Thursday, August 17, 2006

Seeing Red

Me likes the new way Stop Work Orders are now being posted on the Department of Buildings' Building Information System (BIS) web page.




In the past I never really knew if a SWO had been imposed without reading through and deciphering all the fine print of an Environmental Control Board violation.

In the past when you called the Buildings Department or talked to a 311 DoB representative on the phone about the status of a construction site, they were never really sure either. Now we have those shameful scarlet letters for everyone to plainly see the moment the page comes into view. All you need to do next is to cast ye stone on the red SWO to open a link to another page with all the details. Witchcraft ye say... Maybe the DoB is gettin' puritanical on us. "Mr. Hawthorn, may I remind ye kind sir, that you will be needing a permit for that public scaffold!" Oh, the moral dilemmas of personal responsibility.

So for now, Ye Ole Violations pile up. It looks like someone else's backyard has been "spited". A 311 complaint (no address) made on August 9th brought out a building inspector who then wrote a violation. This brings the total to four. I have not been able to arrange an appointment yet with the DoB to have the damaged backyard re-inspected.

In my backyard, the construction site is turning figuratively into a dust bowl of sorts. All it's missing is a bleached cow skull and some tumble weeds. Occasionally the "cowboys" come around. Radusky and his posse mostly stand in a circle, shake their heads, wring their palms for awhile and then leave. Sometimes they kick rocks, spit, and wipe their brows with handkerchiefs. Sometimes they just want to cuddle.

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