City council approves city demolition fee, registration

Niagara Gazette

Demolition contractors working for the city of Niagara Falls will now have to register with the city and pay a $1,000 annual fee.

The city council unanimously passed a resolution to amend a city ordinance that requires home improvement contractors to provide proof of insurance and pay a registration fee to include contracting companies performing demolitions at Monday's council meeting.

Councilman Sam Fruscione, who wrote the resolution, said the registration fee will both create revenue for the city to offset the cost of monitoring the contractors and will ensure that contractors are qualified and insured.

"It weeds out who should not be doing demolitions in the city of Niagara Falls because it's not their expertise," he said.

The fee for demolition contractors is considerably higher at $1,000 than the home improvement registration fee of $125, but will only raise about $10,000 for the city as there are between 10 and 12 demolition contractors at any given time.

Dennis Virtuoso, the director of the Department of Code Enforcement, said the fee for home improvement registration is lower than for demolitions because the two fields are very different.

"Demolition is more high risk," Virtuoso said. "You have to have more insurances and more skill to take down the building."

Demolitions are almost always performed on vacant buildings and those construction sites are more of a risk to the public, Virtuoso said.

"Plus if there are any problems and someone wants to complain that the demolition wasn't done right, now they've got a board that they can go to and file charges and we can investigate," he added. "If the guy doesn't take care of it or something we can pull his license and he's not allowed to work here anymore."

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City council approves city demolition fee, registration