effective reduction.

“The chosen path is a percentage-based reduction,” Building Official Shane Kittendorf said. “The key standard must be cost-based, not profit-generating.”

Mayor John Gunter said there is a list of 35 inspections for a new single-family home with 25 of them on the building side.

“At a minimum, even with today’s reductions that we have been giving at 33 and 47%, we are still on the low side,” he said. “We always want to make sure when we provide a service we get reimbursed for that service. There is more than a 15% savings. I think a third-grader can figure that out. We have to be fair and equitable. What we are doing now still does not go far enough. I could not support reducing.”

Councilmember Bill Steinke said there should be an incentive to use a private provider and, if a re-inspection needs to be conducted, it should be higher than $36.

“I wouldn’t be supportive of a 15% discount. It doesn’t provide enough of an incentive,” he said, adding that removing too much of the discount is too deep of a change for him.

Cape Coral Construction Industry Association Executive Director Wade Kundinger said a 33% to 38% discount would be more aligned.

“There is so much benefit to using a private provider,” he said. “We need to incentivize that as much as possible. There is more efficiency and a faster turnaround in that department. The discount needs to remain where it was now and look at it more extensively later.”

Councilmember Jennifer Nelson-Lastra said the No. 1 complaint she receives is how tedious the building department process is and the number of re-inspections that need to be done.

“I agree we should be incentivizing for people to use these private providers, but if our system isn’t working to be the most efficient, that is where we start with all of this,” she said.

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