Cape Coral city workers get a raise. Here’s how much and when

Good news out of City Hall for some employees. The Cape Coral City Council approved a pay increase for them on Wednesday.

The increase is 4.24% for bargaining employees and 1.25% for non-bargaining workers. It will be retroactive to April 1, 2023.

This increase comes after many employees showed up in force in May to make it clear to city leaders that they need a raise. Cape Coral’s starting wage of $14.39 an hour was less than other municipalities in the area, like Lee County, Fort Myers and Charlotte County, which made it difficult for the city to recruit and retain employees.

Interim City Manager Mike Ilczyszyn added, “So the goal that we achieved with this raise was we now no longer have any positions in the city of making less than $15 an hour. We’re going to continue to make sure that our compensation plan is competitive in the market.” 

Council also gave city staff the green light to perform a compensation study. The goal is to examine a long-term solution by looking at what comparable cities that are going through similar growth pay.

That’s something the local union supports. David Jimenez, IUPAT Local 2301 President said, “We can’t become a training ground, and in my opinion, that’s what we had become. Right? We can’t keep on bringing people in, training them and just have them go to a local municipality that’s within range. I mean, it takes 10 minutes (to) drive over a bridge to Lee County or go right over Fort Myers to go to Port Charlotte. I mean, I know in Cape Coral we have people that live in those other areas that drive over to us because of the cost of living in Cape Coral.”