Gather 'round, kittens. Quick recap time. When last I posted, I told you that my Condo Board had hired a contractor (whom I refer to as "Schneider" from the '70s sitcom 'One Day At A Time') and allowed him to work without permits in my building for 9 months, with none of the required inspections of the work. No one knows for sure if the work was done by licensed and insured professionals, nor has the work been properly inspected or certified, even now, almost a year after Sandy.
Back in June, when the Condo Board and The Building Commissioner were notified of this, the condo got a violation, but no required inspections were requested or done after that either. The permits were issued to Schneider with alacrity, and work continued. The Building (and Fire!) Commissioner are the same person - Scott Kemins - and he has been notified that a certified, licensed, City-approved electrical inspector found water-damaged wiring in this condo that MUST be replaced. Scott still has thus far refused to mandate the required electrical inspections for the rest of the building.
When this was initially reported to Scott and the permit violation issued, someone - I think either the Board, its Managing Agent, Schneider himself, or some combination thereof - vandalized my front door, broke into my apartment and removed the new air conditioners, replacing them with ones contaminated with mold, rust and sewage. When I called the police, they refused to act on it or ask the appropriate questions of the appropriate parties, all the way up to Commissioner Tangney.
Violations of the Building Code that can affect property, life and limb are very serious. So is breaking and entering a residence and committing a crime inside. Both of the applicable City agencies are not doing their jobs. Who should address that?
The City Council, of course. The Building Department and the Police Department report to the Council, and ultimately to Jack Schnirman.
Let's get one thing straight first and foremost: as far as I am concerned, this is NOT about politics. At ALL. Long Beach Patch and the local press have long been a forum for political mudslinging. This is fine in theory because it allows the public to see for themselves which political party represents their interests. In actual practice, the dialogue sounds pretty ugly and stupid. "Dummycrats n' Libtards! "Rethuglicans n' Conservajerks!"
Neither side in Long Beach seems to get the very basic point:
On a national level, there are significant differences between the Democratic and Republican political parties and how they seek to govern. In Long Beach, all that goes out the window. Since the 1920s, Long Beach City Hall's government has simply been a place where corruption flourishes. That's all. Both political machines have been grinding the citizenry of our City up to make political sausage for almost a century. Waste,fraud, patronage, nepotism, lack of transparency, no accountability: these words should be engraved over the sticky, filthy revolving door to that criminally ugly building on National Boulevard.
It doesn't matter which party has the reins. The horse will always enter covered in bunting and glory before pooping in the lobby, then being ground up to be fraudulently sold as hamburgers to the people of Long Beach. And if there's any left for the glue factory, the money from that lines the pockets of whoever is on the Council. It is a standing joke throughout the state.
With that in mind, please refrain from partisan politics-based comments. I may agree or disagree but they will be deleted.
Here's what happened when I raised my concerns to City Hall: nothing. I contacted the City Council with a brief outline of the problem and was met with deafening silence. Not a Goggin or an Adelson made a peep. Scott Mandel had nothing to say. Neither Torres nor McLaughlin had a question or a concern.
This is what we call "breaching the public trust". Patch readers can disagree forever on the exact role that government should play in their day to day lives. But when existing laws designed to protect the health and safety of the citizenry are broken with impunity, it is not up for debate that our government has failed. When crimes are not investigated, our police have failed. And when our governmental agencies get multiple chances to get their jobs right and willfully choose to get them wrong, everyone suffers and society suffers as a whole.
Jack Schnirman used an army of assistants to avoid responding to me directly on the phone, and referred me to Corey Klein, who is the City's attorney. Procedurally, this is atrocious. What Jack should have done is use his rather prodigious resources to fully investigate the matter and provide a written response addressing my concerns. Instead, it became a full-on "OMG how can we cover our butts?!" panic attack. Still, I followed the instruction of Jack's assistant, Mia, and called Corey Klein. I expressed that I thought there was a problem with how the Building Department and Police Department were handling this.
"Corey", I said, "The Building Department is sending a message that the public health and safety is not a priority here. They're on official notice that there's a problem regarding health and safety at my building and they aren't doing anything about it. The Police Department is sending a message that if someone breaks into an apartment and commits vandalism, it won't be investigated. Something can and should be done about it. What will you recommend that Jack do to handle the situation?"
I was very polite, especially since I was being treated like a baby treats a diaper. Yet Corey got EXTREMELY nasty with me. (Don't worry, Corey - I digitally recorded your screamy little screed, too, and you sound exactly as everyone would expect you to.) He yelled "This is a civil matter! Contact me through your lawyer!" and hung up. He didn't really clarify who the parties to the "civil matter" were, in his mind. Me and my condo? Me and the City of Long Beach? Well, we were discussing the City's failure to enforce the law. I guess he meant The City of Long Beach.
Counsel for the City is supposed to assess risk and provide advice about how to mitigate it. But instead of counseling Jack Schnirman to manage the departments that he is supposed to manage in order to avoid litigation and protect the public, Long Beach Corporation Counsel Corey Klein was inviting me to sue The City Of Long Beach.
Atticus Finch, he ain't, and he's playing with all of our tax dollars. Things must be mighty slow in Corey's office because he was practically begging me to provide him with an opportunity to litigate.
It has been suggested by some of our friends (Hi, Eddie!) that I immediately sue the City, the Condo Board, the Managing Agent, and Schneider individually. The courts are certainly one viable means to an end - for me. But the argument is flawed. The courts are not a viable means to members of the public who can't afford them, and ALL of us are entitled to expect that public health and safety are reasonably secured by our laws and their enforcement. Also, the courts are not the first line of defense between local government and the people. We have enforcement statutes on the books that enable and empower elected and appointed public officials to act on our behalf, and the courts should only be used when those officials fail or those statutes prove inadequate.
When Jack and Scott were officially notified that the electrical inspector who audited my apartment found major safety violations, Jack simply responded via email that he "had been advised that it was a civil matter."
I grew up in East Williston, which is only a few miles away. We define "civil" differently there, I guess. Yes, I know the difference between the use of the word "civil" as a legal definition and as a description of manners. I think that both apply here. It's decidedly uncivil to violate the public trust by taking a paycheck from taxpayers and refusing to do your job. It's not nice - uncivil, even - to subject citizens to potentially burning to death because you think electrical inspections can wait. The Board of Trustees for the Village of East Williston takes its responsibilities very seriously and would never allow inspections to be deferred indefinitely in the face of an immediate dangerous condition. Likewise, on the admittedly very rare occasion when a crime is committed in East Williston, the Nassau County Police Department investigates it fully and makes every effort to find the perps and bring them to justice. If the men and women in blue at the 3rd Precinct were to bumble around like the LBPD and refusing to investigate burglaries, my former neighbors would find that very uncivil indeed, and might get uncivil about it themselves.
But this is Long Beach. Civil matters and civility are apparently subjective terms.
I'm not done with our City Officials by a long shot. For example, I contacted the Department of State Division of Code Enforcement and Administration. The chief engineer had a nice chat with Scott Kemins about the electrical issue. Then he wrote back to me that Scott is willing to "remind" Schneider and his electrical inspector that inspections must be done before the permits are closed. That does not address the immediate safety issue, so I'm going over his head, too.
Remember that my neighbors who are moving back in will be plugging in lamps and running appliances. If the wires are wet and connections corroded, the State says that's a huge potential problem.
It raises a few not-so-rhetorical questions. I wonder what will happen when the inspector finds violations after everyone moves back in? How much will my condo have to pay to correct the failure to replace wet wiring? Should Sandy survivors have to go through even more disruption and expense after going through this the first time? Wouldn't it make more sense to just order a simple inspection now, as the Building Code allows? What about my neighbors who are on fixed incomes - are they supposed to scrape together a $10,000 retainer for a lawyer out of grocery coupons? Should we have justice and public safety only for those who have money?
Our City Government is severely broken. And I am like a dog with a bone on this.
Next, we will examine how you should handle things when your Condo Board and its Managing Agent get things really, really wrong. And how to hire a contractor that you can trust.
NOTES: A link to the State Building Code update on flood damaged wiring was provided in a previous post. I can also provide a link to FEMA rules on that, as well as the UL Safety Organization, and the NEMA (National Electrical Manufacturer's Association.)
Please refrain from trying to turn this thread into a place to spout a political agenda. There are plenty of places to do that and this isn't one of them. I will delete off topic comments whether I agree with them or not. For the record, I don't think that I would have gotten a different result if the current administration was Republican, Independent, Green, or a bunch of Williamsburg hipsters wearing raspberry berets to be ironic and cute. As long as there are Schneiders and self-entitled condo boards, there will be officials who are willing to pander to them.
Flood insurance is a relevant issue but it is not relevant to this thread. Please keep comments on topic and civil.
