May 19, 2008
DOB Hopes More Inspectors Will Help Stem Blunders
The Bloomberg administration has augmented the Dept. of Buildings' budget by $5 million next year in order to hire an additional 63 building inspectors. It will bring the total number of inspectors to 461, versus 277 in 2002. The move comes on the heels of publicized events of fatal mishaps.
Patricia Lancaster resigned last month as commissioner. Though she was brought in to streamline the notoriously inept and corrupt department, her leadership was questioned after more construction workers died in the first four months of 2008 than in all of 2007. After the Midtown crane collapse which left seven construction workers and one civilian dead, Lancaster admitted approval for the buildings construction never should have even been issued, and a crane inspector quit after admitting faking a report certifying that everything was A-OK at the site. In March, a vacant building in Harlem completely collapsed and the DOB admitted it knew the building was an imminent danger but failed to follow up on securing the building or protecting the public.
Over the weekend, sheet metal plunged from the under-construction Goldman Sachs headquarters, into an outfield where Little Leaguers were playing baseball. And a steel disc was dropped from the under-dismantling Deutsche Bank Building, which has been been a literal death trap since the 9/11 attacks.
NYC - Civic Center: The Sun Clock, by wallyg at flickr
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A big collective "Huzzah!" emanates from all the Dunkin Donuts in the city.
Does anyone know what are the qualifications to be a NYC building inspector?
Being unwilling to distrust Bruce Ratner
You mean the qualifications beyond being sleazy, corrupt, and ignorant of the building codes?
I have a good friend who's a buildings inspector and he's definitely not sleazy, corrupt or ignorant of the buildings codes. But there are certainly people like that. And the DOB doesn't make it easy for him to do his job. He gets offered bribes almost every day, he has to use his own personal car most of the time and only gets reimbursed $8/day for doing it, he's not allowed to carry a weapon on the job even though he's been threatened many times (and he's a vet who took a bullet in combat and is way more than capable of handling a gun or knife), and in his office he shares a computer with 20 other people who all have to use the same computer to write up violations. Oh yeah -- he also gets paid shit. So good luck hiring more inspectors.