Cape Informer

The first meeting of the New Year opens with an interestingly high amount of communication to the citizens of the City. A refreshing change from the seeming doldrums near the end of 2006.

(ED: Removed the paragraph RE: Change of Term Limit Vote, I was mistaken on what was voted on. This was a housekeeping change to make our city primary elections to a better date.)

The next item of interest, the Illegal Alien Hiring Resolution (76-06), was met with a healthy dose of American’s Standing Tall members. They all requested that the resolution include a compliance statement. The City’s Attorney continues to politically oppose the issue. Her first attempt was to remove the compliance issue. She then pointedly reminded that licenses would still be issued, even if they chose not to sign the compliance document. The Mayor’s statements showed disagreement with the City Attorney. However, the City Attorney then tried to claim that the documents issued were a tax. Her claim is that there is no power to require compliance of the law. My question here is merely, how can we not request companies to be in compliance with just laws?

Mrs. Bertolini asked the City Attorney if this was her opinion, or her personal feelings. She claimed that she did not intend to give the impression that businesses would not come to Cape Coral if they didn’t sign this document. Mrs. Bertolini then asked if in the event that the compliance document was signed, would any liability exist for the City. The City Attorney stated there would not be any additional liability for the City.

The Mayor asked about notarizing the document. The City’s Attorney stated that notarizing the document would help. She then tried to “not interject her personal feelings” but reminded the Council that she did not want to increase the number of documents that would be notarized.

Terry Stewart stated that there will be additional costs for this compliance. He did not state the amounts. He then asked about complying with Federal laws. He brought up the fact that we do not require truckers to sign anything about federal laws for trucking companies. I can say here that simply the difference is this: Someone starting a trucking company will not have more to sign than a construction company. We aren’t talking about trucking laws, we’re talking about illegal immigration. There is no slippery slope, because there is no connection.

The Mayor, and Council Member Day collaborated to add a statement to the statute that the contractor would sign under oath, that they would remain in compliance with the law, and require that this statement be notorized.

Mrs. Lepera questioned the capability of the ordinance to provide a real change. The Mayor pointed out that now the State’s Attorney can now prosecute a perjury charge. Citizens also have the right to point out violators to the State’s Attorney.

In the end, the motion passed unanimously.

[Where: 33990]
This entry was posted on Monday, January 8th, 2007 at 11:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.