The City Council did it. You now have a new licensing requirement that affects every resident and business in the city. Many cities have a license requirement on work done to buildings and structures, but Northglenn went further. The Chief Building Official gleaned the toughest and most restrictive provisions from other cities and put them in the ordinance he sold to the Council.

Their public reason for the new law is to protect you from unscrupulous individuals and to assure the community that work done will be of "satisfactory" quality. The problem is that there is not one word in the license ordinance controlling such behavior. There is such a provision in the peddlers' ordinance but none in the Licensing of Contractors.

Just who is a contractor according to the new law? Here is their definition. "One who undertakes to build, construct, alter, remodel, repair, move, or wreck any building or structure, or any portion thereof, for which a permit from the city is required." The significance of the words I underlined will be discussed in a bit.

Through emails and appearances before the City Council since last summer, I did get some major provisions removed after hitting some hot buttons with a minority of the Council. The most significant was the exemption of homeowners from the license requirement. Fortunately, the city attorney also agreed to recommend the removal of the requirement that all licensees have liability and workers' compensation insurance. Other than that and a myriad of typos in the building official's ordinance, it was adopted as written.

The words I underlined are significant because alter and repair covers just about everything from the smallest, tinniest modification to major reconstruction. The word structure is critical because it does not cover just buildings. How about your sprinkler system, driveway, storage shed, fence, swimming pool, burglar alarm and water heater? The building official has them included and a lot more.

I have much more information to share in future articles but wish to close with a few thoughts for the future. The City Council hopes you will contact local businesses in the future for construction and repair work. You can be sure they will obtain a license early on. When the building official made his initial presentation to the City Council his justification was that he wanted "a level playing field" for his regular contractor clients.

If you go outside the city for a plumber, roofer, electrician or such, they may not have a Northglenn license. The penalty if you or they are caught is an extra investigation fee and a double permit fee that will be paid by you. Why, because the individual has to have a license in order to get a permit. The rub here is that a license from another city is not honored and means only one thing to our building official; the contractor doesn't need to take a written test; maybe.

To make your life more complicated when you want some work done, the city has made sure that a person can not just walk in and obtain a license. Here are some of the additional requirements. "Applicants may at any time, or from time to time, be required to furnish additional information with respect to their qualifications and financial status or other matters relating to or affecting their license, as may be deemed necessary or desirable by the building official...." In other words, don't offend the building official.

Soon I will discuss two groups that will be hit hard by the ordinance: Northglenn Businesses and Apartment Building owners/managers.