By PATRICK WHITTLE
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CHARLOTTE COUNTY -- Even after losing his roof to Hurricane Charley, paying $100,000 to stitch up his home and arguing with his contractor for 10 months, Gerald Lynch's aggravation may be just beginning.

Lynch is among thousands of Charlotte County residents who have gone to county officials with complaints about shoddy repair work.

Like so many other hurricane victims, Lynch is ready to put the devastating 2004 storm behind him, but county investigators face a backlog of complaints they must consider before they get to his.

Charlotte's investigation team is understaffed and overworked, but if it finds that a contractor did a substandard job, the county can force the company to go back and fix it.

That process takes months, but it pays to wait. Charlotte has ordered more than 1,000 jobs finished since Charley.

Still, homeowners such as Lynch, who alleges that Port Charlotte contractor USA Construction and Painting didn't adequately repair his battered roof and home, don't know if they can wait that long.

Claiming Lynch refused to pay the final $13,000 of his bill, USA Construction threatened to place a lien on his Deep Creek home. The 53-year-old wheelchair van driver wonders if his argument with the company will ever end.

"I'm tired of arguing with these guys," Lynch said. "All I say is, if you did the job right, I wouldn't be arguing."

Hurricane Charley created a glut of work for Charlotte County's Building Construction Services division, which investigates complaints against contractors.

The storm damaged more than half of Charlotte's roughly 75,000 homes, which brought a flood of construction companies into the county and spurred inevitable complaints about poor work.

The Building Construction Services division has no official estimate of how many residents have complained to the county about bad Charley repairs, but division supervisor, Erin Mullen-Travis, said it must be "thousands upon thousands."

Part of the reason investigating those complaints takes so long is that Charlotte County has only four investigators handling all of them.

Also contributing to the delay is the gantlet of meetings and negotiations that homeowners and contractors must go through before the county can take action.

When a resident complains to the county about poor work by a contractor, the county first orders the homeowner to try to resolve the issue with the company. If that fails, . . . fails, it becomes an "official complaint," and the county investigates. Official complaints are lumped together into the same file with other complaints against the same contractor.

Charlotte's four investigators have handled 529 official complaints -- many of them containing several individual complaints -- since Hurricane Charley. Of those, at least half are unresolved.

If the investigators find probable cause that the contractor's work was not up to par, the county usually issues a notice of violation, and the contractor must go before the county's Construction Industry Licensing Board. That has happened 36 times since Hurricane Charley.

The board can force a contractor to finish a job, suspend a contractor's permitting privileges or order the contractor to repay a homeowner for work that's not up to par.

Since Charley, Charlotte County has suspended two companies' permitting privileges and ordered more than 1,000 jobs finished. Sometimes the board orders single contractors to finish dozens of faulty jobs.

The city of Punta Gorda has taken an even more aggressive approach. The city's Building Board revoked the license of Tampa-based ICC General Contractors on Tuesday, the most recent in a series of suspensions and probations issued by the city.

Sometimes the county sides with the contractor. In some cases, it can even order a homeowner who is withholding money to finish paying.

USA Construction President Jesse LoRe, who is being investigated because of Lynch's complaint, hopes that is the end result of his case.

LoRe is one of many contractors who claims homeowners are being unrealistic if they expect their jobs to be finished flawlessly and quickly in the wake of such a massive storm.

"My position with him has been that we are focusing our concentration on getting clients back into their homes," LoRe said. "Some of these punch-list items are just going to have to wait until we can get around to them."

The county can only play a limited role in some cases. Certain contractors -- those certified by the state -- can only have their licenses taken away by the state, and the county can only stop those companies from receiving permits locally.

That hasn't slowed the deluge of calls to the county about bad contractors, Mullen-Travis said. The county receives at least 30 to 40 new complaints a day, down from a high of 100 last fall, she said.

Many of the complaints deal with  . . ontractual issues that the county can't deal with, Mullen-Travis said.

"If they just want to get out of their contract with their contractor, we tell them they have to seek legal counsel," she said. "We are not attorneys."

Mullen-Travis expects an upturn in complaints later this fall. Seasonal residents will return, find that their homes are not fully repaired and file complaints, she said.

Regardless of how many people complain, the county will continue investigating, she said.

Deep Creek's Lynch, still stewing over what he calls "amateurish" repairs to his house, hopes his complaint comes up soon.

"I would like for the contractor to come back and repair all of the work," he said. "They don't even answer their phones because they know it's me."